Nightwatch Files

On February 13, 2017, an unusually warm winter day provided a perfect backdrop for an impromptu hike, particularly since Delphi Community Middle School in Indiana had canceled classes that Monday to balance out unused snow days. The morning began leisurely for fourteen-year-old Liberty "Libby" German and her best friend, thirteen-year-old Abigail "Abby" Williams, who were recovering from a Sunday night sleepover at Libby's home. The evening prior, the girls had stayed up late eating pizza and garlic knots, watching a scary movie, and messaging boys on social media. When they finally woke up, Libby's father, Derrick, prepared them a breakfast of banana pancakes.

Libby's grandmother, Becky Patty, was working in her home appraisal office located in the family's garage when the girls asked for permission to go to a hike at the trails. Although Libby did not mention her specific intention to cross the towering Monon High Bridge, Becky agreed to the outing, stipulating only that the girls needed reliable transportation to and from the hiking spot.

Libby secured a ride from her sister, Kelsi. And her father, Derrick, agreed to pick the girls up two hours later.

As the teenagers scrambled to leave, Becky reminded her granddaughter that despite the sunshine, the February air would still be chilly and she needed to take a jacket. Pausing in the doorframe, Libby offered her grandmother a final reassurance, stating, "Grandma, it'll be okay". The girls piled into Kelsi's car equipped for the weather; Libby brought along her new black swim team sweatshirt, and Kelsi loaned Abby a gray sweatshirt. With the song "Heathens" by Twenty One Pilots droning on the radio, Libby snapped a selfie in the backseat. At 1:38 P.M., Kelsi pulled up to the Mears entrance of the trails, where Abby and Libby jumped out of the car and disappeared into the trees.

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Kathy Miller was 15 years old and looking through the classified ads — not for herself, but for her boyfriend. She found a listing, made a phone call, and told her mother not to worry about it. Her mother had a bad feeling she couldn't shake. Kathy went anyway.

What investigators uncovered in the weeks that followed would connect a want ad in a Seattle newspaper to a pattern stretching across multiple states — and to a man whose name they had actually encountered before. More than once. In very different circumstances.

The Harvey Carignan case is one of the most disturbing examples of how American law enforcement operated across state lines in the 1970s, before digital databases, before CODIS, before any of the systems that might have made a difference here.

This episode follows the Kathy Miller missing persons case from the moment her mother reported her gone — through the investigation, the leads that stalled, the witnesses who came forward, and the details that made detectives in Seattle start making calls to people they'd never spoken to before.

Sources:

https://www.heraldnet.com/2007/05/07/mother-gives-solace-to-grieving-families/
https://news.prairiepublic.org/show/dakota-datebook-archive/2022-05-25/harvey-carignan
https://maamodt.asp.radford.edu/Carignan,%20Harvey.htm
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/546721.The_Want_Ad_Killer

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In January 1982, a Sydney mother of two vanished without a trace. Lynette Dawson was thirty-three years old. She had two daughters under the age of five, a home in Bayview on Sydney's northern beaches, and by all accounts, a life she was deeply devoted to.

Then one Saturday morning, she was gone.

Her husband Chris — a former rugby league player turned schoolteacher — told family she had called from an unknown location to say she needed time away. Those who knew Lyn found the explanation impossible to believe. Her own mother struggled to make sense of it from the moment she heard the words.

Five weeks passed before anyone reported her missing. And once they did, the investigation went nowhere.

For nearly four decades, Lynette's case remained unsolved — kept alive only by the people who refused to forget her. Then, in 2018, an Australian true crime podcast changed everything. The series, which focused entirely on Lyn's disappearance, became one of the most downloaded podcasts in history and triggered a national conversation that authorities could no longer ignore. It did more than telling the story. It helped break it open.

In this episode, we examine how a young mother disappeared from Sydney's northern beaches, why her case stalled for so long, and how a single piece of audio journalism reignited a forty-year-old investigation. We look at the life Lyn lived, the morning she was last seen, and the long road to what came next.

What really happened to Lynette Dawson? And what does it take to make the world finally listen?

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>> Content warning: this episode contains detailed descriptions of homicide, torture, hate crimes and the abuse of vulnerable individuals. Listener discretion is advised. <<

In May 1999, police in a quiet South Australian town followed a routine missing persons lead to a disused bank building on the main street. What they found inside its vault would become the most disturbing crime scene in Australian history — and force investigators to confront a network of killings that had gone undetected for years.

This episode examines the Snowtown murders: who the victims were, how they disappeared without triggering alarm, and how the people responsible managed to remain hidden in plain sight for so long.

How do you hide something in a small town where everyone knows everyone? And what does it take for authorities to finally see what was there all along?

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Passion, jealousy, betrayal, and a confession that only deepened the mystery.

In the spring of 1935, a quiet seaside home in Bournemouth, England became the center of one of the most sensational murder cases of the twentieth century. Francis Rattenbury — the celebrated architect behind British Columbia's Parliament Buildings and Victoria's iconic Empress Hotel — was found slumped in his armchair, his skull shattered by a wooden mallet. He died four days later.

His wife Alma didn't run. She didn't hide. When the police arrived at Villa Madeira, she looked them in the eye and told them exactly what she had done.

But what seemed like and open and shut case, was far from it.

Alma's story didn't begin that night in Bournemouth. It began years earlier — with war, loss, reinvention, and a woman who had already survived more than most people could imagine. A musical prodigy. A war widow. A social outcast who had followed her much older husband to England to escape a scandal that followed them across the Atlantic. By 1935, the glamour had faded. The marriage had grown cold. And into their household walked someone who would change everything.

In this episode, we trace the full arc of this extraordinary case — from Alma's turbulent past and the slow unraveling of a loveless marriage, to the chaotic night of the attack, the confession that seemed to close the case before it even began, and the devastating truth that only emerges when you pull back every layer of this story.

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