Serial Napper | True Crime for the Chronically Tired | Podcast Guru

Details

Serial Napper is true crime for the chronically tired. Hosted by Canadian podcaster Nikki Young, Serial Napper tells the stories of real crimes, disappearances and mysteries from around the world, with a focus on the people at the centre of them and the details that too often get lost along the way. Each episode digs into the full story: who these people were before they became names in headlines, what actually happened, how investigators pieced the case together, what unfolded inside the courtroom, and, when answers are still missing, the questions that remain. Nikki tells each story the way she'd tell it to you if you were sitting across the table from her: conversational, curious, occasionally sassy and with a little dark humour when the moment allows for it. The victims are always treated with respect. The absurd behaviour surrounding some of these cases? Considerably less so. Some episodes cover cases you've probably heard of, but go beyond the version that has been repeated for years. Others explore Canadian cases, international crimes, strange mysteries and lesser-known stories that deserve far more attention than they've received. At its heart, Serial Napper is about looking past the headline and asking what really happened. So dim the lights, get comfortable, and try not to have nightmares. This is Serial Napper.

Recent Episodes

Beauty and the Beast: The Girl in the Box | Colleen Stan

In May of 1977, 20-year-old Colleen Stan was hitchhiking through California when a young couple stopped to offer her a ride. With a woman and a baby inside the vehicle, Colleen believed she had found a safe way to finish her journey. She was wrong. For the next seven years, Colleen would live under the control of Cameron Hooker, hidden from the world even as life carried on around her. But perhaps the most difficult part of her story to understand came when the physical barriers began to disappear. Colleen was eventually allowed outside. She worked. She interacted with other people. She even returned home to visit her family. And still, she went back. For this episode of Serial Nightmare, we're exploring the dark side of Beauty and the Beast through the story of Colleen Stan, and how fear, coercion and years of psychological control can create a prison without walls. Because unlike the fairy tale, Colleen didn't return to the Beast because she'd fallen in love with him. She returned because she'd been taught to believe that leaving could be even more dangerous than staying. Content warning: This episode discusses kidnapping, captivity, sexual assault, physical and psychological abuse, coercive control and torture. Sources: https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-the-girl-n-the-box/cat-mcauliffe https://allthatsinteresting.com/colleen-stan-the-girl-in-the-box https://www.oxygen.com/snapped/crime-news/girl-in-the-box-where-is-colleen-stan-now https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1771222.html https://abc7news.com/post/trial-considers-fate-girl-box-kidnapper-cameron-hooker-jurors-weigh-sexually-violent-predator-status/19183056/ https://www.aol.com/articles/jury-blocks-release-infamous-girl-160009000.html https://www.dsh.ca.gov/Treatment/Sex_Offender_Commitments.htm https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1771222.html Follow me here: ► YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SerialNapper/ ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/serialnappernik/ ► Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SerialNapper/ ► TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@serialnappernik *Go Ad-Free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SerialNapper * Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

65 MIN

Goldilocks: The Boy Behind the Wall | Daniel LaPlante

This October, Serial Napper is opening the storybook for another season of Serial Nightmare. This year, we're taking familiar fairy tales and looking at the very real cases that echo their darkest themes. We begin with Goldilocks. In 1986, the Bowen family began noticing strange things inside their Massachusetts home. Food disappeared. Objects moved. Tina and Karen heard unexplained noises and became convinced that something was inside the house. Their father wasn't so sure. Then one evening, Frank Bowen opened a closet and found a teenage boy standing inside. His name was Daniel LaPlante. What followed would turn an already terrifying home invasion into one of the strangest true crime cases I've ever covered. Because when police searched the house, Daniel seemed to disappear, nd the truth about where he had been hiding was only the beginning. In this episode of Serial Nightmare, we'll follow the Daniel LaPlante case from the Bowen family's disturbing discovery through the events that followed: the investigation, trial, appeals, and the legal decisions that would eventually change the sentence he received. Because Goldilocks is a very different story when someone enters your home without permission...and doesn't leave. Sources: https://www.grunge.com/369653/the-truth-about-murderer-daniel-laplantes-childhood/ https://www.talkmurderwithme.com/blog/2021/2/3/daniel-laplante https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/daniel-laplante-priscilla-gustafson-murder-1987-townsend/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/12/03/A-teenager-accused-of-holding-a-man-and-his/7669565506000/ https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/daniel-laplante-murder-priscilla-gustafson-family https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/22/killer-three-townsend-seeks-sentence-reduction/g05AdJcWXPBZiAS9rvHYDI/story.html https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/supreme-court/volumes/482/482mass399.html https://www.joeturnerbooks.com/post/daniel-laplante Follow me here: ► YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SerialNapper/ ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/serialnappernik/ ► Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SerialNapper/ ► TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@serialnappernik *Go Ad-Free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SerialNapper * Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

54 MIN

Inside the Disturbing World of the “Vampire King of Fresno”

On March 12, 2004, two women arrived at a converted commercial building in Fresno, California, with one goal: they wanted their children back. Inside was their extended family, led by 57-year-old Marcus Wesson. What began as a tense family dispute soon turned into something much darker. Because Ruby Ortiz and Sofina Solorio knew things about Marcus that the police standing outside did not. They knew about the strange world he had created around his family. They knew what happened when someone challenged his authority. And they knew about a plan that was never supposed to be put into action. By the end of the day, Marcus Wesson would become the centre of one of the most disturbing cases in Fresno history, eventually earning the bizarre nickname “The Vampire King of Fresno.” But the vampires aren't the most frightening part of this story. Sources: https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/LUH/LUH20050401-V97-04.pdf https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-jun-04-me-wesson4-story.html https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/sites/default/files/supremecourt/default/documents/8-2580-s136171-app-supp-brief-081426.pdf https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article237506244.html https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/case-information/briefs-argued-cases/september-9-2026-oral-argument-cases https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/case-information/oral-arguments/webcast-library https://www.cbsnews.com/news/suicide-pact-in-fresno-deaths/ https://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/dockets.cfm?dist=0&doc_id=1867849&doc_no=S136171&request_token=NiIwLSEnPkw3WyApSCI9TENJUFA0UDxfICM%2BQz1TICAgCg%3D%3D& Follow me here: ► YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SerialNapper/ ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/serialnappernik/ ► Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SerialNapper/ ► TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@serialnappernik *Go Ad-Free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SerialNapper * Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

59 MIN

He Woke Up to His Mother on Fire: The Michael Politte Case

Fourteen-year-old Michael Politte woke to smoke filling his bedroom. His friend Josh was asleep on the floor nearby, and an orange glow was coming from underneath his mother's bedroom door. When Michael opened that door, he found his mother, 40-year-old Rita Politte, lying on the floor with her upper body on fire. Rita hadn't died in an accidental house fire. She had been brutally attacked. Within days, investigators turned their attention to Michael. What followed was a case built around fire, gasoline, a teenage witness whose story seemed to change, and a boy who insisted from the beginning that he did not kill his mother. Michael would spend more than two decades behind bars. But years later, some of the evidence that helped put him there would come under serious scrutiny, raising new questions about the investigation, the conviction, and what really happened inside Rita Politte's home on December 5, 1998. Sources: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-politte-rita-politte-missouri-sleepover-murder-investigation/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-politte-rita-politte-murder-missouri-48-hours/ https://www.the-sun.com/news/8554794/michael-polittee-found-mom-rita-murder/ https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2021-09-29/michael-politte-has-served-22-years-for-murdering-his-mother-experts-say-hes-innocent https://www.kwch.com/2022/04/14/team-lawyers-work-prove-innocence-14-year-old-convicted-mothers-murder/ https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=180456 https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=184233 https://themip.org/clients/ https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2023/sc99813.html https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-moed-4_22-cv-01169/pdf/USCOURTS-moed-4_22-cv-01169-0.pdf https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/ca8/26-1476 Follow me here: ► YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SerialNapper/ ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/serialnappernik/ ► Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SerialNapper/ ► TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@serialnappernik *Go Ad-Free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SerialNapper * Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

46 MIN

He Told Police He’d Been Stabbed. Then They Handcuffed Him: Henry Nowak Was Dying

Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak had only recently started his first semester at the University of Southampton. He was studying accounting and finance, playing football, making new friends and building a life away from home for the first time. On the night of December 3rd, 2025, Henry went out with friends before beginning the walk back to his student accommodation. Along the way, he crossed paths with a stranger. Less than an hour later, police arrived on Belmont Road following reports of an assault. They had been told who the victim was and who they believed had carried out the attack. But as officers tried to make sense of the scene, Henry was on the ground telling them something was seriously wrong. He said he'd been stabbed. He said he couldn't breathe. And then he was placed in handcuffs. What followed would become a murder investigation involving phone recordings, bodycam footage, a missing weapon and a secretly recorded conversation inside a police van. But after the criminal case was over and the public saw footage of Henry's final conscious minutes, his death became the centre of a much larger and increasingly political debate about policing, race and religion in Britain. Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpvpv2xylgeo https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/01/henry-nowak-two-officers-under-gross-misconduct-investigation https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretary-statement-on-henry-nowak https://www.cps.gov.uk/wessex/news/henry-nowak-killers-mother-jailed-after-removing-murder-weapon https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/britain-murder-henry-nowak-debate-race-9.7222123 https://www.hampshire.police.uk/news/hampshire/news/news/2026/may/man-convicted-of-murdering-student-in-southampton/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/world/europe/henry-nowak-murder-uk-stabbing.html https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Digwa-Final-Sentencing-Remarks.pdf https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/henry-nowak-police-transcript-video-b3002166.html https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2026-05-20/sikh-man-tells-court-he-stabbed-student-in-self-defence-after-he-was-abused https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2026-05-22/sikh-man-on-trial-for-killing-student-pleads-not-guilty-to-manslaughter https://www.gov.uk/government/news/solicitor-general-refers-vickrum-digwa-to-court-of-appeal https://www.aol.com/articles/digwa-dad-brother-plead-not-162315000.html https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/news/iopc-investigating-conduct-two-officers-henry-nowak-case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ2rcv_zGw0 Follow me here: ► YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SerialNapper/ ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/serialnappernik/ ► Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SerialNapper/ ► TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@serialnappernik *Go Ad-Free on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SerialNapper * Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

58 MIN