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The night before Jesse Vang called 911 to report three-year-old Elijah Vue missing, surveillance cameras in Two Rivers, Wisconsin captured him driving a borrowed Nissan Altima through town. His phone was sitting at his apartment, playing a Netflix movie — building what prosecutors allege was a false alibi. On camera, Vang pulled up to the donation door at a St. Vincent de Paul store and dropped off a dark-colored suitcase. When investigators recovered that suitcase weeks later, the Wisconsin State Crime Lab found a single DNA profile inside. It belonged to Elijah Vue.
That suitcase is one piece of a case built on evidence Vang and Katrina Baur — Elijah’s mother — allegedly tried to destroy. Deleted photographs. Erased Facebook messages. A story about a sleeping toddler who wandered away that collapsed the moment investigators pulled the surveillance footage. Baur had sent her three-year-old to stay with Vang, her boyfriend, for what she described as “disciplinary reasons.” She wanted him to teach Elijah “how to be a man.” Vang called it “boot camp.” What the criminal complaint describes is a week of forced standing, cold water, isolation, and escalating cruelty — documented in their own texts and photographs. Baur’s phone held a deleted image of Elijah blindfolded with bruising on his face, taken at 3:13 in the morning. She erased it an hour after she took it.
For seven months after Elijah was reported missing, the Two Rivers community searched. Landfills, rivers, forests, private property. A hunter found skeletal remains in a wooded area three miles from Vang’s apartment. DNA confirmed they were Elijah’s. Doctors found healed fractures on his skull and face and concluded he had suffered prolonged harm. His manner of death: homicide by unspecified means. Vang faces a life sentence on the lead charge. Baur faces up to sixty years. Both have pleaded not guilty — and both are heading toward trial in Manitowoc County, where a judge has denied every defense motion to move the case or sequester the jury.
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A hundred and forty-five pages of unsealed transcript from a February detention hearing in the Anna Kepner cruise ship case placed the prosecution's complete theory on the public record. The transcript detailed CCTV footage, phone records, DNA evidence with match odds of 120 sextillion to one, and an FBI agent's admission that he cannot directly connect that DNA to cause of death. Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis provides analysis of what the evidence establishes and where it falls short heading into a September trial.
Anna Kepner, eighteen, was found dead aboard the Carnival Horizon during a family cruise in November. Her cause of death was determined to be mechanical asphyxia. Her stepbrother, Timothy Hudson, was initially charged as a juvenile and subsequently indicted as an adult on first-degree murder charges. He has entered a plea of not guilty.
Prosecutors presented a timeline placing Kepner and Hudson in their shared cabin beginning at approximately 7:30 in the evening. Phone records indicate Kepner was still posting to social media at 8:14. Prosecutors allege Hudson was alone with Kepner for roughly three hours before CCTV captured him exiting the room.
The transcript also confirmed a second juvenile male aboard the ship had an encounter with Kepner prior to her death. The FBI obtained his DNA, tested it, and excluded him from the investigation. The defense has indicated they intend to raise this at trial.
Magistrate Judge Torres stated from the bench he would not characterize the government's case as strong and described it as "a much closer call." Faddis examines the evidentiary gap between DNA identification and proof of cause of death, the strategic implications of the full case theory being public months before trial, and whether the evidence supports the prosecution's characterization of the alleged crime.
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The investigation of Ted Bundy did not end with his arrest. It continued through three trials, nine years on death row, and a final week of confessions that produced more questions than answers.
The Chi Omega trial, Miami, June 1979: the first American criminal trial broadcast nationally, gavel to gavel. Over two hundred and fifty reporters. Forensic dentist Dr. Richard Souviron walked a jury through the bite mark evidence that matched Bundy's teeth to the wound on Lisa Levy. Guilty on all counts. Death sentence. Judge Cowart's address from the bench — calling the man he had just condemned a bright young man — remains one of the strangest moments in American courtroom history.
The Kimberly Leach trial, Orlando, January 1980: Bundy proposed to Carole Ann Boone on the witness stand with a notary present, exploiting a Florida legal quirk. He was convicted and sentenced to death a third time.
On death row, he spoke to journalists Michaud and Aynesworth for hundreds of hours but would only profile the killer in the third person. FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier began visiting in 1986.
In January 1989, with no appeals remaining, Bundy summoned detectives from Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho. He gave Bob Keppel the Washington names. Dennis Couch the Utah names. Mike Fisher the Colorado names. He described locations. When Hagmaier asked if thirty-six was closer, Bundy said: add one more digit.
Pronounced dead at 7:16 on January 24, 1989. The night before, he gave a final interview to James Dobson blaming violent material since boyhood. It was tailored for the audience.
This is the fifth and final conversation in Ted Bundy: History's Hidden Killers. The investigations that continued after the arrest — and the answers the country never got.
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Kouri Richins rolled her eyes while her children's statements described being locked in basements and denied food. She mouthed "What?" when Eric's sister spoke. Then her own family called her the glue of the family — and the tears appeared. For the first time all day.That split — contempt for suffering, emotion for validation — frames everything she said in the forty-five minutes that followed. And what she said wasn't a goodbye or a plea for mercy. It was a recruitment operation targeting the three people on earth who might still be persuadable: her sons.She told them the verdict was wrong. She admitted the affair and reframed it as mutual. She told them God didn't make her to take a life. And she closed with an instruction to never apologize for something they didn't do. Each line a seed. Each seed designed to germinate over years in three young minds. Part five of five — and the most complete window into a psychology that will never concede.
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Steve Shirilla's teaching contract at Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland was not renewed following his appearance in the Netflix documentary The Crash. The Diocese of Cleveland confirmed he will not be returning. Natalie Shirilla was captured on a recorded prison call referring to the family of Dominic Russo — the man their daughter was convicted of killing — as "evil people." Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis provides analysis on whether the Shirilla parents' conduct has legal or procedural implications for their daughter's case.
Mackenzie Shirilla was convicted in August 2023 of killing Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan after driving her vehicle into a brick building at approximately a hundred miles an hour in Strongsville, Ohio. She is serving two concurrent sentences of fifteen years to life, with parole eligibility in September 2037.
Prosecutors decoded recorded prison calls in which Mackenzie and Natalie communicated using a fabricated language designed to evade the monitoring system. In one decoded exchange, Mackenzie allegedly asked whether they could tell police she had a seizure before the crash. These transcripts were introduced as evidence during the 2023 trial.
Steve Shirilla has made public statements across multiple platforms challenging anyone to produce evidence his daughter acted deliberately — despite a judge's findings that address intent directly. On the Netflix documentary, he stated he had no issue with his daughter's substance use while employed at a Catholic elementary school.
Faddis addresses Natalie's potential legal exposure, whether Steve's public campaign could affect the appellate process, and whether the family's collective conduct is creating an evidentiary record that may work against Mackenzie Shirilla at a future parole hearing.
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