True crime with the whole backstory intact.
Serial Killing follows notorious and lesser-known true crime cases with a strong interest in the roots of violent behavior. Alyssa Carroll moves through biography, family background, crime details, psychology, and listener-facing questions in a fast, conversational style.
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Serial Killing is a true crime show centered on the question that keeps pulling the genre forward: what shaped the person behind the crime. It covers serial killers, but it does not stay boxed inside that category. Alyssa Carroll frames cases through childhood, family history, possible inherited issues, trauma, mental illness, social context, and the nature-versus-nurture argument. That focus gives the show a clear spine. The case is never only the crime scene. It is also the home, the school years, the parents, the siblings, the era, the public image, and the research trail left behind. Episodes on Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb look at intelligence, privilege, and early development before turning toward their bond and the crime that made them infamous. The Richard Chase installment brings in warnings about graphic material, then shifts into corporal punishment research and mental health uncertainty. The Vlad III Dracula episode stretches the format into history, war, family loss, and intergenerational trauma. John Gacy and Ed Gein are revisited partly because new screen portrayals can send fresh audiences looking for a more grounded account. Lake Bodom brings the show into an unresolved case, with attention to missing items, compromised evidence, victims, and local theories. Billy Milligan becomes a way to talk through abuse claims, identity, family testimony, and the difficulty of sorting biography from criminal record. The delivery is quick and informal. Carroll talks like a researcher keeping the thread alive in real time, doubling back when needed and dropping in plain-language explanations as the case expands. The show can be grim, but it is rarely sterile. It has a blunt, sometimes irreverent edge, balanced by an obvious concern for context and victim detail. It also makes room for audience theories, especially around unresolved or contested cases. The best fit is a listener who wants more than a timeline and less than a detached academic lecture. Serial Killing is built for the true crime audience that wants the hows, the whys, and the uncomfortable gray space between them.
Made for: Best for true crime listeners who want biography, psychology, family history, and case context alongside the central events. It especially suits audiences interested in nature-versus-nurture questions and older cases revisited through current media attention.
What sets it apart: The show spends unusual time on childhood, inherited risk, trauma, and social context before reaching conclusions. Its solo, research-in-motion style makes the material feel conversational without abandoning the case record.
Become a Paid Subscriber: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/serial-killing/subscribeSerial killers are both terrifying and fascinating. Here, we will explore their life stories and get a glimpse into whether they were born evil...or conditioned to be. We will also tackle other true crime stories from time to time.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Alyssa Carroll connects criminal biographies with careful, plainly stated questions about childhood, trauma, inheritance, and personal responsibility.
Serial Killing : A Podcast builds its case narratives from childhood forward, with Alyssa Carroll handling the research, writing, production, and presentation herself.
Even Vlad Dracula gets a childhood backstory here, for your inner nature-versus-nurture detective.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A historical true-crime look at Leopold and Loeb, with psychology, privilege, and a few repeated beats.
Serial Killing turns to Leopold and Loeb as an older case and spends its first stretch on the boys before the crime, where Alyssa Carroll is most deliberate. She moves from Chicago origins and affluent families to the point where Nathan Fruedenthal Leopold Jr.
A grim case study that pairs a graphic warning with questions about nature, nurture, and media image.
Alyssa Carroll's Richard Chase episode opens with a stark warning and quickly settles into a case that is as much about why as what happened. She frames Serial Killing as a true-crime show interested in the reasons behind violence, then follows Chase's murders with care,…
A grim Dracula origin story that balances family loss, war, and context.
Alyssa Carroll shapes the episode around a new Dracula movie and uses it as a way into Vlad Dracula, Prince of Wallachia. The opening section has real weight: it traces a childhood marked by loss, a father who handed him over as collateral, years spent near war, and a return…
A damaged crime scene leaves the murders caught between suggestive clues and lasting uncertainty.
The episode frames the murders as a case where the scene seems full of answers, then refuses to give them up. The aftermath is all loose ends: missing wallets, clothing, watches, and smaller items, a can with a soda-and-liquor mix and a fingerprint that matched none of the four…
Billy Milligan's story is framed as abuse, family history, and the gap between media image and reality.
Alyssa Carroll spends this Serial Killing hour on Billy Milligan, and the episode is strongest when it keeps its focus on abuse, family history, and the gap between Billy's media image and the reality he describes.
Alyssa Carroll revisits Nanny Doss's early life to probe the childhood, work, and mindset behind the Giggling Granny label.
Serial Killing: A Podcast looks past the easy shock of Nanny Doss's "Giggling Granny" label and spends its time with Nancy Hazel's early life instead.
A Q&A that turns a true crime host's origin story into the main event.
Serial Killing: A Podcast uses its AMA edition to make listener questions the frame for a clear, personal origin story. The host traces an early pull toward true crime back to a blue People magazine cover about Jeffrey Dahmer on her mother’s coffee table, where the ordinary look…
Street-level talk with civic urgency.
Trucking disputes from the driver's side.
Hip-hop headlines under pressure.
Host Elissa Kerrill celebrates the sixth anniversary of her true crime podcast 'Serial Killing' with a Q&A episode.
Alyssa Carroll hosts a Friday morning true crime news show where she reads and reacts to listener-submitted crime articles.
A podcast episode exploring the dark history of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, tied to true crime and serial killers.
Alissa Carroll introduces a listener-submitted news article about a coronial inquest into the 2011 death of a six-week-old baby whose father was twice acquitted of murder.
A deep dive into the life and crimes of Takahiro Shiraishi, the Twitter Killer, covering his background, the nature vs nurture debate, and the sensitive topics of self-harm and dismemberment.
Alyssa Carroll hosts an episode on serial killer Nannie Doss, known as the Giggling Granny.
Serial Killing: A Podcast opens with Alyssa Carroll promising "the what's and the why's" of true crime before naming Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb as the week's case.
Richard Trenton Chase is presented as a Sacramento-born man, born May 23, 1950, whose delusions included poisoned blood, animal blood drinking, and a chronic paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis.
Serial Killing's The True Story of Vlad III Dracula opens with Alyssa Carroll tying the historical Vlad III Dracula to the new film Dracula, A Love Tale and to Bram Stoker's Dracula.
A true crime podcast host revisits the accurate story of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, contrasting it with recent dramatizations.
A true crime podcast episode exploring the life and crimes of Ed Gein, focusing on his childhood and the nature versus nurture debate.
The tent was cut down on purpose, and the killer left behind four teenagers, two motorcycles, and missing shoes.
Serial Killing : A Podcast covers Billy Milligan and dissociative identity disorder through his Florida birth in 1955 and his Ohio childhood under John Morrison, Dorothy Sands, and Chalmer Milligan.
Elissa Kerrill answers listener questions about her interest in true crime and the inspiration for her podcast.