December 26, 1996. In the pre-dawn quiet of an affluent Boulder, Colorado neighborhood, a frantic 911 call shatters the holiday peace. Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen, reports that her six-year-old daughter, JonBenét, has been kidnapped. On a back staircase inside their sprawling home, police find a bizarre, two-and-a-half-page ransom note demanding $118,000 and warning against contacting authorities.

For hours, the Ramsey home becomes the chaotic center of a kidnapping investigation as family, friends, and police await a call that never comes. But the truth is far more horrifying than anyone imagines. JonBenét isn't with a "small foreign faction"; she's in the house. Her body is later discovered in a remote corner of the family basement, a homemade garrote around her neck and duct tape over her mouth.

Join host Ryan Fitz as Ciphered navigates one of the most polarizing and tragic cold cases in American history. This episode examines a crime scene hopelessly compromised from the start and a mountain of baffling evidence that points in two opposite directions at once. Was this the work of an unknown intruder who left behind mysterious DNA? Or was the killer someone inside the house, staging a kidnapping to cover up an unspeakable act?

We'll dissect the infamous ransom note, the conflicting timelines, and the key pieces of evidence—from a bowl of pineapple to a broken paintbrush—that have fueled public debate for decades. This is the story of how a picture-perfect family was torn apart by suspicion and how the murder of a little girl became a national obsession, leaving behind a legacy of unanswered questions and a case that remains tragically, frustratingly, unsolved.

January 15, 1947... In a vacant, weed-strewn lot in residential Los Angeles, a young mother makes a horrifying discovery. It appears at first to be a broken mannequin, but the truth is infinitely more gruesome: the body of a young woman, severed cleanly in two, drained of all blood, and posed with grotesque precision.

The victim is Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old aspiring actress with striking black hair and a mysterious past. In the ensuing media frenzy, the press gives her a name that will become legendary in the annals of American crime: The Black Dahlia.

Join host Ryan Fitz as Ciphered investigates the dark heart of post-war Hollywood. This episode peels back the layers of myth to uncover the real Elizabeth Short, a woman whose tragic story was rewritten by newspapers locked in a circulation war. We explore a crime scene meticulously scrubbed of evidence, a killer who taunted police by mailing the victim’s personal belongings, and an investigation that descended into a circus of false confessions.

The trail leads through the glitz and grime of the studio system to the doorstep of a powerful and brilliant physician, Dr. George Hodel, a man whose own son—a retired LAPD homicide detective—would later build a chilling case against him. This is the story of how a brutal murder became Hollywood’s most infamous cold case, a haunting puzzle where the victim herself became the most tragic and misunderstood clue.

"I like killing people because it is so much fun." In the summer of 1969, this chilling confession—delivered in a complex, 408-symbol cipher—was mailed to three San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. It was the public debut of a new kind of predator, one who didn't just murder but performed, turning his crimes into a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse with the entire nation as his audience. He gave himself a name and a symbol that would become synonymous with unsolved terror: The Zodiac.

Join host Ryan Fitz as Ciphered investigates the phantom who haunted Northern California. This episode traces the Zodiac's bloody timeline, from the desolate lovers' lanes where he ambushed young couples to the heart of San Francisco where he brazenly murdered a cab driver and vanished into the night. We'll delve into the killer's twisted psychology through his own words, exploring the taunting letters and cryptic puzzles he used to mock police and instill widespread fear.

The manhunt became one of the most frustrating in American history, a sprawling investigation that produced thousands of suspects but no arrests. We'll examine the case's most prominent figure, Arthur Leigh Allen, a man surrounded by a mountain of circumstantial evidence, yet always one step away from being definitively caught.

This is the story of a killer who controlled the narrative, a ghost who claimed 37 victims before his letters abruptly stopped, leaving behind a legacy of fear and one of true crime’s most compelling questions: Who was the Zodiac? And where did he go?