The University of Southern Alabama was experiencing an incredibly cold winter in February of 1980. Little did anyone know the weather would cause the murder of 18 year old Katherine Foster to become a cold-case for almost 30 years. But a determined detective, a tip from an AA sponsor, and forensics specialists at The Body Farm, would reveal that Katherine’s stone-hearted killer was someone very close to home.

The Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Arizona had a very problematic student. After Dr. Thomas Meixner gave Murad Dervish a failing midterm grade, Murad began displaying increasingly violent behaviors. But while Dr. Meixner and several of his faculty appealed to the University administration and UA police force several times, little was done to deter Murad’s violent outbursts. And though the university expelled Murad, the act would only serve to further enrage him, and Dr. Meixner became the target. On a quiet afternoon in October of 2022, Murad Dervish shot and killed Dr. Meixner in his own office, leading to an outcry from UA faculty that prompted the university to audit and revamp its safety procedures.

On a summer morning in 1952, a young man named Bayard Peakes walked into the Physical Society’s Office at Columbia University. He was angry that his article had been rejected from their journal for being a ‘crackpot’ theory, and he was looking for revenge. Standing between him and possible academic glory was a teenage secretary working the front desk. Bayard shot 18 year old Eileen Fahen in the chest and fled. Pursued by police all the way back to his hometown of Boston, Bayard wanted the world to know that he was the ‘naughty boy’ who had murdered the secretary of one of the most renowned physics departments. His notoriety was short-lived. His tactics, however, prompted the Columbia Physical Society to change the way they view what they called ‘Crackpots’