Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Jim Chapman

Thomas Randolph called 911 on the night of May 8, 2008, from his Las Vegas home with a chilling story: he and his sixth wife, Sharon Causse, had just returned from a date when a masked intruder shot her in the head. Randolph claimed he then killed the intruder in self-defense. The dead man turned out to be Michael Miller, a handyman Randolph knew. Investigators quickly saw problems with the scene and the story.

Prosecutors later argued Randolph had hired Miller to kill Sharon so he could collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance, then shot Miller to eliminate the only witness and stage the whole thing as a heroic act of self-defense. It was a calculated double murder dressed up as a random home invasion. What made the case even darker was Randolph’s history. He had been married six times, and four of his wives were dead by the time he was arrested.

One earlier wife in Utah, Becky Gault, had also died from a gunshot wound in circumstances that raised suspicions; Randolph was tried and acquitted in that case years earlier. The pattern—marriages, insurance policies, and untimely deaths—earned him the nickname “the Black Widower.” The road to conviction was long and complicated. Randolph was found guilty in 2017 and sentenced to death, but the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the verdict because jurors had heard evidence from the earlier Utah case. At his 2023 retrial, with that prior-act evidence barred, a second jury still convicted him of conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of first-degree murder. In 2024 he was sentenced to 60 years to life. He continues to maintain his innocence.

Timestamps:
02:06 Vegas Home Invasion
05:28 Early Marriages
09:50 Becky’s Death
14:05 Jailhouse Plot
14:43 Leona’s Marriage
15:44 Gayna’s Escape
19:03 Frances’s Mysterious Death
26:13 Sharon’s Murder
29:42 Conviction Overturned

#bloodyangolapodcast #podcast #ThomasRandolph  #podcast #truecrime #Nevada

In this episode Jim Chapman examines the crime, conviction, and eventual failed execution of death row inmate Christa Pike in Tennessee after being convicted in the murder of Colleen Slemmer.

Timestamps
01:45 Failed Execution Shock
02:58 Job Corps Background
10:33 Krista Pike Emerges
20:11 Clues on Campus
26:31 Pike Confesses
30:05 Death Sentence Handed Down
32:11 New Execution Date Set
34:15 Medical Issues Raised
36:21 Execution Goes Wrong

Patreon Link
https://www.patron.com/bloodyangolapodcast

In this episode Jim Chapman brings you to Alaska and tells you the story of Israel Keyes. Jim covers the disappearance of Samantha Koenig in Anchorage in 2012 and the investigation that followed, including the ransom scheme and the evidence later linked to him. Jim also dives deep into Keyes  background, military service, and adult life, along with the violent behavior and confessions that shaped the case. 

Timestamps
05:12 Wilderness to Extremism
10:38 Soldiers See the Rage
20:05 Samantha Koenig’s Last Night
26:43 Ransom Scheme Unravels
30:13 Murder and Body Disposal
39:14 Confession and Charges
41:08 Failed Escape Attempt
43:19 Victims Revealed 

Patreon Link
https://www.patron.com/bloodyangolapodcast

On the afternoon of November 21, 2021, downtown Waukesha, Wisconsin, was packed for the city’s annual Christmas parade. Kids in baseball uniforms. Bank employees handing out candy. The Milwaukee Dancing Grannies in sequins and pompoms. Then a red Ford Escape came down the route and did not stop.

In the span of a few blocks, Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. struck dozens of people. Six were killed. More than sixty were injured. The dead ranged from 8-year-old Jackson Sparks, marching with his brother and the Waukesha Blazers, to 81-year-old Wilhelm Hospel, walking with the dance group his wife belonged to. Three members of the Dancing Grannies — Virginia Sorenson, 79; LeAnna Owen, 71; and Tamara Durand, 52, in her first parade with the troupe — never made it home. Jane Kulich, 52, was walking with a Citizens Bank float.

This episode reconstructs that Sunday: the domestic fight earlier that day, the low cash bail that had put Brooks back on the street, the barricades he ignored, and the five-block path of the SUV. It also traces the two decades that came before it — battery, domestic violence, prior incidents involving vehicles, and open Milwaukee felony cases that never kept him locked up.

In 2008, a young man from Chillicothe, Ohio, slit his girlfriend’s mother’s throat, sat on the couch, and watched her die—then set the apartment on fire. He called himself “Box Cutter.” Prosecutors wanted death. A psychologist’s finding about his IQ took it off the table. He went to prison for life. That should have been the end of the story. It wasn’t.

In February 2016, Casey Pigge carved a cinder block out of his cell wall at Lebanon Correctional Institution, talked his cellmate into a “card trick,” and beat Luther Wade to death. He later said he wanted a cell to himself. Officials still put him on a prison bus. Two days after he pleaded guilty to that killing, he sat in the back of a transport vehicle with no cameras and no line of sight to the officers up front. Using a restraint chain, he strangled and smothered 61-year-old inmate David Johnson while other prisoners watched. When it was over, Pigge boasted: “I guess you never seen that on a bus before.” A year later, in another February, he and another lifer used homemade shanks to stab a Lucasville correction officer 32 times. The officer lived. Pigge did not stop talking about killing again.