Sea of Lies from Uncover

In 2015, a 20-something American named John learns he might be a father. A prenatal paternity test confirms it, and he quickly pivots from college student to family man. But eight months into the baby’s life, a second test reveals John is not the father, shattering his new reality. “How could I be that unlucky?”

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

Hear Episode 2 right now — early and ad-free — by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.

Four years later, a Canadian college student named Corale needs to identify the father of her unborn baby. The 19-year-old turns to Viaguard Accu-Metrics for a prenatal paternity test. Like John, her world is rocked by tests that name the wrong dad. Unlike John, she starts asking questions and connecting dots. “Are there other people? Am I the only one?” 

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

Hear Episode 3 right now — early and ad-free — by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts.

On the surface, Accu-Metrics was making headlines and growing strong. But two former employees paint a troubling picture of what was going on inside, from staff who don’t seem properly trained to a stream of customers complaining about test results. Plus, the questions they were instructed to ask just didn’t seem right… 

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

After years of expansion into different DNA services, controversies around the company begin to surface — publicly. There’s a lawsuit against the company, journalists (including our co-host Jorge Barrera) start sniffing around; and a poodle is falsely identified as an Indigenous person. Meanwhile, prenatal paternity testing quietly disappears from the services on the Viaguard Accu-Metrics website. 

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

What’s really going on inside Accu-Metrics? Co-host Rachel Houlihan goes undercover, posing as a mother who needs a paternity test. Once inside, she meets face to face with the company’s owner, Harvey Tenenbaum. She also connects with an ex-employee who reveals what he witnessed in the lab.  

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

In September 2024, a senior employee at Viaguard Accu-Metrics is sentenced for running an unrelated $6 million hair-testing scam. Will this development prompt the police to investigate his former employer as well? Will it finally push Tenenbaum to comment on the record? And what options remain for John, Corale and the other customers living with the long term impact of their bad results? 

A legal note: Over the course of this podcast, a number of allegations are made against Viaguard Accu-Metrics and its employees. When asked, company owner Harvey Tenenbaum said he stands by the test, and that any errors were caused by customers during sample collection.

Christine Harron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, leaves for school in the spring of 1993 and is never seen again. A suspect emerges, confessing to her murder, but the case falls apart and Christine's family are left without answers.

In Season 9 of the award winning podcast Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen, along with Christine's mother, reopen the investigation and come face to face with the man who said he killed Chrissy.

Someone Knows Something is the investigative true crime series by award-winning documentarian David Ridgen. Each season tackles an unsolved case, uncovering details and bringing closure to families.

More episodes of Someone Knows Something are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/L05ckdsc

Who is this baby’s father? It’s a question a DNA lab promised to answer with “99.9% accuracy” — but instead, routinely identified the wrong dads. Investigative journalists Jorge Barrera and Rachel Houlihan track down the families whose lives were torn apart by these bad results and the story behind the Canadian company that stands by its testing and continues to operate today.

Part 1: Five colleagues are shot dead. Everyone is traumatized. On that day, June 28, 2018, what can the remaining staff of the Capital Gazette do that might make a difference? Publish "a damn paper."

Part 2: How do you try to return to normal after a mass shooting? The Capital Gazette moves into a tiny, temporary office, and staff members confront the challenges of producing a daily paper while dealing with fear and guilt.

Part 3: The Capital Gazette takes on a new beat: itself. As the shooter's case works its way towards trial, the staff tries to balance coverage obligations with personal feelings.

Part 4: The Capital Gazette is swept up in the troubles of the newspaper industry. Its corporate owners are making painful cuts, and a hedge fund with an ominous reputation seeks control. Staff members, who survived the 2018 shooting and kept the Capital going, wonder if the paper can last.

Part 5: In our final episode, there's one important part of the newspaper's story we couldn't bring you until now: what it's like to have their attacker stand trial. And the unexpected ways that trial can affect you. Plus a big update about the newspaper itself.

In the upcoming season, Uncover listeners will get to know the surviving staff of The Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, MD, where a gunman murdered five people in June 2018. Produced by NPR's Embedded.

In 1964, the partial remains of two black teenagers — Charles Moore and Henry Dee — were pulled from a backwater of the Mississippi River. Brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, no one was ever convicted. In one of his first ever cold case investigations, Someone Knows Something host David Ridgen joins victim's brother Thomas Moore, as he returns to Mississippi 40 years later to discover the truth, confront the Klansmen involved, and find justice.

In 1964, two klansmen were arrested for the murder of Dee & Moore: James Ford Seale and Charles Marcus Edwards. The charges were dropped. But Edwards is still known to be alive, and Thomas wants to meet him face to face. For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

Why did authorities close the case? David & Thomas speak with the FBI and local District Attorney to try to find out. They also meet Henry's sister Thelma and Joe Lee, one of the last to see Dee & Moore alive. Thomas makes a shocking discovery. For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

David and Thomas meet journalist Jerry Mitchell, who has stacks of FBI documents about the case. They speak to people who lived through the terror of civil rights era Mississippi, and visit U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton to try to get the case reopened. For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

David and Thomas search for MHSP officers and FBI agents who were present during Seale and Edwards's arrests. And Thomas looks for the support of the local community as he plans to confront the Klansmen in person. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

The investigation continues, leading to the doorsteps of more former Klansmen. Then, a surprising revelation from Lampton. For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

In the aftermath of the Dee-Moore case, questions remain. Years later, David and Thomas return to Mississippi to meet old friends, mourn those who have passed and to try meeting the Klansman turned church deacon, Charles Marcus Edwards, one more time.

For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

In this bonus episode, David travels back to Mississippi, follows up on the Dee & Moore case, and looks at the fate of other civil rights era cases in the wake of the James Ford Seale trial. For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

In this special episode, David and Thomas Moore reflect on their search for justice and what they’ve learned in the years since their investigation into the 1964 Klan murders of Henry Dee and Thomas’ brother Charles Moore.

Two-year-old Salmaan disappears in the chaos of the final days of the war against ISIS. In London, Salmaan’s grandfather, Ash, has been desperate for answers ever since. Poonam travels to Syria to find out what happened to Salmaan and the thousands of children like him.

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Bombs drop as Poonam enters Syria, blocking access to the areas she needs to get to. If things get worse, the troops guarding IS prisons say they will be forced to abandon their positions. The team makes contact with Salmaan’s Canadian family, learning what they believe happened to him and his mother. Poonam and her team see up close the dangers still facing children here.

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Poonam finally gets into the prison camp where the women and children of suspected IS fighters are being held. There, she meets a Canadian woman who has information about baby Salmaan. But it’s clear she isn’t telling Poonam everything.

Poonam returns to DA, now suspicious of the secret she is keeping. What was IS like through her eyes? What can she tell Poonam about some of the terror group’s most heinous crimes?

Poonam makes the perilous journey to the last known location of baby Salmaan, a guesthouse near where IS made its last stand. But IS sleeper cells still lurk in the desert and Poonam only has one hour on the ground – can she find what she needs in time?

Poonam makes the perilous journey to the last known location of baby Salmaan, a guesthouse near where IS made its last stand. But IS sleeper cells still lurk in the desert and Poonam only has one hour on the ground – can she find what she needs in time?

Poonam travels to Canada for an unexpected meeting and returns to London where she shares what she has discovered with Ash.

Two-year-old Salmaan disappears in the chaos of the final days of the war against ISIS. After the war against the Islamic State was won, what became of the children of its fighters? There are thousands of kids like Salmaan, with roots in Canada, the U.K., the U.S. and beyond — many of whom are still trapped without a way back home. Is it a race against time to rescue them?

Crimes like this don't often happen on land. A 10-minute slow-motion slaughter captured by a cell phone camera shows a group of unarmed men at sea, possibly 15 of them, killed one by one by a semiautomatic weapon, after which the culprits pose for celebratory selfies. The shocking footage is then made public, and yet no government is willing to investigate, much less prosecute the murderers. This episode traces a tireless journalistic investigation of a shocking video that after 8 years, finally resulted in a 26-year conviction of the ship captain who ordered the cold-blooded killing. Looking for answers, this reporting takes us to the bizarre world of floating armories, which are part bunkhouse, part weapons depot, where maritime mercenaries wait for their next ship deployment. For broader context, the story explores the explosion of violence on the high seas, how Somali piracy is often used as a pretext for bloodletting by private security guards and the reasons that offshore crime often happens with impunity. Guest Interviews: Duncan Copeland, Trygg Mat Tracking Kevin Thompson, Private Maritime Security Guard

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

It would be hard to believe if it hadn't actually happened. The longest law-enforcement chase in nautical history, spanning 110 days and 10,000 miles, featured a bunch of vigilantes pursuing Interpol's most wanted illegal fishing ship. Slaloming around icebergs in a deadly glacier field, cutting through a category 5 storm, this chase only ended when one of the ships sank. To discuss why illegal fishing is so rampant and unchecked, this episode takes us from the capture of the world's most notorious scofflaw vessel in African waters to the seas off the coast of North Korea, where we discover the planet's largest illegal fishing fleet. Guest Interview: Tony Long, CEO of Global Fishing Watch

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Ian’s account of his groundbreaking reporting on slavery in the South China Sea, the first time a reporter had ever made it onboard a Thai distant-water vessel using enslaved labour. Found shackled by the neck as part of the crew on a dilapidated fishing vessel, Lang Long was a victim of the nightmarish world of debt bondage. A global scourge, sea slavery is something most people do not realize exists. This episode explains how it happens, taking us for the first time on board one such roach and rat-infested ship on the South China Sea, worked by 40 Cambodian boys. The episode also explains how overfishing has given rise to trans-shipment, fish-laundering and a prevalence of abuse that companies and governments have a tough time countering or tracking. Guest Interviews: Shannon Service, Director of “Ghost Fleet” Daniel Murphy, Freedom Fund

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

The sea has always been a metaphor for freedom – an escape from governments, laws and other people. This episode takes us off the coast of England to Sealand. A rogue “micronation” meant to embody this very freedom, which was founded on an abandoned British anti-aircraft platform in 1967. “From the Sea, Freedom” explores the world of libertarian-minded endeavors at sea, where renegades and mavericks of all sorts seek to escape the laws of land-bound nation-states. The reporting also visits the high seas near Mexico to meet other characters who leverage the freedom and a legal gray area found offshore. We travel with Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Women on Waves, a group that provides abortion access for women who live in countries where it is restricted. Secretly carrying several Mexican women beyond national waters, Rebecca uses a loophole in maritime law to legally administer pills that will end their pregnancies. Guest Interview: Rebecca Gomperts, founder of "Women on Waves"

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

The oceans are running out of fish. To slow down that problem, environmentalists pushed for fish farming or aquaculture. The problem is this industry became too big and too hungry. To fatten the farmed fish faster, they started feeding the high-protein pellets called fishmeal — made from massive amounts of fish caught at sea. Now, more than 30 percent of all marine life pulled from the sea feeds other fish in aquaculture farms inland. To explore this upside-down situation, we travel to the West African country of The Gambia for an offshore patrol where hundreds of Chinese and other fishing boats trawl for fishmeal production, cratering the local food source and polluting the coastline. Guest Interview: Dr. Daniel Pauly, Marine Biologist

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

When a ship inadvertently spills oil, it’s big news. But every three years, ships intentionally dump more oil than the Exxon Valdez, and BP spills combined. This episode highlights a vexing and woefully under-discussed problem. It is made possible by corrupt ship captains who use a so-called “Magic Pipe” that dumps oil discreetly under the water line rather than disposing of it on land as legally required. To learn about this problem, the episode tells the story of Carnival’s Caribbean Princess cruise ship, which used such a pipe and was caught, convicted and hit with the biggest fine in history. This case is set in a broader context of other forms of at-sea dumping, such as plastic pollution, and highlights how the sea has long — and perilously — been viewed as a bottomless trash can. Guest Interviews: Annie Leonard, CEO of Greenpeace, creator of “The Story of Plastic” Richard Udell, DOJ Prosecutor on the Caribbean Princess Case.

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

When a ship inadvertently spills oil, it’s big news. But every three years, ships intentionally dump more oil than the Exxon Valdez, and BP spills combined. This episode highlights a vexing and woefully under-discussed problem. It is made possible by corrupt ship captains who use a so-called “Magic Pipe” that dumps oil discreetly under the water line rather than disposing of it on land as legally required. To learn about this problem, the episode tells the story of Carnival’s Caribbean Princess cruise ship, which used such a pipe and was caught, convicted and hit with the biggest fine in history. This case is set in a broader context of other forms of at-sea dumping, such as plastic pollution, and highlights how the sea has long — and perilously — been viewed as a bottomless trash can. Guest Interviews: Annie Leonard, CEO of Greenpeace, creator of “The Story of Plastic” Richard Udell, DOJ Prosecutor on the Caribbean Princess Case.

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For transcripts of this series, please visit this page.

High Seas. High Stakes. High Crimes. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. Perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world’s oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. The Outlaw Ocean is a 7-part series that explores a gritty and lawless realm rarely seen, populated by traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways. Hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina, the series relies on more than 8 years of reporting at sea on all 7 oceans and more than 3 dozen countries.

To hear all episodes of The Outlaw Ocean now, visit here.

New Year’s Eve. Simon receives a message from a beautiful stranger, named Shirley: “Greetings…from my world to yours.” A digital flirtation begins. Then Shirley needs cash – fast. Shirley’s photo is actually adult entertainment “cam girl” Janessa Brazil and many accounts are using her image to lure victims. Who is Janessa? Has she any idea that she’s the bait in worldwide catfishing schemes?

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Roberto is in love. Without ever seeing her or talking to her, he thinks he falls deeply for Janessa. He sends thousands of dollars and begs her to leave the adult entertainment world. Everyone tells the Italian sustainable farmer that he’s being scammed. Then why is Janessa coming to meet him at an airport in Europe? Please note, this series contains adult themes and strong language.

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Tracking down scammers – how and why do they do it? One tells host Hannah Ajala: “I always feel bad”. Researchers estimate half of global romance scams originate in West Africa. In Ghana, there are the Sakawa Boys. The conning process can involve staying up late, chatting on the phone… building trust and deepening the connection — a bit like a real relationship. It takes time to fall “in love”.

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

Please note, this series contains adult themes and strong language. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Where is Janessa Brazil? She seems to have vanished. Then, she turns up somewhere unexpected. Is that really Janessa on a radio show, with the wife of a scam victim? Meanwhile, Hannah discovers that justice is hard to come by. Can victims of romance fraud even get their money back? Please note, this series contains adult themes and strong language.

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

Transcripts for this series are here.

“I'm an offensive person.” Can a shock jock radio talk show host help us find Janessa Brazil?

Meet Bubba the Love Sponge Clem. Bubba and Janessa used to host his show together and they were even housemates. Did they talk about romance scammers using her images? And does he know where Janessa is now?

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

Transcripts for this series are here.

Her real name is Vanessa. Her model name is Janessa Brazil. Where does Janessa end and Vanessa begin? Vanessa tells her story and reveals the human cost of being the bait in catfishing schemes around the world.

To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.

Transcripts for this series are here.

When the fish met the bait. Roberto has a broken heart and lost thousands of dollars to scammers. Vanessa had her images stolen by scammers and her life fell apart. An emotional finale.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

“I love her. I just love her!” You meet someone online. It turns out many others think they have fallen for the same person. Introducing the search for the unwitting face of a digital con. With host, Hannah Ajala. Episode 1 coming to Uncover on Feb. 26, 2024.

Einar Stangvik is a white-hat hacker — an internet security expert with an expertise in cracking the most secure and disturbing parts of the web. He discovers a troubling phenomenon online and joins forces with journalist Håkon Høydal. It leads them to Australia, to confront two men who are running the largest child abuse site on the dark net. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

All Gordon wants for his birthday is to travel to Washington, D.C., to visit museums and see the opera. He’s completely unaware that his companion on this trip has very different plans. His friend has an alter ego, Warhead, and it turns out police are not far behind. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

After the arrest of Canadian Benjamin Faulkner, Taskforce Argos has to learn how to become Warhead on Child’s Play, before its users realize that the site has been compromised. But time is running out — and very difficult moral decisions will have to be made. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

Jenn was home alone with her children when she received a call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They needed to talk to her as soon as possible. It was about her relative, Ben Faulkner. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/1.5346693

What led Benjamin Faulkner to become Warhead? And, more importantly, how do you prevent others like him from following the same path? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

At Faulkner’s final sentencing hearing, we finally discover the true extent of his activities on the dark web. We thought we knew everything he had been up to. We were wrong. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/hunting-warehead-transcripts-listen-1.5346693

A new investigative series from CBC Podcasts and the Norwegian newspaper VG, Hunting Warhead follows an international team of police officers as they attempt to track down the people behind a massive child-abuse site on the dark web — and the morally complicated lengths authorities will go to to do so.

The judge finally rules on what evidence he’ll consider at the trial. The Crown and Greg must decide how to proceed. 

Greg calls some familiar faces as witnesses. The defence and Crown make their closing arguments. The judge announces a date for his final decision.

Justice Richard Danyliuk shares his detailed decision in court. He doesn't mince words. The ruling hits hard for Sheree’s friends and family.

Questions arise around what’s next for Greg. Others look for ways to prevent deaths like Sheree’s from happening again. Friends keep Sheree’s memory alive

What does a Philadelphia junk artist have to do with the deaths of a wealthy Canadian pharma giant and his philanthropist wife? Maybe nothing, but it’s odd that their bodies were reportedly posed like a piece of junk sculpture that the Shermans displayed nearby. But this strange coincidence is just one of many in this most baffling of unsolved murder cases in Canadian history. Host Kathleen Goldhar goes on a byzantine journey to find out what kind of life do you have to live that your death spurns on multiple theories about who might have killed you, including some involving your closest family.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Leo Sewell’s website

Matthew Campbell’s The Unsolved Murder of an Unusual Billionaire

Saul Rubinek’s IMDB

The Shermans’ funeral is weird, the list of eulogists long, and it’s attended by Canadian boldface names. But ask anyone who knew Barry Sherman and they all say the same thing:he was the smartest person they'd ever met. Always finishing at the top of his class, Barry was smart enough to claw his way to the top of the infamously cutthroat generic drug industry and make billions of dollars. But he was also arrogant and unreasonable, driven and deceptive. Just the sort of man who dies under suspicious circumstances.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Sherman funeral

To get ahead in the generic drug industry you need to be focused, hard-nosed and fearless. Especially because half the battle is taking on one of the richest, most powerful industries in the world — Big Pharma. Barry Sherman was the perfect generic drug lord — more litigator than innovator — but did his ability to win in court, and slough off the losses, end up getting him killed?

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies

Jeffery Robinson’s Prescription Games

Nancy Olivieri’s How John le Carré Changed my Life

John le Carré The Constant Gardener

Nancy and Barry on 60 Minutes

It is no secret that some family members wanted Barry Sherman dead. And no one had a bigger grudge against Barry than his first cousins, Kerry Winter and his brothers. The Winter cousins were close to Barry — especially Kerry. They were father/son close. And the Winter boys lived well off Barry's money. But that good blood turned bad after a 10-year court battle that pitted cousin against cousin, in a fight over a billion-dollar fortune of which the Winters claimed their cousin robbed them.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Kerry Winter on The Fifth Estate

If Honey Sherman showed up unannounced at her favourite hair salon and someone was in her chair — that person got moved pretty darn quickly. Honey wasn't the one who made the billions, but she certainly spent them. So much is known about her husband, but very little about Honey Sherman. A child of Holocaust survivors, family and community meant everything to Honey. And as for her friends? They aren’t talking.

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Rosemary Sexton’s website

The lack of justice, or any resolution, has left a void in this story that has been filled by online sleuths, investigative reporters, nosey neighbours, and conspiracy theorists. From Covid to the Clintons. From family to the Mafia. With more than a dozen theories on the table, and little information from the police, is it any wonder this case remains constant fodder for the darkest corners of the internet?

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Websleuths

Snopes

Corrina Oates’ Sleuthing Websleuths

Ann Brocklehurst

After a notorious 2018 interview on CBC television, Kerry Winter became a familiar figure in the tale of the Shermans’ deaths. “The Cousin Did It” wasn’t just a snappy headline on the cover of The National Enquirer, it also became a favourite theory. Yet Kerry is not a suspect. And all these years later the humiliation, anger, and deep sadness Kerry feels towards his cousin Barry are still right on the surface. How did such a good thing go so bad, and why is Kerry so certain Barry killed Honey then killed himself? Was a man capable of “ripping off little orphans” also capable of killing his own wife? And himself?

Kerry Winter on The Fifth Estate

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

After our year-long investigation, in this final episode we revisit the murder/suicide theory. That misstep set the whole investigation off on the wrong foot, and might have derailed any chance of finding out who killed the Shermans. To the Sherman's children, it's one of the biggest police screw-ups in recent history – a botched job that muddled the truth and stained the family. But the theory hangs in the air because its adherents, especially Kerry Winter, aren’t budging. In the end, what is the Shermans’ legacy? And what was all that money really for?

Itiel Dror’s Cognitive Bias in Forensic Pathology Decisions

Douglas Young’s website

For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

In the early hours of May 13, 1985, police direct residents of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia to leave their homes, and not return for 24 hours. It’s Mother’s Day, and authorities have come to resolve a years-long conflict with a family of local revolutionaries — the Africas, collectively known as MOVE. There are 13 people in the Africa home that morning. Six of them are children. By the end of the day, most will be dead, and a neighbourhood will lie in ruins.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

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Artwork by Yannick Lowery.

A quiet and reclusive young man is conscripted to war in Korea and returns having been made anew. Vincent Leaphart becomes the enigmatic John Africa, whose revolutionary vision will prove irresistible to followers seeking a new way of living. But what begins as a movement concerned with the protection of all life, will gradually turn to nonviolent direct action and large-scale civil disobedience in reaction to the state. This is the origin story of John Africa, leader of what will soon become known as MOVE.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

By the 1970s, both local and federal law enforcement have perfected a system to subvert and neutralize Black liberation movements across the United States. The civil rights movement has been uprooted, and Black Power is now here. In Philadelphia, the most famous police officer in America is elected mayor. Frank Rizzo’s objective is to turn the city into centre stage in the nationwide fight against Black liberation activists. His power and influence will have deep implications for MOVE.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

Complaints from neighbours about MOVE’s lifestyle lead to increasingly violent clashes with police. One confrontation turns deadly, and by 1978, relations between MOVE and city authorities have reached a crisis point. The MOVE home in residential Powelton Village becomes the scene of a two-months-long starvation blockade, and the site of a stand-off with police that will end in blood, gunfire, and the arrest of nine members of MOVE, collectively charged with murder for the death of an officer.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

The MOVE 9 are catapulted into the international spotlight, facing more than 900 years between them for the death of Officer James Ramp — a crime for which they maintain their innocence. Central to the case is a former Black Panther and Vietnam vet named Delbert Africa, who will become a symbol of police brutality in Philadelphia. As all of this is happening, MOVE’s mysterious leader John Africa is on the run from local and federal authorities. When he’s finally found and brought up on charges, John Africa opts to represent himself in court, and an old friend takes the stand against him.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

In 1983, the City of Philadelphia elects its first Black mayor as successor to Frank Rizzo. Woodrow Wilson Goode inherits Rizzo’s fight against MOVE, but he also represents a moment of hope for Black Philadelphians who believe his election could be a harbinger of progress for a city beset with racial strife. Instead, Mayor Goode’s administration unleashes a torrent of violence never before seen in American history in an effort to neutralize MOVE once and for all.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.

After a commission finds that city officials and police were negligent in their actions on May 13, 1985, a reeling city looks to heal, and surviving members of the Africa family redouble efforts to free the MOVE 9. Two senior members are released from prison having served more than 40 years. They now have reservations about the MOVE organization. A rift in the family opens up. By the end of 2020, all remaining MOVE 9 are free. Delbert dies only months after his release, and the family now turns its focus to the future. The descendents of MOVE remind us the fight for liberation continues.

The Africas VS. America is nominated for a Webby! Vote for the series here.