HELLVILLE is an investigative true crime podcast hosted by award winning journalist Petra Sterling, who reopens one of California's most infamous unsolved murder cases nearly four decades after the Hellville Massacre. Through exclusive interviews, forgotten evidence, and newly uncovered recordings, Petra peels back the layers of a mystery that has haunted generations.

What begins as an investigation into a teenage killer soon uncovers a far more disturbing story involving a controversial psychiatrist, a disgraced carnival, missing evidence, and a family whose darkest secrets may have changed Hellville forever.

New listeners are advised to begin with Episode 1.

THE LAST WITNESS

Retired Sheriff's Deputy Harold Thompson has spent thirty-seven years refusing to speak publicly about the Hellville murders. In his first ever interview, Thompson revisits the earliest days of the investigation, the first victim, the mistakes that shaped the case, and why police arrested the wrong man before ever suspecting Darren Grieves. As old memories resurface, Thompson leaves Petra with a single name that will change the course of her investigation forever: Robert Hodder Wainwright.

THE CARNIVAL THAT WOULDN'T DIE

Petra travels to the isolated Wainwright Compound to meet Robert Hodder Wainwright, better known as Pinwheel, the eccentric former proprietor of the Wainwright Family Carnival and the first man arrested for the Hellville murders. Decades after the case destroyed his livelihood, Pinwheel remains equal parts charming, unsettling, and impossible to read. As the conversation unfolds, he offers cryptic insight into Dr. Alistair Grieves, Darren's troubled childhood, and the Grieves family itself, leaving Petra to wonder whether she's interviewing an innocent man... or someone who has been hiding the truth in plain sight.

I WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE THAT NIGHT

Monica Hardy was scheduled to work at the Shellville Cinema the night four of her closest friends were murdered. A sudden illness kept her home. Hours later, a disturbing phone call drew her back to the theater, where she became the first person to discover the aftermath of one of Hellville's bloodiest crime scenes. In the most emotional episode of the series, Monica shares her memories of the friends she lost, the horrors she witnessed, and the survivor's guilt that has haunted her ever since.

Coming soon

EPISODE 4: THE FEAR ENGINE