Out of the Shadows
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I met Vicki in high school. It was like we were just meant to be. We had so much in common.

That was my favorite song and to this day I'll crank it up in the car if I hear it. It just says something about, I guess, kind of like the way I thought of her maybe. There was never, never a doubt in my mind how much my mom and my dad loved us. My name is Bill Wiggerly. I was coming home for lunch. I was working on that side of town. I figured why hurry and get home for lunch.

I found Brandon by himself, I thought. That was unusual for her not to be there with him. I kind of looked around, I think, for her and didn't find her. In normal life, you don't expect something bad to be happening. She died by strangulation. There were a number of ligature marks around her neck. Why? Why her? You know, what did she do? What did we do?

He's there for 50 minutes, probably before he discovers the body. There were definitely police officers that thought that Bill Wegerle killed his wife. Could that person be involved? You know, who else would have killed the wife? Did they ask you to take a polygraph? Yeah, I took a polygraph for them, and I also took one privately. And did that make them less suspicious? No, it made them more suspicious. Why? I failed both of them.

So Bill Waggerly, for 18 years, had to live under the cloud of suspicion that he killed his wife? I don't think they put two and two together that this had anything to do with a serial killer. This is BTK. This is him. He killed my mom. Out of the shadows. For three decades, Wichita, Kansas has lived with a murder mystery. Ten victims strangled without mercy and a faceless killer who called himself BTK.

I've dealt with very, very cold-blooded killers, but none who have such a tremendous memory over this many years. I've never dealt with anybody like this. Hello, everybody. District Attorney Nola Folston is prosecuting Dennis Rader, the man behind the initials, which stand for BIND, TORTURE, and KILL. We have torture devices. He commented to me at one point, "I'm sorry. I know this is a human being, but I'm a monster."

You'll learn how Rader became that killer and the untold story of one family's horrific encounter with BTK. Bill Wagerly was victimized and tortured in this whole episode from the day that his wife died. The day that she was killed, it not only killed him, it put him under suspicion for a long period of time.

Bill Wegerle and his children have been silent about what happened to them for 19 years. They speak for the first time. I remember seeing her across the hallway in school and just thinking, you know, wow. Bill met his wife Vicki when they were 16. She was just tall and slender and attractive, well-kept. I mean, she was quiet. And you got married when? When we were 17. Young. Yeah.

Sometimes it seemed like they were just, you know, two kids in love. When they were just 18, Bill and Vicki had a daughter, Stephanie. What do you remember of your mom? To me, it seemed like she was always happy and bubbly and, you know, easygoing.

Life was good. Eight years later, a son, Brandon, was born. My life revolved around her and her life revolved around the kids and me and her family too. Those were the important things to us. Then came a day so surreal that even 19 years later, Bill Wegerle still seems in shock. When was the last time you saw Vicki? When I left for work that morning.

probably about 8 o'clock. The date, September 16th, 1986. And I just remember kissing her goodbye, which normally I didn't take the time to do that, but that morning I did. While Bill was at work and Stephanie at school, Vicki was home. At one point that morning, she was heard playing the piano. She was also taking care of Brandon, who was then two. I was coming home for lunch, and

just to see her and Brandon. I passed my car on my way home. Did you know it was your car? Yeah, I was sure it was my car. And could you see who was driving it? I saw a person driving it, yes. But not your wife? No. What happened when you got home?

I found Brandon sitting on the floor by himself. Were you worried at that moment? I was concerned, yeah. I didn't know exactly what was going on, why Brandon would be there by himself. That's very unusual. What did you do at that point? I eventually went into the bedroom and discovered her on the floor. Vicki had been tied up and strangled. Then you start to put things together that...

The person that was in my car probably, I'm sure, did this, and I immediately called 911. But when police arrived and started putting things together themselves, they came to a different conclusion. Did they believe you? I don't think they did. That's because Bill failed those two lie detector tests. The individual that I hired to take the polygraph, he said he believed me.

What I was saying was true. He said it's just the stress that I was under. Did you think it was possible you might be charged? It got to a point, yeah, I was fearful of that. Police never had enough evidence to actually charge Bill or anyone else. But the rumors persisted for years. I remember going back to school and my friends would tell me on the playground that, you know, my mom and dad said that your dad did it.

That was tough, wasn't it? What would you say to them? I didn't say anything. We knew what the truth was, so... It just made me more aware of who I was friends with. What about you, Brandon? Yeah, I had a teacher, I think, in middle school that had relayed to her younger son who had told me that me and my dad were bad people and would stay away from us. Why? Because my dad killed my mother. As you two...

got older, did you wonder what had happened to your mom? Yeah. What would you think? Well, I can remember from probably age seven or eight, my grandma told me that she thought I was BTK. But at that age, you know, that meant nothing to me. BTK. Those initials and this symbol haunted Wichita, representing a phantom killer who had never been caught.

Although it had been nine years since his last known murder, Vicki's brutal death seemed to carry his trademark. She had been bound and strangled, like all the others before her. January 1974, four members of the Otero family are tied up and strangled, including two children, nine-year-old Joseph and 11-year-old Josephine, who is hanged from a basement pipe.

April 1974, 21-year-old Catherine Bright tied up, strangled and stabbed to death.

October 1974. In a note left at the Wichita Public Library, the killer took credit for the Otero murders and gave himself a name, BTK, for buying them, torture them, kill them. March 1977, another strangling, and this time a witness, six-year-old Steve Ralford. What do you remember of that day? I remember every time.

Steve was walking home from the store with soup for his sick mother when he was confronted by a stranger. He stops me, approaches me, shows me a picture, asks me did I know who it was. I said, no, sir, I don't know who this is. Steve ran home, but moments later, there was a knock on the door. Me and my brother rushed to the door. I beat my brother. I left a BTK in my house.

BTK gave Steve and his two siblings a blanket and some toys. Then he locked them in the bathroom. The terrified children watched through a crack at the top of the door as their mother, Shirley Vian, was tied to her bed and strangled. What do you remember of him? Was he tall? Ma'am, I don't remember how tall, I don't remember how short, but I remember what his face looked like. It sounds like you feel guilt that you ever let him in your house.

That'll be for the rest of my life. How could you feel guilty about it, Steve? You didn't have anything to do with this. Yeah, I did. I answered the door.

December 1977, BTK bound and strangled 25-year-old Nancy Fox and added a twist. He reported the murder to police himself. Then the killer sent a chilling letter to a local TV station that read in part,

How many do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention? He apparently was pretty irritated by the lack of news coverage. Former Wichita Police Detective Arlen Smith says the city was in a panic. We worked it with a sense of urgency because nobody knew how long it was going to be before he killed somebody else.

But then, in 1979, BTK seemed to disappear. So when Vicki Wegerle was killed seven years later, police focused on the most logical suspect, her husband. I knew there was an individual out there that did this, but to me it just seemed like they weren't looking for anybody else.

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all the pain and the heartache and just miss her. What do you miss about her? Everything. I mean even at 10 years old, you know, she was my best friend. I don't think people understand that the difficulties that I had and the fears of just raising two kids. It was like Stephanie was my second mother. She stepped in and kind of took over.

The Wegerle children not only lost their mother, Vicki, they also had to endure the whispers and rumors about their father for 18 years. Was there ever a time, Stephanie, that you thought your dad might have been responsible for your mom's death? Oh, no. Absolutely not. Never. There's kind of a cloud that rests over your head, and, oh, there's Bill Wegerle. His wife was killed, and nobody's ever found the killer. And then on a March day in 2004...

Everything changed. It started with a letter to reporter Hurst Laviana. This is a copy of the envelope. Inside the envelope, a copy of Vicki Wegerle's driver's license and what appeared to be crime scene pictures of her body. I looked at the crime scene photographs and realized they weren't routine crime scene photographs. They weren't routine because police didn't take them. The only person who could have

was the killer. We do not have photographs of her at sea because she was transported because it came in as a medical call. So EMS gets there, transports her out before police have arrived. For Lieutenant Ken Landwehr, who ran the BTK Task Force, the letter was a huge breakthrough. After 18 years, it cleared Bill Wegerle and exposed BTK as the real killer.

This monster come into my home and took my wife from me, you know, took my life, our whole lives away from us as we knew it and changed us as people for the rest of our lives. For the Wegerleys and all the families that lost loved ones to BTK, the horror came rushing back. We'd gone on, you know, with our lives all these years and then to have all of it

come up again and to have to live through it all again was pretty hard.

The return of BTK also shocked Wichita's District Attorney, Nola Folston. Like everyone else in town, her life and career have been haunted by the faceless killer. I was the same as anybody else with locking my doors, checking my phone, living in the same fear that everyone else was living with. Good evening. A new letter and new clues possibly... Vicki Wegerle's driver's license was only the beginning.

Throughout 2004, there was a frenzy of chilling BTK communiques, as the killer scattered clues from past crimes all over the city. Teasing, puzzling, and frightening.

KFDI. The FBI is now checking out a package that was found in a Wichita park. There were doll grams, little dolls, one with a noose around its neck. The killer posed the doll to represent the murder of 11-year-old Josephine Otero, who was hanged. He's perverted. He's a sexual offender. He is a pedophile. There were cereal boxes, BTK's sick play on the words "cereal killer."

He's got to be really twisted to have to manufacture these pictures. He is sexually benefiting as he's drawing this stuff. Why would he reappear after years of silence? Okay, are you ready? Police believe it was because of a writer named Bob Beatty. Hi. Excellent.

and the publicity surrounding his new book about the murders. This guy always wrote because he wanted attention. He writes to a television station and says, "How many do I have to kill before I get some attention?" Soon enough, the killer, seemingly jealous of Beatty, submitted his own book to police.

And then he made a mistake. Inside another cereal box, he sent a note asking if he could send police a computer disk and still stay anonymous. So he wrote and he said, be honest with me, his words, be honest with me. If I send you a disk, will it be traceable? You know, put it in the newspaper, it'll be okay, Rex, and send it under this code number.

Police placed an ad in the paper, just as BTK instructed. He, in turn, sent in a disc and was trapped. When it reached its destination, immediately it was forensically examined. In no time, computer experts traced the disc to a local church and a user named Dennis.

A Google search did the rest, turning up a Dennis Rader, president of the Christ Lutheran Church. And I looked at this picture and I went, you have got to be kidding me. The ghost who had terrified Wichita for 30 years finally had a face. And what a face it was.

BTK was, of all things, a dog catcher, a suburban family man with two grown kids and a tidy little house. It all seemed so normal. And then it was kind of like, oh yeah, he fits. He just fits. He fits the profile. He's every man. Everyone's gut said Dennis Rader, but police wanted the case airtight.

They wanted DNA. They secretly obtained a sample from Rader's daughter. It was taken while she was in college and... Blood? No, pap smear. The daughter's DNA was compared to semen left at some of BTK's crime scenes. And it was a close match. On February 25th, three decades after the BTK murders began, it all ended.

One of the most notorious murders in American history was arrested in the most routine way as he headed home for lunch. It was so emotional. I can't tell you how emotional it was. It was so great. It was like, this son of a bitch is gone. He is out of here. This is BTK and your job is to get a confession from him. He needs to say what he did.

Wichita Police Lieutenant Ken Lamwehr spent his entire career preparing for this one moment, confronting the man he believed to be the serial killer, BTK. I wanted to clear all the homicides. I just didn't want to clear two or three. I wanted all of them. As Lamwehr sat down to interrogate Dennis Rader, District Attorney Nola Folston watched from the next room. What was your first reaction? I thought he was a geek.

I know that sounds terrible, but he was just, he was so full of himself. For the first few hours, Rader admitted nothing. Then Lambert took him by surprise and told Rader there was DNA evidence connecting him to six of the murders, including Vicki Wegerle's. Rader's skin was found under her fingernails. Then it was like the dam had broken. You could not shut this guy up.

What was the most surprising part of the confession? The one that I will never forget is the fact of when he asked me the question, "Ken, why did you lie to me?" And what's he talking about when he asks you why did you lie? He's looking at the floppy disk. He didn't think we could trace a floppy disk because he asked me that. "Why'd you lie to me?" "If you wouldn't have lied to me, I wouldn't have sent it to you." "Because I was trying to catch you." And when I told him I was trying to catch you,

He says, "But we had such a good thing going. You and I had that rapport." He really thought that they would be honest with him? Can you believe that? They could have sold him the Brooklyn Bridge.

From that point on, Rader eagerly spent the next 30 hours reviewing the last 30 years of his life. As he proudly confessed to murder after murder, Rader revealed a darker nature than anyone could have imagined. It's nauseating. He'd start going on and on and on about each and every one of his conquests.

While Rader was confessing, investigators began turning up physical evidence against him. In his city hall office, they discovered in plain sight a cabinet full of souvenirs from the killings, all neatly filed away. Rader called the stash his motherlode.

He had all the original communications. He had all the evidence, all the trinkets, driver's licenses. All those things were all very neatly stored, all in binders.

Inside Rader's tiny 900-square-foot house, investigators found another stash, a container in his closet full of what Rader called slick ads, sexual fantasy cards he made using magazine photos of women and young girls. What is wrong with this guy? His mind was totally...

Fantasy driven. Police theorized these fantasies allowed Rader to go years without killing and were key to his elaborate double life. A life in which the normal activities of Dennis Rader fed the ghoulish appetites of BTK. For instance, he told police he used a former job installing burglar alarms to enter homes and troll for victims.

You always felt like he was very busy and, you know, whatever you got, just whatever you need, let him know because he's got things to do. Very busy man. Denise Maddock shared an office with Rader at the home security company ADT in the 1980s. Vicki Waggerly was killed in the middle of the day when he was working at ADT and when you were working with him, which means he had to leave in the middle of the day and then come back after killing a woman and brutally killing a woman.

When Rader admitted to the 1985 strangling of Maureen Hedge, a woman who lived on his own block, he told police he took the body to his church, where he posed and photographed it. It was the same church where he appeared to be so devout, he was elected president of the congregation. We just couldn't believe that they were talking about the Dennis Rader that we knew.

Paul Karlstad has known Dennis Rader for 30 years. The dentist that came to church every Sunday, the dentist that was there to help in whatever way we wanted him to help. It just didn't make any sense. Rader also revealed that he slipped away from a Boy Scout camping trip in 1991 to strangle 62-year-old Dolores Davis. It was Rader's last murder.

His fantasy is to take her to a barn, string her up, and then do some sexual bondage things with this dead body and photograph her. But Rader got caught in a snowstorm and dumped the body under a bridge instead. And it isn't until a couple of weeks later that her body is actually located underneath this bridge out in the county.

and they find with it a mask, a plastic mask that's been painted, decorated with some eyelashes and lipstick and painted face on it. What made him think he had the right to take somebody that meant the world to me? So unjust. For Dolores Davis' son, Jeff, learning the identity of his mother's killer is a fresh outrage. What sick, perverted...

pleasure can you possibly get enjoying looking into somebody's terrified eyes as you strangle the life out of them?

The BTK suspect will be back in court in about a half an hour. A court proceeding is scheduled at 9:00. Finally, Rader was forced to appear in public for the first time since his arrest. Sir, I have been advised that your desire to enter a plea of guilty in this case is that correct? Yes, sir.

On June 27th, in a Wichita courtroom, he pleaded guilty to all 10 murders. I used a ruse as a telephone repairman to get in their house. Rader's casual, cooperative tone in the courtroom seemed strangely at odds with the brutal murders he described. I was still kind of in a fog, I think. You know, it just didn't seem real that this person could do these things. And then

For me, it really hit home when he said he walked up to the door and heard the piano. As I approached it, I could hear a piano sound. That's when I knew that, you know, yeah, that was my mom that he heard playing. Is that the first time you realized this really was the killer? But even as he was admitting what he did, Dennis Rader failed to answer the biggest question of all, what made him do it? I remember one of the detectives saying, "The devil comes in an angel's disguise."

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Why not? That this normal look, you know, normal average guy that's married, has two kids, does all the normal stuff, that he could do such horrible things to so many innocent people. We know Dennis Rader did do these horrible things. The only question is why. I was able to speak with him by phone and I met with him twice in jail. Cameras, however, were banned. This is what Rader told me.

He says he grew up like any other child in a loving family and insists he was never abused. In fact, Rader's court-appointed attorney, Steve Osborne, admits he tried to find something, anything from Dennis Rader's past that could somehow explain BTK. We talked to the family some, and we didn't see anything that jumped out at us as abnormal. No trauma, no...

big event that would scar him or cause, you know, something like this to happen. Yet as young as seven or eight years of age, Rader told me and investigators, he became fascinated with inflicting pain on living things. He started with animals. As a young boy, he first became aroused when he was at his grandparents' farm.

and they would kill chickens for feeding the family. And he became very fixated on the death of those animals.

And it gets stranger. While other boys of his generation looked up to baseball players, Rader says his hero was Harvey Glattman, a serial killer who targeted young single women in Hollywood. He was executed in 1959 when Rader was just 14. But Glattman became an inspiration for the boy who would grow up to terrorize Wichita.

Remember Annette Funicello? Raider told detectives, quote, she was my favorite fantasy hit target when she was on The Mouseketeers. Raider imagined how he would kidnap the star Mouseketeer and, quote, do sexual things to her in California.

Reader told me that as he got older, he collected Detective Pope magazines depicting women in bondage, that the act of tying up a human body became an obsession, an obsession that he managed to keep secret from everyone he knew, even when he began killing at the age of 29. For all these years...

He seemed just like anybody else here. He might have been someone you talked to, you might have been standing next to him here in the library. Right, right. Author Robert Beatty. They were looking for crazy Charles Manson, somebody with a history of crime, sex crimes, mental disorders. You get on the elevator with Charles Manson, you're going to move the other side of the elevator. So you get on the elevator with BTK,

You're gonna smile and nod and have a conversation. You're never gonna suspect this guy. I trusted this man.

I mean, I really trusted him. During the time that Denise Maddox shared an office with Rader at ADT... You will find a homicide. That 14-second phone call reporting Nancy Fox's homicide was replayed repeatedly on television. Denise, you worked with him for 11 years. I did. And you didn't recognize his voice on that phone? I didn't.

She also never connected the killer's behavior with a Dennis Rader she knew. He was polite and even protective of women. I was working around all these guys, sharing a restroom with them. I was the only woman. And he always wanted to make sure that they put the lid down and no dirty jokes. He painted the bathroom for me because I thought it was a

It was really gross. We know from Rader's own letters to police that he admired famous murderers like Jack the Ripper and Son of Sam. But what isn't widely known is how much he borrowed from his hero serial killer, Harvey Glattman. A warning: What you are about to see may be very disturbing. Back in the 1950s, Glattman's victims were beautiful young models.

He would lure them with the promise of a photo shoot. Glattman bound, gagged, and then photographed them in the moments before he strangled them. Rader told me that's where he got the idea. These are the pictures Dennis Rader took. This of his last killing. He shows her laying on the bed, gagged.

Rader even sketched a drawing of that same victim. It was with her eyes open and a very horrified look on her face and actually reinforcing that she knew of her impending death. Rader is proud to take credit for all of this, but what he didn't want the public to know was how far he took his obsession with bondage. This is Rader. He took these photographs of himself

This one, in an open grave he dug for a victim. Dennis Rader did not want that evidence to come out. He did not want people to see him in a negative light. He wanted people to see him as some gentleman serial killer. We believed that that was totally inappropriate.

The killing, the stalking, the fantasy world. Somehow, Rader managed to hide it all, even from the woman who thought she knew him best, his wife of 33 years, Paula Rader, a bookkeeper. They appeared to be a devoted couple, regularly attending church together. Is it possible that his wife, who lived with him for all those years, truly had no idea he was connected to this? I'm convinced of it.

What makes you say that? I've talked to that woman. That woman, just to be honest, is a very, very nice woman, a saint. She is totally devastated. I've talked to his daughter, a wonderful, wonderfully young woman, totally devastated by the actions of this man. They had no idea. How would his wife not have any idea that she was living with a serial killer? In a 30-year period, he disappeared for 10 nights in a 30-year period.

probably less than a lot of men in America. But he hid so much stuff in the house. You know, he was pretty neat. He kept it neat. He kept it orderly. A lot of his stuff was at his workplace. He's such a control freak. Maybe that's the relationship he had with his wife. Don't be touching my things.

Why didn't Rader target his wife? He looked shocked when I asked him that question. He said he didn't kill anyone he knew, that his victims were just objects. He did say, however, that his wife was terrified of BTK and that he once reassured her by telling her to keep all the windows and doors locked.

I wasn't really worried, he told me, since I knew I was the one doing all the killing. I'll take care of that for you. Steve Osborne believes that even if no one had discovered his well-kept secret, Dennis Rader, dog catcher, scout leader, church president, was planning to one day take credit for becoming BTK. I

I think this was his life's work and he wanted basically to take a bow for it. I mean, this is who he was. This is what he did. I don't think that he was going to go to the grave without taking a bow for this. What do you hope happens to Dennis Rader at this point? I hope he's incarcerated for the rest of his life, which he will be, and that we never have to hear from him again.

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To the dark sanctum. Listen to Dark Sanctum Season 2 exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. It is some person within our community suffering from a mentality disorder leading toward the fetish. For those in Wichita who lived through three decades of fear and grief... It's like a war has ended, and there's not really a victory yet.

But the war's over. Today is a day they never thought they'd see. Dennis Rader is about to be sentenced for his crimes. I could see it in his eyes and his face. This guy is an animal and he's a monster. To make sure Rader is put in prison for life, the state must present evidence of his killings. After we had heard what she had went through, I know for me that's when I decided that I could be strong enough for her to sit through.

everything that I had to do to get to the end of it. It's the least I could do for her. For Steven Ralford, it is a memory he has tried so hard to forget. I see the same thing all my life. My mom laying there on that bed, me looking over that door.

Until now, this is the only way Steve Ralford could release the anger and grief he has known since his mother was killed by Raider in 1977. Will it be over after this sentencing for you? No. It will never, never be over, ma'am. Never. Until this son of a bitch is dead. My mom was my life. And he took it from me. Are you guys still in the 40s?

With the sentencing about to begin, Ralford and the other families arrive to finally confront the man who caused them all so much pain. I've waited 14 years. I want him to hear my statement. I want him to hear what I have to say. District Attorney Nola Folston hopes to expose the real man behind the killer who was invisible and once seemed invincible. This is a man who is twisted, and the community needed to see that. All rise. Please proceed.

It is a day and a half of mind-numbing testimony. He strangled her by tying the rope tightly around her neck, put a plastic bag over her head. Did Mrs. Davis put up any resistance or fight? There was nothing that she could do. He stated that it took approximately two to three minutes for her, and she felt no more pain. Finally...

My name is Charlie Otero. My name is Beverly Platt. The families get their chance to speak. I want him to suffer as much as he made his victims suffer. Although we have never met, you have seen my face before. It is the same face you murdered over 30 years ago. The face of my mother, Julie Otero. For the last 5,326 days, I have wondered what it would be like to confront the walking cesspool that took my mother's precious life.

If I had your devil nature, I would delight in the fact that your congregation has turned its back on you, that your wife has divorced you, that your own children have disowned you. You have now lost everything, and you will forever remain nothing. Thank you, Your Honor. My name's Steve Relford. Shirley Vian was my mother. After waiting 28 years for this moment... I'd just like for him to suffer for the rest of his life. ...words fail Steve Relford. And, you know, I don't...

Your Honor, my name is Bill Wagerly. Bill Wagerly, too, is overwhelmed as his daughter speaks from her broken heart. It's been almost 19 years now that my brother and I had the most important woman in our lives taken from us. It's not fair that we had so little time with her. It's not fair that she doesn't get to see me with her grandchildren. My mother begged for her life.

Yeah, he showed no remorse. If the families hoped to see that remorse from Dennis Rader today, they didn't get it. Some of them weren't even willing to sit and hear him speak and simply walked out. Okay, I know the victims' families won't ever be able to forgive me.

I hope somewhere deep down eventually that'll happen. When he finally apologizes... I finally apologize to the victims' families. There's no way that I can ever repay them. His closing words ring hollow. It's pitiable for Mr. Rader to stand here looking all pale and pasty and say how sorry he is. You know, gosh, I'm really sorry. Well, what else do you say after you kill ten people?

At the time of the murders, Kansas had no death penalty. So the judge gave Rader the maximum sentence, 175 years. They're coming down the road. They're now on prison property. And if the families get their way, Dennis Rader and BTK will just fade into the past. I hope that people will not correspond with him, have anything to do with him.

That would probably be a greater suffering to him than if he was put to death or tortured or whatever else.

Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals.

However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created.

She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.

It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that was still a virgin. It just happens to all of us.

I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.