In May 1924, fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks got into a car with someone he knew and trusted. Minutes later he was dead — not for money, not out of hatred, but as anexperiment. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had every advantage the world could offer: brilliant minds, immense wealth, futures wide open. And they spent nearly a year planning the murder of a child to prove a single idea they heldabout themselves — that they were exceptional enough to stand above the rules that bind everyone else.

This week on Deadly Intent, we sit with the case that this whole show was built for: the one where ordinary motive nearly disappears. We trace the "perfect crime" from its cold conception through the pair of eyeglasses that unraveled it, into a courtroom where Clarence Darrow made one of the most famous pleas in American legal history — and asked a question we're still wrestling with a hundred yearslater. What kind of intent kills for the idea of it? How much can any of us be blamed for becoming what we were shaped to be? And what happens when two mindstalk each other into a monstrous lie?

We follow the folie à deux at the heart of their bond, the confessions that turned them against each other the instant fear arrived, and the strange, diverging afterlives that followed. And before we close, we bring the story back to theboy at its center — because Bobby Franks was never the footnote. He was the whole moral weight of it.

⚠️ Content warning: This episode discusses the remeditated murder of a child. Please take care of yourself while listening.

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Freaky Folklore: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/freaky-folklore

Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror

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At 5:30 on a July morning in Strongsville, Ohio, a silver Camry accelerated down an empty suburban road to nearly 100 miles an hour, held a dead-straight line for three-quarters of a mile, and drove head-on into a brick wall. Two young mendied. The seventeen-year-old girl behind the wheel survived — and what investigators pulled from the car's black box turned a tragedy into a homicide case.

The accelerator was floored. The brake was never touched. And two weeks earlier, Mackenzie Shirilla had allegedly threatened to crash the car with her boyfriendinside it.

This week, we walk the whole length of that road: the silent testimony of the event data recorder, the security footage a judge said she could never un-see, the toxic relationship the state built its motive on, and the medical defense thatcouldn't find its expert. A court called it murder — "the mission was death." But behind the verdict sits a locked room none of us can enter: what a teenage girl truly meant in the last few seconds before impact.

A story where we know almost everything that happened, and still can't be certain why.

Content warning: this episode discusses a fatal crash, intimate partner violence, and suicide. Crisis resources are shared at the end. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and the Suicide & CrisisLifeline is 988.

#DeadlyIntent #TrueCrime #MackenzieShirilla #TrueCrimePodcast #TrueCrimeCommunity#Strongsville #OhioCrime #CrimePodcast #TrueCrimeAddict #Murder #ForensicPsychology #CriminalIntent #TrueCrimeFans #PodcastCommunity #Justice

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Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror

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Rex Heuermann didn't just kill eight women. He wrote down how to do it — and then revised the document between murders.

For seventeen years, the Long Island Serial Killer left women along Ocean Parkway, fifteen minutes from his house in Massapequa Park. For thirteen more yearsafter their bodies were found, Suffolk County didn't catch him — despite a burner phone he bought with his own credit card. In April 2026, Heuermann pleaded guilty to seven murders and admitted to an eighth. In June, he was sentenced to life.

This episode is about the piece of evidence that makes this case unlike almost any other: a deleted Word file recovered from a hard drive in his basement, written in all capitals, containing checklists, a disposal procedure, and a section of lessons learned for next time. On this show we usually have to infer intent. Here, he typed it.

We cover the 911 call from Shannan Gilbert that cracked the case open, the discovery of the Gilgo Four, the taunting phone calls made to a fifteen-year-old girl, the police chief who kept the FBI out of the investigation and went to federalprison, and the eight women whose names deserve to be said: Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello, Jessica Taylor, Valerie Mack, Sandra Costilla, and Karen Vergata.

Intent doesn't lie. People do.

Content warning: serial murder, strangulation, sexual violence, and discussion of theexploitation of sex workers.

#RexHeuermann #GilgoBeach #TrueCrime #RexHeuermann #GilgoBeach #LongIslandSerialKiller #LISK #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePodcast #TrueCrimeCommunity #SerialKiller#CriminalPsychology #ColdCase #ShannanGilbert #DeadlyIntent #CarmanCarrion #TrueCrimeTikTok #Massapequa

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Freaky Folklore: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/freaky-folklore

Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/

Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror

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SUPPORT THE SHOW:

Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/carmancarrion

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SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW:

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Your support helps bring you more terrifying tales.

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DISCOVER MORE HORROR:

http://eeriecast.com/

https://www.carman-carrion.com/

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MUSIC CREDITS:

Music and sound effects provided by: ElevenLabs