Bill Gothard reduced the French Revolution to a lesson about disobedience. The Wisdom Booklets — the Duggar family’s curriculum — taught children that all authority is divine, that questioning it invites destruction, and that the separation of church and state is rebellion against God. The law sections framed Old Testament Read more…
Ten feet. That’s the distance between where Victoria Heuermann sat as a child watching television and playing video games, and the room where her father strangled, murdered, and dismembered women over the course of nearly two decades. Ten feet between a normal childhood and a crime scene. She didn’t know Read more…
She was adopted and never felt wanted. Assaulted at sixteen. Attempted to take her own life before she was out of her teens. And then a man named Rex Heuermann showed up and said move in, I’ll handle everything. For a woman who had never once felt safe in her Read more…
At 9:27 PM on February 1, 2021, Matthew Farwell entered Sandra Birchmore’s apartment building. At 9:56 PM, he left. Twenty-nine minutes. Sandra was never seen alive again. When her body was found three days later, she was wearing the same clothes. Federal prosecutors allege that inside those twenty-nine minutes, Farwell Read more…
This is the story Bob Motta has been waiting three years to tell — and he’s telling it here first. The criminal defense attorney and Defense Diaries podcast host spent sixteen months investigating the Don Studey case on the ground in Iowa. He made contact with Lucy Studey-McKiddy, the daughter Read more…
Before the arrest, before the 911 call, before the charges — there was a man with a guitar and a public image built on faith, family, and music. Caleb Flynn grew up as a pastor’s son in Braham, Minnesota. He drummed in his father’s praise band as a child, played Read more…
Over a hundred hours of phone calls. Sixteen months of investigation. Boots on the ground in Green Hollow. And one question that still doesn’t have a clean answer — is Lucy Studey-McKiddy telling the truth about the alleged Green Hollow Killer? Criminal defense attorney Bob Motta approached the Don Studey Read more…
From inside solitary, Joseph Duggar has been performing the role of a man reborn. Bible readings. Hours of prayer. A new translation because the old one didn’t work anymore. He found the Book of Ruth and told Kendra it encouraged him — the story of an outcast restored by grace. Read more…
A five-year-old girl sits in front of Wisdom Booklet 36. She can’t fully read it yet. But the framework is already being installed: if something happens to you, the first question is what did you do wrong. The Duggar family curriculum taught girls that male lust was their fault to Read more…
Parents in rural Iowa warned their children for decades — don’t go back into the hollow, stay away from Don Studey. He was the boogeyman of Green Hollow. And when criminal defense attorney Bob Motta went into the small towns of Tabor and Thurman to start interviewing locals about the Read more…