True Crime Culinary

In 2002, Gwen Araujo, a 17-year-old transgender girl, was murdered in California for living openly as herself.

In this episode of True Crime Culinary, host Leah Llach tells Gwen’s story with care, personal reflection, and historical context — examining how everyday cruelty escalates, how violence is excused, and how one case helped change the law.

We follow Gwen’s life, the night of the attack, and the aftermath that led to the Gwen Araujo Justice for Victims Act, which limited the use of the so-called “trans panic” defense in court.

Then, through the show’s culinary l...

In November 1939, a lone German carpenter and clockmaker came within minutes of assassinating Adolf Hitler — inside a Munich beer hall.

In this episode of True Crime Culinary, we explore the Beer Hall Bombing, one of the closest and least-known assassination attempts of World War II history, and the everyday objects that filled the room where it nearly happened.

Beer halls weren’t just bars in early 20th-century Germany. They were political spaces — places where people gathered to eat, drink, listen, and belong. They were instrumental in the rise of Nazi ideology. And they were furnished with h...

A man dressed as Santa walks into a bank… and no one hits the alarm right away.

In this episode of True Crime Culinary, we start with a real holiday robbery and follow the trail all the way to a plate of cookies left out in the dark. Why does Santa work as a disguise? Why do we trust him so completely? And why, of all things, do we leave him cookies?

From medieval European Christmas baking and spice-laden survival cookies, to Scandinavian hospitality rituals, to the Great Depression origins of milk and cookies in th...

Candy canes feel harmless — festive, nostalgic, impossible to take seriously. But this episode asks a simple question: why do we trust sweet, familiar objects so easily?

We start with a real-world reminder that even a cane can hide danger, then trace the history of sugar itself — from chewed sugarcane in Southeast Asia to hand-pulled sugar sticks in medieval Europe. By the 1600s, refined sugar had become a global luxury, produced almost entirely through enslaved labor on Caribbean and Brazilian plantations. Those early sugar sticks — the ancestors of candy canes — were symbols of wealth built on violence and exhausti...

In this episode of True Crime Culinary, we unwrap the chilling story of Christiana Edmunds — the Victorian poisoner who slipped strychnine into chocolate creams — and trace chocolate’s own extraordinary journey across continents and centuries.

We go way back: to the Indigenous origins of cacao in Central and South America, where chocolate was medicine, ritual, ceremony, and even currency. Then we follow cacao across the Atlantic, into colonial systems powered by enslaved labor, and into the hands of European confectioners.

By the 19th century, Swiss innovators — Daniel Peter, Henri Nestlé, Rodolphe Lindt, Philippe Suchard, and Jean Tobl...

In this hilarious and surprisingly fascinating episode of True Crime Culinary, host Leah dives into the real-life story of a liquor-store break-in unlike anything you’ve heard before — featuring a very drunk raccoon, a bathroom floor, and a trail of shattered whiskey bottles that left employees wondering if they’d walked onto the set of The Hangover: Woodland Edition.

From that chaotic crime scene, we follow the pawprints into a deeper look at the history of prison alcohol, better known as pruno, hooch, or jailhouse wine. Leah breaks down how prison-made alcohol works, why inmates started making it cen...

What really happened at the first Thanksgiving — and why do we center a turkey that wasn’t even on the table? In this episode, we peel back 400 years of myth, marketing, and cultural reinvention to explore the deeper story behind America’s most symbol-heavy holiday.

We start with the Indigenous history that actually shaped the 1621 harvest gathering — the Wampanoag people, their agricultural expertise, and the political context that shaped their alliance with the English settlers. We look at what was really served (spoiler: likely waterfowl, venison, corn, and shellfish — not turkey), and how early colonial accounts transformed into the i...

What do you do when your late-night poutine order shows up… with a handful of Viagra at the bottom of the bag?

In this episode, we unpack one of the strangest food-adjacent crimes in Canadian history — a 2015 drug ring run out of an ordinary Québec poutine shop, where delivery drivers quietly offered cannabis, magic mushrooms, and pharmaceuticals alongside fries, gravy, and cheese curds.

But the story doesn’t start with the drug bust. To understand why this crime became an instant legend, we trace the tale back centuries — to the Indigenous nations along the St. Lawre...

What do backyard mole hunters, fat squirrels, and Thanksgiving sweet potatoes have in common? Marshmallows.

In this delightfully bizarre episode of True Crime Culinary, host Leah Llach uncovers a real-life backyard “mole war” sparked by an internet myth — and somehow connects it to the sweet, squishy history of marshmallows.

From ancient Egyptian medicine to French confectioners and early 20th-century marketing magic, this story traces how a swamp plant called Althaea officinalis became the modern marshmallow — and how one 1917 ad campaign made it a Thanksgiving staple.

Featuring “tactical marshmallow insertion failures,” conspiracy theories about squirrels, a...

A murder mystery solved by… a sweet potato? In 2011, a bizarre clue at a Massachusetts crime scene went cold for over a decade — until DNA in 2023 cracked the case. We trace the sweet potato’s journey from Indigenous fields to Southern kitchens, exploring sweet potato pie, its pumpkin cousin, and even forgotten carrot pie along the way. Flavor, history, and true crime collide in the strangest ways.

Sources & Further Reading

ABC News — “Sweet potato helps solve Massachusetts cold case murder”

Oxygen True Crime — “DNA on sweet potato silencer links man to Cape Cod cold...

A knock at the door. A bowl of candy. And one Halloween night in 1957 that turned deadly. In this episode, we unwrap the story of Peter and Betty Fabiano, the so-called “Trick-or-Treat Murder”, and trace how the sugary ritual behind it evolved from ancient offerings to candy corn.

Sources include:

Los Angeles Times archives (1957–1958)

True Crime Edition, “The Trick-or-Treat Murder”

Medium / @CrimeBeatChronicles, “Halloween Homicide: The Story of Peter and Betty Fabiano”

Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford University Press, 2002

Santino, Jack. Hallowee...

One man hiding from police in a California corn maze accidentally leads us down a different path—into the 9,000-year story of corn itself. Featuring Indigenous perspectives, culinary history, and a side of humor, this episode uncovers how one ancient grain shaped our plates, our past, and one very strange police report.

Sources include:

An interview from KTVU

An interview from ABC 7

Ancient DNA Continues To Rewrite Corn’s 9,000-Year Society-Shaping History from the Smithsonian

Historical Indigenous Food Preparation Using Prod...

When Aron Ralston was trapped by a boulder in Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon, two burritos became his last link to life. This episode dives into his 127-hour fight for survival—and the fascinating history of the burrito, from Mesoamerica to modern-day.

Sources include:

Bluejohn Canyon

Outside Online – “Between a Rock and the Hardest Place”

The Guardian – “The Story Behind 127 Hours”

All That’s Interesting – The True Story of Aron Ralston

Wikipedia: Aron Ralston

Nuestro Stories

DishHistory – Burrito Origins (YouTube)

Wikipedia: Tex-Mex Duration: 00:10:30

A prune cake. A smile. A string of poisoned husbands. Meet Nannie Doss — the “Giggling Granny” whose deadly dessert shocked America. In this episode of True Crime Culinary, Leah Llach unpacks the sweet, sinister story of love, arsenic, and domestic deception.

Sources include an article from all that’s interesting, an analysis from the YouTube show Observe, and our friend Wikipedia.