Where a real case meets the horror film it inspired.
Based on a True Crime sets a real story beside the film it fed, from Sarah Winchester's house to poisoned candy myths and Candyman. Chelsea comes as the true crime fan and David as the horror movie fan, and the talk moves easily between history and film trivia.
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Two interests share the microphone on Based on a True Crime. Chelsea introduces herself as the true crime fan, and David introduces himself as the horror movie fan. Together they take a real case, legend or historical figure and follow it onto the screen. 'Winchester (House)' shows the method plainly. It lays out the story of Sarah Winchester and her house, points to further reading such as a biography.com page, and saves the 2018 film Winchester for after a break. 'Poisoned Candy Myths, Facts and Candyman' runs the same way, working through the candy scares and bringing in the Tylenol murders in Chicago as a related case before Candyman gets its turn. The asides range widely. In 'Dracula & Vlad the Impaler', a subject a patron raised in a poll leads to a discussion of antisemitism in the novel, with lines drawn to Jack the Ripper, the Leather Apron figure the public tried to blame, and the lie of blood libel. It is a sober stretch, and it comes before the movie talk begins. Elsewhere the mood is lighter. Talk of The Entity, the 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey and Ron Silver, wanders into its director's other work, including a Rodney Dangerfield soccer comedy, with a quick joke about Lando along the way. The candy conversation takes in memories of parents vetting Halloween hauls and the satanic panic of the 1980s. Adaptations beyond the headline film come up too. 'The Silence of the Lambs' ranges across Manhunter and the Hannibal television series with Mads Mikkelsen, and settles one difference between the two: Chelsea loves spoilers, David does not. Titles such as 'Urban Legend(s)' and 'The Entity & Doris Bither' show the spread, from folklore to a film tied to real-life events. Several episodes began as Patreon exclusives, with topics put to supporters' votes. They now arrive with a new introduction that cites a hiatus as the reason they are being shared more widely, plus a caution that some news references may be dated. Several end on the same line, 'death is but a door and time is but a window', and a promise to be back. What a listener gets is the real story and the screen version side by side, from two people with different tastes and an easy rapport. 'Winchester (House)' makes a good first listen, since the history-then-film structure is laid out clearly there.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants to know what really happened behind a horror film, and who enjoys a relaxed conversation that follows tangents about directors, casting and childhood memories.
What sets it apart: Instead of covering a case or a film alone, it puts a true crime fan and a horror movie fan together. Each subject, from Sarah Winchester's house to poisoned candy myths, sits beside the film it inspired.
BASED ON A TRUE CRIME is a podcast where Chelsea’s love of true crime and David’s love of horror movies intersect. We discuss murders and mysteries and how they have inspired film adaptations, television, books and more.
Bonnie and Clyde's movie romance meets the funeral crowds; you get the less tidy version.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A lively Dracula discussion that links Vlad the Impaler's brutality to screen myth and the book's darker cultural history.
Vlad Tepes starts in recognizable horror country, then keeps steering Dracula back toward the fifteenth-century violence around the Ottoman Empire and Wallachia.
Sarah Winchester's haunted mansion sets up a brisk haunted-history episode before the film's ghost story takes over.
The Winchester House legend gives the episode a sturdy haunted-history spine: Sarah Winchester heads west after her husband's death and keeps expanding a seven-story mansion, with the familiar story tying those additions to spirits killed by Winchester rifles.
Chelsea and David revisit a late-90s campus horror movie through the urban legends that drive its kills.
A late-90s campus slasher gets treated as both a horror setup and a folklore machine, as familiar warnings start turning into a murder pattern at a New England university.
A relaxed true-crime history of how poisonings, copycat fears, and Halloween panic shaped a lasting candy warning.
Chelsea and David turn familiar Halloween candy rules into a true-crime conversation about why those warnings stuck. They move from childhood routines around inspected treats into the 1980s satanic panic and the Tylenol murders in Chicago, treating that case with care: cyanide…
A loose, good-humored discussion of The Entity, its true-crime backdrop, and Sidney J. Fury's wider film career.
The Entity gives this single-episode review a sturdy center, with Chelsea and David moving between the 1982 film, the real-life events said to have inspired it, and the show's horror-meets-true-crime framing. Barbara Hershey's Carla Moran and Ron Silver's Dr.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard traces con man John Meehan's fraud, abuse, and its Bravo TV adaptation.
["Based on a True Crime's Dracula & Vlad the Impaler, originally made for Patreon listeners, connects Vlad Tepes's Wallachia to Universal's 1931 Dracula.", "David and Chelsea trace Vlad II, Radu, John Hunyadi, and Mehmed II through hostage-taking at Gallipoli, Wallachian power struggles, and impalement as a ruling method.", "They then move from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel and Bela Lugosi's 1927 Broadway run to Todd Browning's 1931 film and its budget-driven changes.", "The discussion also covers Moroi folklore, blood-libel readings of Dracula, and comparisons with Christopher Lee, Nosferatu, and other vampire versions."]
Based on a True Crime uses Sarah Winchester's California mansion to connect a $20 million inheritance, a 1906 earthquake, and the folklore around the Winchester rifle fortune.
Based on a True Crime's "Urban Legend" episode opens with Chelsea and David framing the recording as a Patreon bonus released while the show is on hiatus, then warning that some references are dated.
["Based on a True Crime's 'Poisoned Candy Myths, Facts and Candyman' starts with Halloween-candy panic, from Industrial Revolution distrust to Bureau of Chemistry testing in the 1890s and 1900s.", "Chelsea and David cite William Shine's 1959 candy-coated laxatives and the 1964 Long Island woman who handed out steel wool, dog biscuits, and ant poison to older trick-or-treaters.", "The main true-crime case is Ronald Park O'Brien's 1974 Pixy Stick poisoning of eight-year-old Timothy in Deer Park, Texas, tied to debt, life-insurance policies, and a cyanide purchase attempt in Houston.", "The back half switches to Bernard Rose's 1992 Candyman, covering Clive Barker, Cabrini-Green, Tony Todd, Virginia Madsen, bees, hypnosis, and the film's production details."]
Based on a True Crime covers Doris Bither and the 1974 Culver City case that brought UCLA parapsychologist Barry Taff to 11547 Braddock Drive.
Chelsea and David connect Hannibal Lecter to Alfredo Bali Trevino, a Mexican surgeon whom Thomas Harris met at Topo Chico Penitentiary after a 1960s interview with Dykes Askew Simmons.
Based on a True Crime examines Ted Bundy's crimes and the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile through the hosts' research into victims, investigations, trials, and Bundy's public image.
Based on a True Crime examines Michael Alig’s rise from South Bend, Indiana, student to New York Club Kids promoter and his connection to the 1996 killing of Angel Melendez.
Based on a True Crime examines Henry Lee Lucas's 1983 firearm arrest, hundreds of murder confessions, and his partnership with Otis Toole.
Based on a True Crime traces the reported 1949 possession of 14-year-old Roland Doe, whose case inspired William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist and William Friedkin’s 1973 film.
Based on a True Crime examines the June 9, 1912 killing of eight people in Villisca, Iowa, a case that remains unsolved despite several suspects and trials.
Based on a True Crime examines Bernie Tiede's relationship with wealthy Carthage, Texas widow Marjorie Nugent and the 1997 discovery of her body in a taped-up freezer.
Based on a True Crime examines Mary Cecilia Rogers's 1841 disappearance, the discovery of her body in the Hudson River, and Edgar Allan Poe's fictional retelling as The Mystery of Marie Roget.
Dana Fredsti discusses writing zombie fiction, urban fantasy, and science fiction with Chelsea and David on Based on a True Crime.
Based on a True Crime covers Ivan Milat, who was convicted in 1996 of murdering seven backpackers whose bodies were found in Belanglo State Forest between September 1992 and November 1993.
Based on a True Crime examines the Hwaseong serial killings, in which at least nine women were murdered between 1986 and 1991 and the killer was not identified during the investigation.
Based on a True Crime revisits the 1954 murder of Honora Parker by her 16-year-old daughter Pauline Parker and Pauline’s 15-year-old friend Juliett Hume, later dramatized in Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures.
Chelsea and David celebrate the one-year anniversary of Based on a True Crime with listener questions recorded after their move to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Based on a True Crime examines Bobby and Ila Faye Dent's May 2, 1969 flight from a Texas traffic stop, which became a six-hour, nearly 300-mile hostage chase.
Based on a True Crime examines Henry Theodore Young's imprisonment at Alcatraz, including solitary confinement, a 1939 escape attempt, and the 1940 killing of fellow inmate Rufus McCain.
Based on a True Crime hosts Chelsea and David, joined by Heather and Rochelle of Nature vs.
Based on a True Crime examines Joe Ball, the Texas tavern owner whose live-alligator attraction became linked to disappearing barmaids and the 1976 horror film Eating Alive.
Based on a True Crime examines Gary Gilmore's violent history, abusive childhood, repeated imprisonment, and relationship with Nicole Baker Barrett.
Based on a True Crime examines Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s Great Depression crime spree, which the episode says included robbery, kidnapping, and the killing of at least 12 people.
Based on a True Crime examines the January 1958 killing spree associated with 19-year-old Charlie Starkweather and 14-year-old Carol Fugate, which left 10 people dead and later influenced Natural Born Killers.
Based on a True Crime examines Harry Powers, born Herm Drenth in Holland in 1892, whose matrimonial aliases connected him to women including Asta Eicher and Dorothy Lemke.
Based on a True Crime examines the unsolved 1950 murder of 13-year-old Jeanette Christman in Columbia, Missouri, and its influence on When a Stranger Calls.
Based on a True Crime examines whether Bob Clark's 1974 film Black Christmas came from real Montreal murders, the Babysitter and the Killer Upstairs urban legend, or earlier crimes.
Based on a True Crime’s “Christmas Murders” features Chelsea and David with Julie from Little Podcast of Horrors, covering a Los Feliz family attack on December 6, 1959 and the 1895 St.
Based on a True Crime examines Bob Crane’s rise from Connecticut radio host to Colonel Robert Hogan on Hogan’s Heroes, which ran from 1965 to 1971.
Chelsea and David frame Based on a True Crime's Winter Holiday Horror Minisode as a discussion of seasonal horror films rather than a detailed account of the Covina massacre or Silent Night, Deadly Night.
Based on a True Crime examines the 1827 disappearance and murder of Maria Martin after she left home to meet William Corder at England's Red Barn.
The hosts discuss the true story of Anneliese Michel and its film adaptation The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
Chelsea and David discuss true crime cases and their connections to horror movies and film adaptations.
The hosts discuss the 1981 murder of Marcy Conrad and its inspiration for the film River's Edge, blending true crime analysis with film commentary.