True Crime Sleep Stories

Tonight’s episode is one of the oldest on the show, from back when True Crime Sleep Stories was still new and I was often recording on my cell phone. Most of you never heard the original, so for 31 Nights of Frights it felt like the right time to tell it again.
This is the 1972 case of 16-year-old Jeannette DePalma, who vanished from Springfield, New Jersey, and was found six weeks later on a cliff the locals called the Devil’s Teeth. Almost at once, the rumors turned to witchcraft.
Thank you for sticking with me over the years. The room is a lot fuller now than it was when this one first went out, and I'm glad you're here.
Settle in. Get cozy. And I'll see you tomorrow night for a longer story.
Patreon Exclusive: Ad-free version & bonus content available now for supporters.
Your support keeps the stories coming... thank you! 💤
Listen & Connect
• Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyTimeCreepyTime
• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Stay in Touch
Facebook
Instagram: @truecrimesleepstories | @kellibrink
TikTok: @truecrimesleepstories
Buy the True Crime Sleep Stories Books by Kelli Brink
Vol. 1: amzn.to/3Z8jx5L
Vol. 2: amzn.to/4kAthhj
Vol. 3: amzn.to/3H9xfPQ

Support the show on Patreon

True Crime Sleep Stories is hosted and created by Kelli Brink, produced with the support of our dedicated team. Subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to help us keep telling these haunting tales. Visit patreon.com/kellibrink for exclusive content and to join our community. Thank you for listening, and we'll meet you in the shadows next time. Until then, stay safe out there, and lock your doors.
🌑 Goodnight.
#TrueCrimePodcast #SleepStories #UnsolvedMysteries

Welcome back to 31 Nights of Frights on True Crime Sleep Stories.
This weekend I’ll be walking the halls of Lenox College in Hopkinton, Iowa, after dark. Not alone. Joining me are several true crime podcasters crossing over for a paranormal investigation: Justin from Generation Why, Lauren and Ken from Paradise After Dark and the Florida Themis Project. Lauren and I have done this before. We spent a night inside the Villisca axe murder house. This one is different. No known victim. Just a school that ran out of students, and a few stories that never quite left.
This is part 1. I’ll be back with a full report of my thoughts on the hauntings after the expedition. :-)
Until next time, sleep well. Thank you for your support!
Patreon Exclusive: Ad-free version & bonus content available now for supporters.
Your support keeps the stories coming... thank you! 💤
Listen & Connect
• Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyTimeCreepyTime
• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Stay in Touch
Facebook
Instagram: @truecrimesleepstories | @kellibrink
TikTok: @truecrimesleepstories
Buy the True Crime Sleep Stories Books by Kelli Brink
Vol. 1: amzn.to/3Z8jx5L
Vol. 2: amzn.to/4kAthhj
Vol. 3: amzn.to/3H9xfPQ

Support the show on Patreon

True Crime Sleep Stories is hosted and created by Kelli Brink, produced with the support of our dedicated team. Subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to help us keep telling these haunting tales. Visit patreon.com/kellibrink for exclusive content and to join our community. Thank you for listening, and we'll meet you in the shadows next time. Until then, stay safe out there, and lock your doors.
🌑 Goodnight.
#TrueCrimePodcast #SleepStories #UnsolvedMysteries

Welcome to 31 Nights of Frights on True Crime Sleep Stories.
In the late winter of 1957, Fox Chase was a quiet corner of northeast Philadelphia, all rowhouses, corner stores, and rough fields at the edge of town. In February, in a brushy field off Susquehanna Road, a little boy was found wrapped in a flannel blanket inside a cardboard box that had once held a department-store bassinet. No one came forward to claim him.
Tonight's episode follows the long, patient effort to give that child back his name: fingerprints checked against birth records, hundreds of thousands of flyers mailed with gas bills, a box traced to a JCPenney store, and a medical examiner's investigator, Remington Bristow, who carried the case for more than thirty years. We'll come to December 2022, when DNA and genetic genealogy finally named him: Joseph Augustus Zarelli, four years old.

Patreon Exclusive: Ad-free version & bonus content available now for supporters.
Your support keeps the stories coming... thank you! 💤
Listen & Connect
• Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyTimeCreepyTime
• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Stay in Touch
Facebook
Instagram: @truecrimesleepstories | @kellibrink
TikTok: @truecrimesleepstories
Buy the True Crime Sleep Stories Books by Kelli Brink
Vol. 1: amzn.to/3Z8jx5L
Vol. 2: amzn.to/4kAthhj
Vol. 3: amzn.to/3H9xfPQ

Support the show on Patreon

True Crime Sleep Stories is hosted and created by Kelli Brink, produced with the support of our dedicated team. Subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to help us keep telling these haunting tales. Visit patreon.com/kellibrink for exclusive content and to join our community. Thank you for listening, and we'll meet you in the shadows next time. Until then, stay safe out there, and lock your doors.
🌑 Goodnight.
#TrueCrimePodcast #SleepStories #UnsolvedMysteries #TheBoyInTheBox

Welcome to 31 Nights of Frights on True Crime Sleep Stories.
Tonight, three listener letters. A childhood house. A gas station after midnight. A rental where a staircase was not supposed to be used.
Denise, winter of 1994, outside Moline. A mushroom nightlight. Her sister’s red parka on the hook. A sleeve that lifted like a wave.
Marcus, 2011, Highway 218. A Kum & Go. A tan Taurus with a trash bag taped over the back window. A plate number on a receipt, and a deputy who could only say it came back to Keokuk.
Lori, summer of 2006, 4th Street in Dubuque. Four screws, painted over. A strip of blue tape that never broke. A carpenter’s pencil she did not own.
If you have a story like this, a house, a road, a night you still cannot explain, write to me at: truecrimesleepstories@gmail.com. You can stay anonymous if you’d like.
Patreon friends, the ad-free version of tonight is already waiting for you. That support is how these stories keep coming.
Until tomorrow night... Lock your doors. Sleep well. Goodnight.
Patreon Exclusive: Ad-free version & bonus content available now for supporters.
Your support keeps the stories coming... thank you! 💤
Listen & Connect
• Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyTimeCreepyTime
• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Stay in Touch
Facebook
Instagram: @truecrimesleepstories | @kellibrink
TikTok: @truecrimesleepstories
Buy the True Crime Sleep Stories Books by Kelli Brink
Vol. 1: amzn.to/3Z8jx5L
Vol. 2: amzn.to/4kAthhj
Vol. 3: amzn.to/3H9xfPQ

Support the show on Patreon

True Crime Sleep Stories is hosted and created by Kelli Brink, produced with the support of our dedicated team. Subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to help us keep telling these haunting tales. Visit patreon.com/kellibrink for exclusive content and to join our community. Thank you for listening, and we'll meet you in the shadows next time. Until then, stay safe out there, and lock your doors.
🌑 Goodnight.
#TrueCrimePodcast #SleepStories #UnsolvedMysteries

Welcome to another night of 31 Nights of Frights on True Crime Sleep Stories...
"Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one."
 
The kids jump-rope rhyme got almost everything wrong. It was not an axe, it was not her mother, and the forty whacks were made up to fit the beat. Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted in 1893. Nobody else was ever charged. More than 130 years later, the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden are still unsolved, a case that went cold because 1892 had no tools to close it.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, the 4th Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan Monster season, premiered on Netflix on September 17, 2026, and does what that series did with Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, and Ed Gein... it fills the blank morning with plot and calls it the story. This episode does not. We walk the house on Second Street, mark the rumor when we meet it, and leave the verdict where the jury left it.
Thank you for being here. If this one kept you company, the next one will be waiting in the shadows.

Patreon Exclusive: Ad-free version & bonus content available now for supporters.
Your support keeps the stories coming... thank you! 💤
Listen & Connect
• Watch on YouTube: youtube.com/@SleepyTimeCreepyTime
• Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Stay in Touch
Facebook
Instagram: @truecrimesleepstories | @kellibrink
TikTok: @truecrimesleepstories
Buy the True Crime Sleep Stories Books by Kelli Brink
Vol. 1: amzn.to/3Z8jx5L
Vol. 2: amzn.to/4kAthhj
Vol. 3: amzn.to/3H9xfPQ

Support the show on Patreon

True Crime Sleep Stories is hosted and created by Kelli Brink, produced with the support of our dedicated team. Subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast platform to help us keep telling these haunting tales. Visit patreon.com/kellibrink for exclusive content and to join our community. Thank you for listening, and we'll meet you in the shadows next time. Until then, stay safe out there, and lock your doors.
🌑 Goodnight.
#TrueCrimePodcast #SleepStories #UnsolvedMysteries #LizzieBorden