A child abandoned. A life shaped by violence. Long before the headlines, the story of Aileen Wuornos began with a childhood that looked more like survival than innocence.

Born in Michigan in 1956, Wuornos entered the world surrounded by instability. Her parents separated before she was born, and by age four she and her brother had been abandoned by their mother and left to be raised by their grandparents. What followed was a childhood marked by poverty, alleged abuse, and isolation.

By the time she was barely a teenager, Wuornos was already living a life most adults would struggle to endure. She became pregnant at fourteen after a reported rape and gave birth in a home for unwed mothers, only to have the baby placed for adoption. Soon after, she dropped out of school and was thrown out of her grandparents’ home, leaving her to survive on the streets.

In this episode, we explore the tragic early years that shaped one of the most infamous figures in true crime. This LGBTQ+ true crime podcast episode looks beyond the headlines to examine the abuse, abandonment, and systemic failures that defined Wuornos’s earliest years. It’s a haunting chapter of queer history and criminal psychology that forces us to ask difficult questions about trauma, survival, and how society fails the most vulnerable.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Patients trusted him with their lives. Instead, they were slowly dying under his care.

Behind a hospital smile lurked one of the most prolific medical serial killers in American history.

In the 1970s and 80s, hospital orderly Donald Harvey quietly moved between patient rooms in hospitals across Ohio and Kentucky. To coworkers, he seemed gentle, soft-spoken, helpful, even compassionate. But behind closed doors, something far darker was unfolding. Over nearly two decades, dozens of vulnerable patients died under suspicious circumstances as Harvey poisoned food, tampered with oxygen, and suffocated those who trusted him to care for them.

In this episode of this LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we dive into the chilling story of the man known as the “Angel of Death.” We examine how Harvey’s crimes went unnoticed for years, the culture of silence inside medical institutions, and how a single autopsy would finally expose one of the most disturbing murder sprees in modern hospital history. Along the way, we also explore Harvey’s life as a gay man in an era when secrecy and stigma shaped the lives of many queer people, raising complex questions about identity, isolation, and the systems that failed to stop him.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For generations of LGBTQ+ Americans, a simple night out could mean a huge risk. But the local gay bar offered safety, community, resistance, and eventually revolution.

Long before Pride parades and marriage equality, queer bars were the beating heart of LGBTQ life in America. Hidden behind unmarked doors and dim neon lights, these spaces offered something the outside world often refused: safety, connection, and the freedom to exist. From underground gatherings in the 1800s to legendary spaces like the Stonewall Inn, queer bars became sanctuaries where community was built and where history was made.

In this episode of Beers With Queers, we’re joined by the hosts of Cruising Podcast, Rachel Karp and Sarah Gabrielli to explore the powerful history and cultural importance of queer bars across the United States. Together we explore why these bars were never just nightlife, but a lifeline. We discuss the decline of not only the number of gay bars in the US but the lack of dependency of them in the digital age. We also discuss Cruising Podcast's amazing 10K, one month road trip across America to visit each of the 25 lesbian bars left in the country as well their new book The Lesbian Bar Chronicles coming to anywhere you buy books May 2026.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light—all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

From the Cruising website: https://www.cruisingpod.com/

CRUISING PODCAST SEASON 1 (2021-2022):

3 queer women, 1 Honda SUV, and the last lesbian bars in America. In 2021 there were less than 25 of these spaces left in the country. Season 1 of Cruising follows creators Sarah Gabrielli, Rachel Karp, and Jen McGinity on a cross-country road trip to visit each of these bars. Through interviews with staff, owners, and community members, Cruising tells the stories of the humans that own these bars and the humans that call them a home.

CRUISING PODCAST SEASON 2 (2023-2024):

Since Cruising launched in 2021, EIGHT new lesbian bars have opened across the country. In Season 2, Cruising takes listeners to each of these new bars and travels back in time to explore lesbian bars of decades past. From 1930s San Francisco to 1990s New Orleans to present day Chicago, Season 2 brings even more stories from the humans that call these spaces home.

CRUISING PODCAST SEASON 3 (2025-present):

In Season 3, host Sarah Gabrielli sits down with history-making lesbians and LGBTQ+ folks to discuss all kinds of queer spaces — from bookstores to farms to peace encampments and more!

Cruising is deeply committed to honest and unbiased journalism.

WHO IS CRUISING PODCAST FOR?

Cruising is a podcast for everyone. We are a TERF-free, anti-racist zone. We have zero-tolerance for transphobia and racism. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary people. Gender is a spectrum.

WHAT IS A LESBIAN BAR?

Our working definition of “lesbian bar” is: a space that is created by and for queer folks of historically + presently marginalized genders.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A brilliant spy. A duffle bag containing a body, padlocked from the outside. And a death no one can explain.

When an intelligence officer is found zipped inside a padlocked duffel bag in his own bathtub, the official answers only deepen the mystery.

In August 2010, brilliant Welsh mathematician and intelligence analyst Gareth Wyn Williams was discovered dead in a London flat his naked body sealed inside a zipped and padlocked sports bag in the bathtub. Gareth Wyn Williams worked as a codebreaker for GCHQ while on secondment to MI6, helping track global money-laundering networks and organized crime.

But investigators couldn’t explain how he ended up trapped inside the bag. A coroner ruled the death “unnatural” and likely linked to another person, while police later suggested a bizarre accident may have occurred while he was alone.

In this episode of this LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we examine the eerie details surrounding the mysterious death of Gareth Wyn Williams, an unsolved case that blends espionage, secrecy, and unanswered questions. Is this a queer mystery lost in intelligence agency silence, or something far more sinister?

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A mile-long island in New York holds more than a million bodies. No headstones. No funerals. Just rows of pine boxes disappearing into the earth.

Just off the coast of the Bronx sits Hart Island, America’s largest public cemetery and the final resting place for the people society forgot. Since 1869, the island has received the unclaimed, the unidentified, the poor, and even victims of epidemics, quietly burying them in long trenches beneath the soil.

In this episode, we explore the haunting history of Hart Island and the millions of lives laid to rest there from Civil War prisoners and AIDS victims to the marginalized dead of modern New York. What began as a city potter’s field became a hidden archive of tragedy, inequality, and forgotten humanity. One of the most chilling chapters in American queer and urban history.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers: A True Crime Podcast dives into chilling crimes, queer history, and twisted justice, all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A friendly favor. An insidious plan. And a disappearance that would expose one of the most disturbing crimes in Sioux Falls deaf community’s history.

In February 2006, Darlene VanderGiesen, a beloved member of the deaf community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, left work to meet someone she trusted. She told friends she was helping plan a Valentine’s Day surprise for a mutual friend. But she never came home. Days later, investigators uncovered a trail of evidence that revealed a chilling story of jealousy, secrets, and unimaginable violence, one that would ripple through the tight-knit world she belonged to.

In this episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we explore the complicated relationships, cultural misunderstandings, and media narratives that surrounded the case. From the early panic in the deaf community to the courtroom battle that followed, this story sits at the intersection of queer history, disability, and one of the most shocking gay-related murder cases to make national headlines.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers dives into chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice, all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover another dark chapter of LGBTQ+ true crime.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirteen men walked into the woods of Paturis Park seeking a moment of freedom, only to be met by a predator who treated their lives like a "social cleansing." In a case where the justice system's silence was as deafening as the gunshots, the line between the hunters and the law began to blur.

From 2007 to 2008, the busy suburbs of São Paulo were haunted by a serial killer who specifically targeted gay and bisexual men in their most vulnerable sanctuaries. This chilling gay murder case exposed the deep-rooted "impunity" within the Brazilian legal system, where victims were blamed for their own deaths and the investigation was sabotaged by systemic bias. Join us as we track the hunt for the Rainbow Maniac, explore the high-stakes DHPP investigation into a retired military officer, and examine one of the most prolific unsolved LGBTQ+ mysteries in true crime history. This episode dives deep into a queer history of survival and the 2011 trial that left an entire community demanding justice.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light, all with a cold one in hand. Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ true crime from a perspective you won't find anywhere else.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A marriage built on secrets. A body burned beyond recognition. And a courtroom scandal that shocked an entire nation.

In early 20th-century Australia, a laborer known as Harry Crawford seemed like an ordinary husband until his wife vanished after a quiet holiday outing. Years later, when investigators began unraveling the mystery, they uncovered something that sent newspapers into a frenzy. Crawford was actually Eugene Falleni, a person who had lived for decades as a man in a world that offered no place for gender variance. When the charred remains of Crawford’s wife, Annie Birkett, were finally linked to the case, the investigation exploded into one of the most sensational trials in Australian history.

In this episode of our LGBTQ+ true crime podcast, we explore the shocking murder that gripped Australia, the moral panic that followed, and the complicated legacy of a case often described as the most sensational in the nation’s history. It’s a story that sits at the intersection of queer history, media hysteria, and one of the strangest murder cases ever tried in court.

Hosted by Jordi and Brad, Beers With Queers brings chilling crimes, queer stories, and twisted justice to light—all with a cold one in hand.

Press play, grab a drink, and join us as we uncover the darkest corners of LGBTQ+ history.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.