New England crime and chills, with plenty of chatter.
Katie and Kirby start with loose local chatter, then move into detailed case narration, such as the numbered suspect theories in the Lady of the Dunes episode set in Provincetown. Interviews add another angle, including a conversation with the co-authors of a memoir about a childhood babysitter later found to be a serial killer.
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Killer Babes is a true crime conversation led by Katie and Kirby, and the cases are set around New England. The places are specific: Provincetown on Cape Cod, Danvers, Lawrence, Andover and the banks of the Neponset River. That local detail is what holds the show together. Episodes tend to use two registers. The openings are loose and chatty. They cover small updates, like a light show at Roger Williams Park Zoo that the pair found mediocre, the first snow of the season, or a joke that listeners must know by now that this is a podcast. Then the tone firms up into narrated case history, with names, dates and passages quoted from news coverage. The Colleen Ritzer episode shows the method. It reads out classmates' descriptions of a 14-year-old taken from a CNN article, then traces Ritzer's life from her family in Lawrence through Andover High School and Assumption College to her teaching at Hale Middle School in Stow. Several episodes come back to Provincetown. Part 1 of a look at the book 'The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer' covers the Tony Costa case: the discovery of Susan Perry's remains, Costa's many confessions and the failed polygraph exams that showed many of them to be untrue. Part two plays an interview with co-authors Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan. The book combines memoir and investigation, and the conversation keeps returning to memory: the moment of realizing where a charismatic babysitter had been taking the children, and a sister who remembers set against one who forgets. The Lady of the Dunes episode goes back to P-Town and works through suspect theories by number. One asks whether a young witness's memory shifted over the years. Another weighs sightings of Whitey Bulger on the Cape while noting he was never officially linked, and a third turns to Haddon Clark and a letter he sent to a friend in 2004. The interviews go beyond authors, too. Julie Murray joined for the third part of a season-three finale on Mara's disappearance, and the exchange starts with how her family has been holding up. There is room for seasonal fright as well. 'Ep62 New England’s Nightmare on Elm Street' makes a case for stretching spooky season to Thanksgiving, then follows a man named Freddie, a fire and three boys who are later found murdered. Sign-offs stay casual, with a nudge toward good deeds in one and teasing about new-year goals in another. A good first stop is the Babysitter pair, which plays both halves of the show back to back: the case recap and the conversation. The balance suits anyone who wants case detail delivered with a friendly, unfussy edge.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants true crime told as relaxed conversation, with enough dates, names and sourced detail to take the cases seriously, and who enjoys stories tied to real places around Cape Cod and Massachusetts.
What sets it apart: Its cases are tied to specific New England places, and Provincetown comes up more than once. Some case recaps are followed by interviews with people close to the story, such as the co-authors of a memoir set in Provincetown and Julie Murray.
Two babes from New England talking about local crime, mystery and spooky stuff in the New England area
Provincetown loses its postcard gloss with Katie and Kirby, if that's your Cape Cod mood.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A P-Town cold case holds its pull as unsettling evidence, shifting theories, and loose conversation keep the mystery open.
Killer Babes returns to P-Town for the Lady of the Dunes case, a mystery still defined by two absences: the woman known by that name has not been identified, and neither has her killer.
A conversational, victim-centered account of Colleen Ritzer's life, legacy, and the kindness carried forward in her name.
Killer Babes keeps Colleen Ritzer at the center, first as a devoted daughter, respected teacher, and steady presence at Danvers High School. The episode gives room to her education, family bonds, and the encouragement she offered students before moving into the events of October…
Liza Rodman reflects on how childhood memories of Tony Costa endured alongside the facts behind The Babysitter.
Killer Babes spends this episode with Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan on The Babysitter, the book connecting Rodman's late-1960s childhood friendship with Tony Costa to the true crime investigation she later undertook.
A conversational Cape Cod case recap that follows Costa from burial sites to court, strongest when it stays with the evidence.
Tony Costa's case is framed through a faux book-club recap of Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan's The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer.
A grim spooky tale of revenge, sharpened fingernails, and two hosts stuck on the manicure problem.
Killer Babes frames its spooky-season story as a chain reaction: grievance curdles into suspicion, then into townwide panic. After a fire in the woods is ruled an accident and three boys are acquitted, Freddie threatens to seek his own justice.
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.
Killer Babes Episode 66, Lady of the Dunes, revisits a 1974 Provincetown cold case in which Leslie Metcalf found a nude woman missing her hands at Race Point Dunes.
Killer Babes Episode 65 covers the October 2013 killing of Colleen Ritzer, a 24-year-old Danvers High School math teacher, and the arrest of 14-year-old student Philip Chisholm.
["Killer Babes episode 64 is part two of a two-part interview about The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer, the Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan book set in Provincetown, Massachusetts.", "Rodman says nightmares that intensified while she was finishing her bachelor's degree led her to ask her mother about Tony Costa in 2005, when she learned he had become a serial killer.", "Jordan explains how a couch conversation, a 40-year friendship, and more than 10,000 pages of archives from Kent State University became a memoir with an alternating Liza-and-Tony structure.", "The interview focuses on memory, research, and 1960s Provincetown, including the claim that weak police communication and no DNA testing let Tony Costa stay in plain sight."]
Katie and Kirby recap the book 'The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer' about Tony Costa, a serial killer on Cape Cod.
Killer Babes episode 62 ties Camp Karana in Cumberland, Rhode Island, to the Fingernail Freddy and Hot Shot Charlie legends near Diamond Hill Reservoir.
The Hartford Circus Fire killed 167 people during a Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey performance on July 6, 1944.
Julie Murray says her sister Mara disappeared in 2004, and the family still does not know why she went to New Hampshire.
Killer Babes’ “Ep59 Maura Murray Part 2” follows the searches and theories after Maura Murray disappeared from Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire, in February 2004.
The hosts interview Maureen Boyd, author of 'Shallow Graves,' about the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer case.