
Show Notes
In July of 2018, 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts went on a run in her small hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. Something she’d done countless times before. But this time, she didn’t come home.
What followed was a search unlike anything this town had ever seen. Neighbors combed the fields. Reporters camped out at the local diner. And as the weeks stretched on without answers, the questions only grew louder: How does someone vanish without a trace in a town this small? Who could have seen something and stayed silent?
Today, we’re digging into the first chapter of Mollie’s story, a case that began as a missing persons search and grew into something bigger: an investigation that transformed a town and captured the attention of a nation.
Want early access to every episode, all at once? Tenderfoot+ subscribers get the full case at the start of each month—plus ad-free listening and exclusive content from over 30 shows. Sign up at tenderfootplus.com.
Find all action items, sources, and resources in the show notes at truercrimepodcast.com.
Keep up with us through our Truer Crime Substack Newsletter.Follow @truercrimepod on Instagram and X.Follow me @celisiastanton on Instagram and TikTok.Sign up for my weekly Substack newsletter, Sincerely, Celisia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Truer Crime
Welcome to Season Seven of Nobody Should Believe Me. Andrea revisits the case of Maya Kowalski—the story at the center of the Netflix film Take Care of Maya–and the family’s high-profile lawsuit against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. What became widely framed as a story about “medical kidnapping” began when hospital staff reported suspected medical child abuse after Maya arrived with a history of extreme ketamine treatments.
In this bonus episode of Truer Crime, we return to the disappearance of eight-year-old Relisha Rudd.
True crime is usually something we consume at a distance, through headlines, documentaries, podcasts. But what happens when those stories are tied to real places you can stand in front of?
Most of us were taught a simple version of what happened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: a lone gunman, a closed case, a tragic end.
Two years after Jennifer Kirk was found dead on former mayor Clement Richards Sr.’s property, another woman was discovered at that same address: 30-year-old Susanna “Sue Sue” Norton, who was in a relationship with one of Richard's sons. To this day, no one has been charged in connection to her murder.