Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes

On June 30th, 1999, sheriff's deputies found a man's body in a field in St. Charles County, Missouri, and nobody had reported him missing. In his pockets were two handwritten pages, more than thirty lines of capital letters, numbers, dashes and parentheses. Fingerprints identified him as Ricky McCormick, 41, a high school dropout whose family later said he had been writing in code since he was a boy. The FBI's codebreakers, the unit that once read Nazi spy traffic, could not crack it, and neither could the American Cryptogram Association. In 2011 the Bureau published the encrypted notes and asked the public for help, something it almost never does. The pages remain one of the FBI's top unsolved codes. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson investigates the man nobody reported missing, the two pages that outlasted the best codebreakers in the country, and why the FBI believes that cracking them could still name his killer. Please note, this episode contains discussion of homicide and may not be suitable for all audiences.
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In 2003, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, promising to run hundreds of medical tests from a single finger-prick of blood. By 2014, investors valued the company at $9 billion. But the technology never worked, and patients received dangerously inaccurate results. A 2022 jury convicted Holmes of defrauding investors, and she is now serving an 11-year federal prison sentence... and the face of the breakout documentary, "You Can See Everything."
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If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.
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Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!
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By 2017, Jeff and Shaleia Divine were running Twin Flames Universe out of rural northern Michigan, selling a promise: everyone has one predestined soulmate, and for a fee, they would tell you who yours was. Members paid tens of thousands of dollars for classes, practiced a technique called the mirror exercise that turned every complaint into self-blame, and were assigned soulmates who had agreed to nothing and sometimes had never met them. Former members say that because the group was mostly women, Jeff told some of them they were divine masculine and should live as men. In July 2025, Michigan's attorney general raided two properties in Leelanau County and said a judge had found probable cause that crimes were committed. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson examines how a YouTube channel about finding love became a matchmaking machine, what it cost the people who believed in it, and whether the investigation Michigan opened in 2025 will ever produce a single criminal charge. Please note, this episode contains discussion of suicide and coercive control and may not be suitable for all audiences.
Head over to our YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios
If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.
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Most nights, Niecy Nash and her daughter, Dia, end up in bed talking true crime, and now they’re inviting you in.
If you love Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, you are going to love Crime House’s new podcast out now called Mother Knows Murder. It’s the same team that helps us make this podcast!
Mother Knows Murder is hosted by actress Niecy Nash and her daughter, Dia Nash. Each week, one of them brings a case and the other hears it for the first time. They catch different details and lock in their own verdicts, with humor that keeps things fun even when the cases get dark, and they never lose sight of the real people at the heart of these stories.
Follow Mother Knows Murder for a new episode every Tuesday: https://pod.link/6827634300
Mother Knows Murder is a Crime House Original powered by PAVE Studios.

On the night of September 19th, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home through the White Mountains of New Hampshire when a light in the sky started following their car. Barney pulled over, looked through binoculars, and said figures were looking back. They got home two hours later than they should have, with no memory of where the time went. Betty started having nightmares. Two years later a Boston psychiatrist hypnotized them separately, and both described being taken aboard a craft and examined. The psychiatrist never bought it, and thought Betty had dreamed the whole thing and Barney had heard it from her enough times to believe it. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson examines the most famous abduction case in history, Barney's description of large heads and wrap-around eyes that became the grey alien everyone pictures today, and the question the case has never shaken: what happened on that road?
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If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.
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Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts!
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