Minnesota

The Nick Firkus Case — Staged Intruder Murder in St. Paul

The Nick Firkus case is a solved Minnesota homicide in which Nicholas Firkus shot his wife Heidi in their St. Paul home in April 2010 and staged the scene as an intruder attack.

27 Years in the Dark: How Podcasts Documented Jacob Wetterling's Case

Jacob Wetterling was 11 years old when he vanished while cycling home from a convenience store in rural Minnesota in October 1989. Twenty-seven years later, DNA evidence and a confessional plea deal would finally reveal what happened to him—and podcasters would document every twist of this watershed case.

The Vanishing of Brandon Swanson: 16 Years Without Answers

Brandon Victor Swanson, a 19-year-old from Marshall, Minnesota, vanished in the early hours of May 14, 2008, shortly after his car went into a ditch. Speaking to his parents by phone and claiming he was near the town of Lynd, Brandon exclaimed "Oh, shit!" and went silent approximately 47 minutes into the call—and was never seen again.

Fashion's Darkest Hour: The Versace Murder and Nordic Obsession

The murder of Gianni Versace in Miami in 1997 became one of the decade's most infamous crimes. Nordic storytellers have long been fascinated by serial killer narratives—and the Versace case remains a fixture in Scandinavian true crime discourse, reflecting broader European interest in American criminal pathology.

In the Dark: How a Podcast Exposed Systemic Justice Failures

Since launching in September 2016, *In the Dark* has become one of the most consequential true crime podcasts, using meticulous investigative journalism to examine not the crimes themselves, but the systemic failures that allow injustice to persist. Now produced by *The New Yorker* and Condé Nast Entertainment, the series has prompted legislative reform and overturned convictions.