Redhanded

What happens when a group of fame-obsessed teens with a passion for fashion go for a shopping spree in their favourite stars’ wardrobes?You get the Bling Ring: the unlikely architects behind a string of burglaries in the Hollywood Hills in the mid-2000s, targeting celebs from Paris Hilton to Orlando Bloom…Until those Ugg-booted cat burglars finally ran out of lives. Behind the TMZ headlines lay a tangled web of teenage angst and codependent friendships – and we’re unravelling it all in this week's designer-label ShortHand. --Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

America the beautiful: from sea to shining sea! (...Plus a bunch of random islands 2,000 miles away in the Pacific Ocean.)The story of why these seven Polynesian islands became part of the US of A is a wild one, taking in a slew of sweet-toothed sugar barons, a pinch of rampant colonialism, and one heroine who refused to let her culture die. When a white militia surrounded the palace of Queen Lili’uokalani, she was ready to spill her “last drop of blood” for the Hawai’ian people. This is the ShortHand.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

The Golden State Killer, The Easter Area Rapist, The Visalia Ransacker, and The Original Night Stalker. All pseudonyms for a man who committed one of the largest and most prolific sprees of home invasions, rapes, and murders, in American history.For over ten years one man held a vice like terror across the entire state of California, committing over 120 burglaries, at least 51 rape and 10 murders.Join us in part 1 of a 3 episode series on The Golden State Killer, as we discuss how it all began.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

When the night guards passed Frank Morris’s cell, in San Francisco’s “inescapable” island super-prison, Alcatraz, he seemed to be sleeping soundly. But what they saw was a dummy head made of plaster, soap and real human hair. And Morris was already making his way to the shore – and his homemade raft, stitched together using 50 prison raincoats.This week we look at the history of the US’s big bad citadel in the war on crime; its most infamous inmates; and find out if anyone ever really escaped The Rock.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

As part of our virtual road trip around North America inspired by the 2026 World Cup, we're revisiting some of our most classic cases. This week we stop off in  Sacramento, to revisit on of the single most disturbing individuals we have ever covered Richard Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento. Clinical vampirism, terrifying delusions and paranoid schizophrenia. This week the girls enter the bloody world of their very first truly psychotic spree killer, Richard Trenton Chase. Join them as they follow his evolution from cat-murdering child, to drug-addicted teen, to blood-smeared twenty-something; unpicking the unbelievably shocking story of one of America’s bloodiest killers.

The idea of human beings floating in space used to feel as likely as time travel. But after WWII, the world’s two strongest superpowers had to find a way of outdoing each other that didn’t involve the total eradication of the human race. So they decided to race to the stars instead.Here’s how that ideological moonshot became a reality.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

When elderly women started being murdered around Mexico City in the early 2000s, it sparked the nation’s first ever serial killer manhunt…But the fearsome monster targeting the city’s beloved grandmas? She was actually (gasp!) a woman. The search for the so-called “Mataviejitas” – The Little Old Lady Killer – was hampered by media hysteria, clueless (and maybe corrupt) coppers, and one gigantic misunderstanding.Because Juana Barraza – a middle-aged woman with a sinister lucha libre alter-ego called “The Lady of Silence” – was the very last culprit the authorities were expecting to unmask…--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Louisiana has more than its fair share of real monsters hiding in its deep, dark bayous. So, settlers’ nightmares about what else was hiding there – spiced up with African folk beliefs, plus Cajun and Creole folklore and a dash of Haitian voudou – quickly became a rogues’ gallery of gruesome monsters that couldn’t exist anywhere else.From a grim scaly monster, born in a voodoo ritual from the devil’s testicles, to a big hairy hominid known as ‘Swamp Thang’, these are the very worst of Louisiana’s cryptids.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

As part of our virtual road trip around North America inspired by the 2026 World Cup, we're revisiting some of our most classic cases. This week we stop off in North Carolina, to revisit the infamous staircase of Michael & Kathleen Peterson...From the outside the Petersons had it all; the perfect family, a beautiful mansion and more money than they could spend. But on 9th December 2001 all that changed, when Michael Peterson claimed to have found his wife, Kathleen, dead at the bottom of their stairs.What followed would become a bizarre tale of strange family secrets, shocking revelations and a true crime case obsessed over like nothing before, or since.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

If someone told you they could read your mind, levitate, walk through walls, or make your heart explode in your chest, you’d probably say they were crazy.But for over 30 years, the US government spent tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money attempting to create psychic super soldiers of the future, with all those skills and more. This is the ShortHand on Jim Channon, and the First Earth Battalion.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

After the search of Vancouver’s missing women finally brought them to the gates of Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton’s grisly pig farm, Canadian police faced the gigantic task of bringing the country’s most prolific serial killer to justice. But with much of the evidence literally eaten by the pigs, how much would be left to piece together this puzzle? And even long after the cell doors clanged shut on old Willie Pickton, the case raised serious questions about the plight of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada – many of which remain unanswered to this day.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Long before the ‘90s cartoon version painted with all the colours of the wind, a real Native American woman named Pocahontas inspired a romantic tale that would endure for centuries…But how much of her story is fact – and how much is a convenient colonial fiction?Featuring gold-hunting colonists, grisly cannibalism and more than a splash of imperialist violence, let’s just say the true story isn’t exactly a Disney fairytale. --Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

As part of our virtual road trip around North America inspired by the 2026 World Cup, we're revisiting some of our most classic cases – with a stop in Massachusetts sparking spooky memories of our visit to the Lizzie Borden house...The brutal hatchet murders of Andrew and Abby Borden are still among the most infamous and hotly debated cases in true-crime history.Truly springing from the pages of your favourite murder mystery – with seemingly innocent housekeepers, “evil stepmothers”, and precocious ladies of luxury aplenty – there’s a lot of fact and a lot of fiction to wade through. Join us as we discover the real story behind the infamous Lizzie Andrew Borden, and the trial that swept the English-speaking world.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Any moment now, we might experience an explosion that emits the power of 1,000 atomic bombs every second. An explosion so fierce that it would reduce the world’s most powerful country to an ash-covered wasteland – and, if it was feeling particularly gnarly, could lead to the extinction of the entire human race.This week we take a look at just how royally f***ed we’d be if the world’s largest above-ground supervolcano blew its top. How likely is it? When could it happen? And is there anything we can do?--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

For years, women were vanishing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside…But the police refused to admit it.In the first of a two-parter on the grisly crimes of Robert ‘Willie’ Pickton, we uncover the investigation into the missing women, the community whose cries for help went unheard, and the systemic failures that kept the authorities from discovering what was really going on at the pig farm from hell…This is the disturbing story of Canada’s most notorious serial killer: the so-called ‘Butcher of Vancouver’.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

People who seem to have suddenly burst into flames – leaving just a pile of ash, a foot or skull, and a puddle of strange grease – have left biologists and police stumped for hundreds of years. And as recently as 2010, a medical examiner in the UK was forced to write ‘spontaneous combustion’ on a real death certificate.But there are some very strong scientific theories, and they are… unpleasant. Join us to find out why we think people go WHOOMP – and the very disturbing ‘human wick effect’.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

The gold-lined, intact tomb of Tutankhamun is without a doubt the most important archaeological discovery in Egypt's history. But what if Tutankhamun, the teenage God King, took something in return? After the young Pharaoh was found, several people connected to his discovery died in “mysterious circumstances”, including the man who had financed the whole operation. Was this King Tut’s price for gold and riches beyond anyone's wildest dreams? We dig a little deeper…--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Tom Cressman’s brutal murder – beaten with a cricket bat by the ex-royal dresser to Sarah Ferguson, the ex-Dutchess of York – was a truly British tragedy.Jane Andrews’s act of violence dominated the headlines in the UK, and for good reason. The obsessive social climber had spent a lifetime getting herself into rooms with some of the richest and most influential people in the country. All she had left to do was marry one of them, and she’d be set for life. But just when she was rubbing shoulders with the family of the soon-to-be-disgraced Prince Andrew, it all came tumbling down. --Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Reliably living to 100 years old – a once unthinkable goal – is slowly creeping closer to becoming a reality. But there’s a catch: we’re still not entirely sure how it works…On the one hand, a healthy, stress-free, and activity-rich lifestyle (with a bit of actually-rich thrown in for good measure) does seem to have a legitimate effect on your mortality. However, some people seem to be able to rip ciggies, drink wine, and still live to a ripe old age. So what gives?--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

You’re free falling towards the ground at 120mph, and below you all you can see is an expanse of open wilderness. What are you going to do? Had you not listened to this ShortHand, you’d most likely panic and die. Luckily for you though, we’ve decided to give you a comprehensive (without assuming any legal responsibility) guide to what to do if you find yourself in a spot of bother.From the best way to hit the ground to finding your way back to civilization, this is the ShortHand.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram