A free flight. Fifteen minutes inside an elderly woman’s home. Eighty-eight credit card charges. And a note telling her to call a stranger her granddaughter.

Investigators say twenty-four-year-old American Airlines flight attendant Destiny Blake used her employee standby benefits to travel to Palm Coast, Florida, where a seventy-five-year-old woman had been caught in a fake Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes scheme.

The woman had memory problems. She could not remember the visit. But her sister found a piece of paper that helped expose what detectives say had happened.

In this episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions, Kaitlyn follows the alleged payments, the trip from New York to Florida, the credit card spending, and the investigation that ended with Destiny’s arrest at Miami International Airport.

We also explore the psychological themes raised throughout the episode: immediate rewards, status seeking, moral disengagement, and the ability to understand someone’s vulnerability without sharing their pain. What happens when the scam stops being a voice on the phone and becomes someone standing in your living room?

Destiny Blake faces three felony charges. She has not been convicted and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty. Psychological discussion is interpretive, not a clinical diagnosis.

Read the companion blog post, “The Scam That Knocks”:
https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/the-scam-that-knocks

Support GBRLIFE on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE

Listen and connect:
https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Explore more episodes, reviews, blogs, and stories at https://www.gbrlife.com/.

Understanding the darkness helps us appreciate the light.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Positive pregnancy tests. Doctored medical records. An ultrasound belonging to another woman. And a former Bachelor star determined to uncover the truth.

Laura Owens told Clayton Echard she was pregnant with his twins. What followed became a court battle that exposed other men with strikingly similar stories—and a pattern stretching back years.

In this episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes, Kaitlyn follows the Laura Owens case, from her earlier relationships with Michael Maraccini and Greg Gillespie to the pregnancy claims involving Clayton, the unraveling evidence, and the sentencing that left her victims demanding more accountability.

We explore rejection, control, the use of legal proceedings to prolong a connection, and the family dynamics discussed throughout her story. What happens when a person’s response to being told “no” pulls someone else into years of defending their name?

Companion Post: https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/why-would-a-woman-fake-a-pregnancy

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

He was home. She was at the wrong door.

On September 6, 2018, Botham Jean was spending the evening in his Dallas apartment when off-duty police officer Amber Guyger entered and shot him. She said she believed the apartment was hers and that the man inside was an intruder.

But the questions went beyond how she reached the wrong floor.

What did she overlook before opening the door? Why did she enter instead of backing away? And what did her actions in the minutes after the shooting reveal about her priorities?

In this episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions, Kaitlyn explores Guyger’s background, her police career, the relationship and messages examined during the trial, and the prosecution’s argument that this was murder.

We also remember Botham Jean: the accountant, singer, devoted brother, and community member whose life was taken inside the place he should have been safest.

From the guilty verdict and ten-year sentence to Brandt Jean’s act of forgiveness, the appeals, and the episode’s discussion of parole, this case raises difficult questions about fear, bias, responsibility, and whose pain becomes the center of a public story.

After Listening...read the companion blog, “Forgiveness Was Never the Sentence,” where I explore why a family’s grace should never be confused with justice:
https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/forgiveness-was-never-the-sentence

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

The rhyme made her infamous. The trial left her free.

In August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were killed inside their Fall River home. Lizzie Borden was accused of the murders, but the jury that acquitted her never heard her inquest testimony or testimony about an alleged attempt to buy poison.

So what did the jury hear? And what might the familiar nursery rhyme have kept us from questioning?

In this episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions, Kaitlyn explores Lizzie’s childhood, the family’s fractured relationships, disputes over inheritance, and the unsettling sequence of events surrounding the murders. From the dress Lizzie burned to the life she built at Maplecroft, we follow a woman whose acquittal never ended the public’s suspicion.

The episode also considers competing psychological explanations, their limitations, and the role that gender, class, and reputation played in the courtroom.

Listen on GBRLIFE and YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more episodes, blogs, and reviews at https://GBRLIFE.com.

Content note: Includes descriptions of fatal violence. Discussion of possible psychological explanations is speculative. Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the murders.

Explore the companion blog and more GBRLIFE:
https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/lizzie-borden-fact-vs-fiction-acquittal

Support GBRLIFE on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE

Listen and connect:
https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Understanding the darkness helps us appreciate the light.

Read the companion blog post, “Does She Look It? How Lizzie Borden Was Acquitted by an Idea”:

https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/lizzie-borden-fact-vs-fiction-acquittal

Explore more episodes, reviews, blogs, and stories at GBRLIFE.com.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

For years, Angie Mock was a familiar face on the morning news. On Halloween morning in 2025, the former television anchor approached neighbors in Wichita, Kansas, and asked them to call 911. Her mother, Anita Avers, had been attacked in her bed.

Angie said she had acted to save herself. Later, she told detectives she believed her mother was the devil.

Her family described years of delusions, angry outbursts, a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, and a previous psychiatric hospitalization. Anita, an 80-year-old marriage and family therapist, had opened her home to a daughter who needed help.

In this episode of GBRLIFE of Crimes, part of GBRLIFE Transmissions, Kaitlyn follows Angie’s journey from broadcasting to a life sentence, while examining the warning signs, her changing accounts, and the difference between competency to stand trial and mental state at the time of a crime.

On October 5, 2026, Angie was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. But the sentence leaves another question: what happens when families become the treatment plan?

This episode remembers Anita’s life and considers the psychology behind the crime without losing sight of the person whose life was taken.

Read the companion blog post, “The Family Was Left to Handle It”:

https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/the-family-was-left-to-handle-it

Explore the companion blog and more GBRLIFE:
https://www.gbrlife.com/

Support GBRLIFE on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE

Listen and connect:
https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Understanding the darkness helps us appreciate the light.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

For years, Danette Colbert approached visitors in the French Quarter. Men reported waking up without their money, watches, phones, or access to their accounts. Despite a growing criminal record, she kept returning to the streets where she had become known as the Bourbon Street Hustler.

During Super Bowl week in February 2025, she met Adan Manzano, a 27-year-old sports reporter covering the Kansas City Chiefs. Hotel cameras recorded Colbert entering his room and leaving alone. Adan was later found dead.

Adan was also a widowed father. His baby daughter had survived the crash that killed her mother less than a year earlier.

In season 3, episode 35 of GBRLIFE Of Crimes, Kaitlyn examines Colbert’s history, the evidence presented at trial, the defense’s argument, and the jury’s decision to convict her of negligent homicide and racketeering.

Does that verdict account for what happened to Adan, or does it leave the most difficult part of this case unresolved?

Read the companion blog post, “Nobody Missed Danette Colbert”:

https://www.gbrlife.com/blog/nobody-missed-danette-colbert

Explore more episodes, reviews, blogs, and stories at GBRLIFE.com.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Christa Pike was 18 years old when she told a friend at the Knoxville Job Corps Center that she planned to kill another student.

When asked why, she simply said she felt mean that day.

Less than two days later, 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer was found dead near an abandoned steam plant. Christa had lured her away under the pretense of making peace, but she arrived carrying a box cutter and a miniature meat cleaver.

Before leaving, Christa removed a fragment of Colleen’s skull and carried it back to the Job Corps Center. She showed it to other students, spoke openly about the killing, and later appeared at the crime scene while investigators were still working.

Christa was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder and became the youngest woman sentenced to death in the United States during the modern death penalty era. After 30 years on Tennessee’s death row, she is scheduled to be executed on September 30, 2026.

But Christa entered the world with fetal alcohol-related brain damage. She endured severe abuse beginning in early childhood and lived with untreated bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

None of that makes her innocent.

It also does not erase what happened to Colleen.

In this episode of GBRLIFE Of Crimes, we examine the murder of Colleen Slemmer, the evidence that sent Christa to death row, the violence and escape plot that followed, and the psychological and neurological conditions now at the center of her clemency request.

Does understanding what shaped Christa Pike change what justice should look like, or are some crimes too deliberate and cruel for those circumstances to matter?

Read the companion blog post, “Christa Pike and the Murder of Colleen Slemmer”:

https://gbrlife.com/blog/christa-pike-and-the-murder-of-colleen-slemmer

Explore more episodes, reviews, blogs, and stories at GBRLIFE.com.

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife

Frances Zaayer spent a year and a half terrorizing the family across the street, but the Scotts were not strangers. They were the same family who had taken her in as a teenager and welcomed her into their home again decades later.

What began as a property dispute became a campaign of surveillance, false accusations, repeated 911 calls, racist abuse, and staged injuries. Her accusations eventually worked. Shawna Scott was arrested, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault, and received probation.

Frances had already won.

On May 26, 2018, she crossed the street with a gun anyway. She shot Shawna in the face and killed David Scott while he was installing security cameras to protect his family.

In this episode of GBRLIFE Of Crimes, we examine the escalation that led to David’s murder, the warning signs authorities saw for more than a year, and the narcissistic, antisocial, and paranoid traits reflected in Frances’s behavior.

Was Frances ever searching for justice, or did she simply need the Scott family to suffer?

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

• Visit for more: GBRLIFE -> https://www.gbrlife.com/
• Support GBRLIFE on Patreon: Become a Patron-> https://www.patreon.com/GBRLIFE
• SUBSCRIBE to GBRLIFE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUkTLZ3Db39XdqlFDYcnVw
• Watch/Read/Enjoy more: https://beacons.ai/gbrlife