The Disappearance and Death of Elisa Lam
A video you might be familiar with: A young woman with shoulder length, black hair wearing a red hoodie and black cargo shorts. She enters a hotel elevator and inspects the button panel. She starts pressing buttons, seemingly at random, but the doors remain open. Something outside the elevator catches her attention, maybe a voice or a noise. Her body becomes slightly rigid; nervous, agitated, perhaps.
She quickly lunges out of the elevator doors looking down the right side of the hallway just outside of the elevator. You can’t really see anything else except for some carpet and the wall…
The Shocking Story of the Danish Baby-Burning Serial Killer
On Murder Shelf Book Club Podcast, we have been in the midst of recording a series on Charles Cullen; dubbed an ‘angel of death.’ Often, these ‘angels’ are considered mercy killers; they are hospital workers, care givers — those who we entrust our sick and aging loved ones to be cared for when we ultimately cannot. Yet, Charlie was no angel. He killed at random, loading chemical cocktails into IV bags and sending them out into the Intensive Care Unit like grenades. …
The Cecil Hotel, now known as Stay on Main, has a sordid past of suicide and murder.
Chances are you’ve heard of this hotel. Ever watched season five of American Horror Story, aptly named ‘Hotel’? Well, this is it, THE hotel where the season took place. Strange occurrences, suicide, murder…the hotel has seen more than a dozen suicides and has been home to TWO serial killers during their respective killing sprees — Richard Ramierz, ‘The Night Stalker,’ and Jack Unterweger, ‘The Austrian Ghoul’; and not to mention one of the most bizarre incidents to occur in recent history — the disappearance and death of Elisa Lam. The surveillance video of Elisa’s last moments in the Cecil Hotel…
Bringing us together and to better mental well-being
The term ‘boundary’ can sometimes be misleading. We aren’t talking about building walls. We are building a fence — remember, ‘good fences make good neighbors’. Boundaries are necessary to establish better relationships with ourselves and others. Not only are boundaries crucial in establishing your own identity, but also necessary for your mental health and well-being. They can be physical or emotional, loose or rigid. They are what you feel is necessary.
Setting boundaries is hard. I wish it were easy, but I won’t lie to you. It’s hard to say the word ‘no’ especially when you want to help someone…
The Early Days of Private Investigation & Forensic Practices
“The term to ‘detect’ derived from the Latin verb to ‘unroof’, and because the devil, according to legend, allowed his henchmen to peer voyeuristically into houses by removing their roofs, detectives were known as the ‘Devil’s Disciples’.” — David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon
In our latest series of the Murder Shelf Book Club Podcast, my co-host, Jill, and I delved into the wildly popular book Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. This story has everything…murder, mystery, intrigue — undercover agents, disguises, misinformation, explosions, oh my! David Grann weaves us directly into the tale of the Osage…
What “We” Look for in You
I often ask myself, what am I looking for in a manager? Do I want them to be just a manager or boss, or do I want them to be a leader as well — to motivate and inspire, to kickstart the drive that keeps me showing up every day? What does real leadership look like? Obviously, everyone is different in terms of how they wanted to be managed or led. …
What if your ‘gaslighter’ was a serial killer?
Gaslight was a movie that came out in 1944, starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten. In the movie, a young woman moves back into her murdered aunt’s home with her new husband. This husband has a secret — no spoilers here! — and he’ll do anything to protect that secret, even if it means letting his wife think that she’s gone absolutely bananas.
If you haven’t heard the term, this is gaslighting…it’s a psychological tactic used to gain control over another individual; a form of emotional abuse where a person manipulates another into questioning their own thoughts, memories…
Yes — it’s important! Building a culture to increase employee engagement and productivity while promoting psychological safety.
Promoting a safe and fun ‘we’ culture, isn’t a one size fits all. It takes work. Employee motivational triggers may not always be the same thing. What could mean something to one employee, may not have the same importance to another — money, recognition, appreciation are a few that come to mind. Essentially, each employee wants to feel that what they do matters — all that time and energy adds up to something.
On Master of Scale, a podcast where Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, speaks with entrepreneurs on how they became wildly successful with their companies (think Facebook’s, Mark…
The Missoula Mauler and the Satanic Panic: How Rumor Can Spread Hysteria
Two words: Satanic Panic. You might remember it well as it gained momentum like a tidal wave in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, its ramifications persisting even to this day.
Considered a moral panic, not unlike the Salem Witch Craft trials of 1692, allegations of satanic ritual abuse began to surface that caused mass hysteria in the United States and around the world. The best part is, it still doesn’t make any sense! We’ll begin in the late 1960’s, early 1970’s with the rise of occultism and Satanism.
The year 1969 saw the publication of The Satanic Bible by Anton…
Capture of the Golden State Killer — Joseph James DeAngelo, Jr.
If you’re a true crime junkie, you’ve heard the news. The Visalia Ransacker, The Original Nightstalker, the East Area Rapist — a messy package all rolled up into one, the Golden State Killer — a moniker that deceased author Michelle McNamara coined for a serial killer whose reign of terror spanned decades, has been caught! The Golden State Killer can be attributed to twelve murders, forty-five rapes and the ransacking of more than one hundred homes in the state of California from 1974 to 1986. For years, this brutal rapist and murderer went about his life without authorities being able…
Tara Rose
True crime enthusiast, co-host of Murder Shelf Book Club podcast. I often dabble in organizational leadership and development.
