In this gripping episode, we delve deep into the sinister world of Craigslist killers, where innocent online interactions turn into real-life nightmares. Join us as we meticulously dissect the chilling tales of individuals who used the anonymity of online platforms to lure victims to their demise. With expert analysis and meticulous investigative insights, we aim to unravel the methods, motives, and psychological twists that led to these shocking crimes. Prepare to be captivated by stories that serve as chilling reminders of the dangers that can lurk behind seemingly innocuous online transactions. * Listener discretion is advised as we navigate the harrowing web of deceit woven by the Craigslist killers.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 I know a lot of us have bought stuff on Craigslist and eBay and Facebook marketplace, but I really didn't realize how dangerous it could be.
0:43 And I guess I did, I mean, it had crossed my mind before, you know, how you should always meet somebody in a public place and it should always be well lit during the day, never give anyone your address and those kinds of things.
0:58 But people don't always have good intentions.
1:02 Of course, we all know that many times they don't really want to purchase what you're selling.
1:09 Many times their plans are not to pay you money and walk away with the item that you're trying to get rid of.
1:16 And I didn't realize in doing my research that there have been at least 131 Craigslist murders since 07.
1:27 And I can tell you this several years ago, my daughter was looking for work and she mentioned to me that she had gotten on Craigslist, and she found an ad that was listed by a man who wanted someone to come set up his Christmas decorations while his wife and Children were out of town visiting his in-laws.
1:54 Now, I did think this was super strange, but what triggered me is that she told me that he wanted her to go up in the attic and get the Christmas decorations down.
2:07 And his goal was to surprise his wife when she got home and have the decorations all put up.
2:15 Now, I don't know about you, but most women like to do this themselves and they have a specific way that they want it done in a specific place that they want everything to be.
2:26 It's just weird, you know.
2:28 And so when she mentioned to me that this adult man wanted this young 18, 19-year-old girl to climb up in the attic and pull down his decorations.
2:42 I just really got a bad feeling about it.
2:45 I mean, it doesn't sound right.
2:46 I told her no, I mean, you're not going to do that whatever he was going to pay you.
2:53 I'll give you double not to do it.
2:55 There are probably women in his attic.
2:59 He's probably not married.
3:01 There probably aren't even any Christmas decorations up there.
3:05 Not good.
3:06 I mean, I could just picture him bringing her a drink that had been laced, bad, bad things could have happened and not everyone on Craigslist is bad.
3:16 I'm definitely not saying that not everyone who purchases on Facebook marketplace has bad intentions, but you have to always think, worst case scenario.
3:27 And as a death investigator, I probably think that too much.
3:32 But I've seen a lot and police officers have seen a lot.
3:37 You always just have to think about the past and stories that you've heard and things that can happen, possibilities and the potential for you being put in a situation that you can't get out of.
3:51 I had found a case on Nathaniel Briscoe, and he met a girl named Amy Dickey and she was 28 years old, and he met her through ads for sex on Craigslist and this was in Austin in 2010.
4:09 So Nathaniel Briscoe was 30 his victim, Amy, her body was dumped in a field, and she had been strangled.
4:19 She was a prostitute and she worked through Craigslist and a friend drove her to his apartment in Minnesota on May 21st of 09.
4:31 Now she disappeared after midnight that day.
4:35 And later in the day, Briscoe showed up at his dad's house to do laundry seemed normal.
4:42 Nothing was odd.
4:44 But after her body was found dumped in this field and it was covered in bamboo sticks that had been at his house next to his garage.
4:58 So that's kind of how they linked him to it, I guess.
5:01 But he told detectives that he put his hands on her throat, but that she left completely unharmed.
5:10 Her DNA was found in his apartment.
5:14 So, you know, there was proof that she had actually been there.
5:18 Now, Amy had smoked some crack.
5:22 The driver that drove her over there did tell police that she was very calm.
5:29 Whenever she first got to his residence, she had advertised as a sex worker.
5:35 And that's the reason that he reached out to her on Craigslist.
5:39 He came out and met her at the car and the driver was actually waiting outside for her.
5:45 Later that morning, a landscaper found her body in a wooded green belt, duct tape was matted in her hair.
5:54 The tape had her and Briscoe's DNA on it and the body was covered with grass leaves, rocks and the bamboo sticks which had been out by Briscoe's garage.
6:06 He stated that he didn't recognize her at first when he was shown a picture.
6:13 And then he later said that he met her in December, and he acknowledged that she was in his apartment the night she died and that they did have sex.
6:24 He told the police that she was upset because the condom broke and he had bit her on the shoulder, which I guess he thought was attractive, but she did not.
6:34 He said that he liked to choke women during sex.
6:37 And he said that after that she left his apartment alive, and he had paid her $150.
6:46 Now when asked about his whereabouts, he told the police that when he left his house, he went to smoke and ate at a restaurant.
6:56 But the location where he went to smoke was actually about 100 yards from where her body was found, the restaurant that he said he ate at was actually closed that day because it was under construction.
7:08 So they also found some of the duct tape that was in her hair at his apartment.
7:14 And he also had visible injuries and some grass and leaves that were consistent with grass and leaves that were on top of Dickey’s body.
7:25 When she was found inside the rental car that he had rented.
7:30 Dickey actually died as a result of homicidal asphyxia from strangulation.
7:35 So she had a large bruise on her neck.
7:39 She had hemorrhages in her eyes and bruising on her lips, upper arms and wrists.
7:47 Now she had cocaine in her blood, and it was 0.67 mg per liter, which the pathologist said was not necessarily deadly.
8:00 And that was kind of an average amount for a user.
8:03 But after three hours of deliberations, he had literally no reaction.
8:09 He got life in prison, no remorse, never said I'm sorry, anything.
8:15 He got 25 years in addition for tampering with evidence and he's actually eligible for parole after 30 years.
8:26 It's kind of scary.
8:28 Of course, this interaction between them was planned and was going to be intimate and she didn't know him.
8:39 I mean, bad, bad, bad idea.
8:41 A complete stranger.
8:43 It's just not a good plan.
8:45 I mean, I could just see this is going to turn out bad written all over that.
8:50 This is one example, and that happened in the Austin area.
8:55 That actually happened in Texas.
8:58 Now there's another incident where Jade Harris, he was 37 years old, He was from Los Angeles.
9:07 He was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder.
9:11 In 2024 counts of kidnapping for Carjacking and possession of a firearm by a felon.
9:20 He actually killed three people after responding to an online ad for a car.
9:28 So he went to a business.
9:30 This was on October 24th of 2012.
9:33 He went to a business in response to an ad for a 2010 Chevy Camaro.
9:39 Now he was on parole after being convicted in 2005 of robbery and attempted robbery.
9:48 So he went into this place of business where he was supposed to be looking at a Chevy Camaro to purchase, he bound two people, placed them on their knees and then shot them in the head.
10:04 Now he forced one woman to drive him and her 13-year-old son to a nearby home and then he shot the woman, and he shot her son too, but he survived.
10:17 So he goes to purchase a Camaro and ends up killing three people just to get the car without having to pay for it.
10:27 And this poor little boy, 13-year-old saw his mom get shot.
10:34 It was after she drove him to this nearby house.
10:38 Now he was arrested the next day and he was sentenced to death.
10:44 Now, the woman's son again called 911 after she had been killed, but he had also been shot, he was injured.
10:52 So what a brave little boy to actually call the police when he's been injured.
10:58 And he had witnessed everything that he'd witnessed.
11:01 He was at the place of business.
11:03 So he probably also saw the other two people get shot before this man forced his mom to drive them to this other residence.
11:14 All that for a car and his intention initially was to steal it.
11:19 He never intended on paying for it.
11:22 I'm curious what they were even asking, but he never intended on paying for it.
11:26 He was just going to kill everyone and take off with it again.
11:32 Even in this incident, like it was a place of business, it was daylight, there were several people there.
11:41 It still turned out bad.
11:43 So you just never, ever, ever can be too careful.
11:47 Now, Karina Roberts was sentenced to life in prison and this one's really scary y'all.
11:54 And we hear of this happening a lot, but she pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
11:59 She met Heather Snively who was 21 in 2009 to sell baby clothes to the pregnant woman.
12:09 Snively was struck up to 30 times with a collapsible police baton and Roberts cut open her abdomen and stole her fetus, cut her open with a straight razor y'all in the bathroom of her house.
12:29 Heather Snively comes to Karina Roberts home to buy baby clothes because she's seven months pregnant.
12:37 She gets struck with this police baton.
12:40 They use a straight razor to cut her abdomen open and take her baby.
12:45 Karina Roberts was 29 at the time she was from Oregon, and she was reportedly obsessed with having a child.
12:53 Now her boyfriend, when he got home the day that this happened, he found her in the tub with this lifeless infant who was due.
13:03 Two months later, Smiley's body was later found in the crawl space of Robert's home covered with carpet and Roberts told her boyfriend and family for months that she was expecting twins for the past four months.
13:24 She had been telling neighbors that she was pregnant with these twins.
13:29 She bought strollers, she bought formulas, she bought parenting magazines.
13:34 She seemed to be super excited about having these babies.
13:41 And now just a few months before the killing, snively had moved to Oregon from Maryland to be with her fiancé because she was in fact pregnant, these two women met through Craigslist, Roberts had attempted to contact other women by phone prior to meeting Snively.
14:00 So by advertising for baby clothes, she is focused on meeting people who were pregnant.
14:09 My thoughts is she was probably trying to find someone that was far enough along that she could actually perform this makeshift straight razor C section, just show up with this baby and no one would ask any questions and then of course this pregnant woman would end up missing and we hear stories like this all the time and it's so sad because, you know, she took two lives.
14:38 This sweet baby would have had this wonderful family and she just kind of stripped them of everything.
14:46 Now, another one is Ali Salam.
14:50 Now this guy was 44 and he was a psychiatrist in Mount Vernon.
14:57 Now he was convicted of two counts of involuntary manslaughter, one count of rape, one count of tampering with evidence and one count of abuse of a corpse.
15:10 But he was only sentenced to 36 years in prison.
15:14 So he placed an ad looking for someone to clean his house and a 23-year-old woman who was pregnant, coincidentally responded to his ad because she was looking for work.
15:29 Now, she told her parents that she had answered the ad because he was looking for someone to clean his house.
15:37 But in actuality, I think the ad may have been for sex, but I'm not 100% sure there's some conflicting stories about that.
15:45 But she probably, if she was going for sex wouldn't have told her family anyway.
15:50 She responded to this ad nonetheless, whatever the intentions were, she was pregnant, and he gave her a lethal dose of heroin and her body was found in the woods in her car in Delaware County.
16:06 Back on August 1st of 2012, Salem admitted to filming himself performing sex acts on her while she was intoxicated in his bed.
16:19 Now, this guy's a physician.
16:22 I looked at his picture, he looks a little bit shady.
16:25 You can't really assume that someone's a good person because of the position that they hold or the job they have.
16:31 I mean, that's super scary.
16:32 This guy works in the, he's around people all day long.
16:37 Again, his intentions were not good, and she ends up dead and again, killed two innocent people, she was pregnant and he just murdered her and left her in her car.
16:51 This next one, I guess it kind of hit home because of the incident that happened with my daughter and just how vulnerable people are.
17:00 You know, sometimes it is hard to find a job and people will go to any extent in order to make ends meet.
17:08 And so it's really sad that 24-year-old Catherine Olson who was just looking to babysit just needed a little bit of extra money.
17:18 She saw an ad on Craigslist posted by a woman named Amy looking for someone to care for her five-year-old.
17:26 That seems pretty legit.
17:29 Of course, she didn't know that Amy was 19-year-old Michael John Anderson and Anderson, this was in Minnesota was socially awkward.
17:41 Like he just was really not capable of a relationship.
17:45 He'd never even had a girlfriend, never even held a girl's hand.
17:50 He was just a weird awkward guy.
17:52 So he decides to just place an ad and say that his name is Amy, and he has a five-year-old and he wants someone to take care of her.
18:00 So Catherine is completely innocent, just looking for a way to make extra money.
18:06 And so she shows up at Michael Anderson's house expecting to see a woman named Amy and a five-year-old when Anderson shot her in the back of the head with a 357 revolver.
18:23 And then he stuffed her body in the trunk of her car after wrapping her in a sleeping bag and she bled out there, there's a trail of blood down the stairs where he drug her body after he shot her on March 31st of 09, he was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life.
18:49 The creepy thing is that she had talked to him via text prior to meeting and she was supposed to watch this child between 10 30 in the morning and 5 p.m. So, it was early in the morning when she went over there.
19:09 It was during the day, but she told her roommate that her new employer seemed a little bit strange.
19:15 So she had a creepy, bad feeling about it.
19:20 I mean, you never know people.
19:21 If she would have taken her roommate, he probably would have killed both of them.
19:26 I don't know.
19:26 You just really can never be safe enough.
19:30 I mean, I know many times I've done the porch pickup thing thinking that that's safe.
19:36 I don't even know that that's safe.
19:37 I think it's a really bad idea to give anyone your home address because if it is a male or female who has some psychological problems and they, for some reason or somehow become obsessed with you, they know where you live, they can always come back, they can watch you, they can learn your schedule.
19:59 They can know when you're there.
20:01 They can know when you're there alone.
20:03 It's just scary and you don't know, these killers can be male or female, they can be any age, they can seem completely normal.
20:12 They can be preachers, they can be doctors, they can be anybody in the community that you see outside on a day-to-day basis that seems normal.
20:22 But has this hidden secret that you do not want to be a part of?
20:27 So internet homicide is a real term.
20:30 So it basically refers to getting killed because the victim meets the perpetrator online, whether it be to sell an item or for sex or anything, the crimes are becoming more common, but that shouldn't be a big surprise really because everything is done on the internet now and they do the best they can to try to ensure the safety of the users.
21:04 But people can be evil.
21:07 Ultimately, we use the internet at our own risk.
21:11 I found a list that had been put together on how not to get killed using Craigslist.
21:18 I thought that was kind of clever, but they do say to run the seller's name and email through social media.
21:29 So, to find out if they're a real person, I know that when we got a rent house, for example, the realtor actually told me that he stalked me on Facebook.
21:40 He knew who I was, he knew I was a legit person.
21:45 We actually had mutual friends.
21:48 That would also help me with things like that.
21:52 We use that tool a lot.
21:53 Even at the medical examiner's office, we will look somebody up on Facebook to try and find maybe we have a mutual friend that I can reach out to.
22:03 That knows how to find a family member of someone that's deceased or maybe they have family members as their friends, and we can reach out to the family members.
22:13 The internet can be a good thing, but you can run the seller's name and email through that social media to see if you can find them.
22:21 Also pick things up with a group of friends, maybe even take a guy friend with you if you have to purchase online that's always a good idea.
22:32 Public place, daylight, that kind of stuff.
22:37 Always the best plan.
22:39 Always tell somebody, even if you're going to go look at something, let someone know at least one person where you're going to go, who you're supposed to meet the address of where you're going.
22:54 This sounds kind of creepy, but I've done this before too when you get there before you get out of your car, text message that friend, the make and model of the vehicle that the person is driving.
23:06 And I've done that before when I feel unsafe or maybe I'm just paranoid y'all because of my job.
23:12 I just think it's important to let someone know where you are exactly who you're with again, try to avoid going to a home address or a private residence and actually going inside.
23:27 I don't so much mind porch pickup when it's me anymore, but I don't want anyone to know where I live.
23:33 I will not do porch pick up most of the time.
23:38 Leave a note in your house is what they say and tell them exactly what you're going to get and where you are going.
23:49 So that, you know, if some, this is paranoid y'all, but if something happens to you, the police are going to go to your home first.
23:56 And if there's a note there that says, hey, I was meeting Mr. Wilson at this address to purchase a TV, then you've thought ahead enough to kind of let people know, consider carrying a concealed weapon.
24:10 It doesn't have to be a gun.
24:12 It can be a bat in your car or a small knife or just something.
24:19 Don't answer Craigslist ads for sex.
24:23 If you're looking for something cheap, don't go there.
24:28 Like, just don't go there if the offer is too good to be true.
24:32 It probably is.
24:34 So you are not going to go answer an ad for something that's listed for a dollar that, you know, is worth a lot more money.
24:45 You'll know that it's not legit.
24:48 Most likely there's just a lot of ways really that you can keep yourself safe.
24:53 But I would say the best ways the note's a great idea to leave at home.
24:58 But I think it might sound a little bit off and you don't want to live your life being completely paranoid, but it is important to tell a friend where you're going, who you're meeting.
25:08 And again, I had rented an Airbnb once in Portland, the owner of the Airbnb offered to pick me up at the airport randomly because he was near the airport at the grocery store.
25:22 It freaked me out.
25:23 But then I thought, ok, well, I'm going to be staying in their house so they have every opportunity to murder me.
25:28 Right?
25:28 So, why would they do it now?
25:32 Anyway, I agreed to it, and I let him pick me up at the airport.
25:37 This guy was a college professor, and you know, who knows?
25:42 I decided this one time to be trusting.
25:44 But as soon as he pulled up in a white van, I have to admit I was a little bit freaked out.
25:49 And so I text messaged a picture of his van and his license plate to my best friend at the time.
25:57 And I just said, hey, if I go missing like this is where I am.
26:01 And of course everyone knew the address of the home I was staying in; it was an Airbnb.
26:06 It was legit and had great reviews.
26:09 Again, I didn't just randomly stay at these people's house.
26:12 I looked at the reviews.
26:14 It had great reviews.
26:15 It was a beautiful older home.
26:17 It turned out amazing.
26:19 It's just you have to do your research.
26:22 If you're meeting somebody to pick up something, look them up on Facebook, look at their photo, make sure that they're a legit person like this guy that pretended to be a female looking for a babysitter.
26:37 Just kind of be smart.
26:39 And I guess that's the main thing.
26:41 We do not want to have to pick you up and bring you to our office.
26:45 So I am just encouraging safety as all I may even cover some more of these deaths because I'm sure there are a lot of them, and I'm interested to see if there are very many from Facebook and other things.
26:58 It becomes more and more common because people are creepy and it's a easy way for them to gain access to you without them really putting forward much effort.
27:07 Just be safe out there.
27:09 Again.
27:10 The heat is stifling in Texas.
27:13 I hope everyone is trying to stay comfortable and cool.
27:18 I know they're having a lot of flooding in California.
27:20 So we're praying for those people and still for Maui with all the fire damage that they've had.
27:27 Everybody just hang in there and we will come to you next week with some great news stories.
27:33 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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27:48 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLillies.com for merchandise and past episodes.