In the era of some of the most heinous serial killers of all time, one murderous family went curiously unnoticed: The McCrary family. Led by a psychopathic patriarch and his cunning son-in-law, this Texas clan roamed the country and his cunning son-in-law, this Texas clan roamed the country robbing, kidnapping, and killing up to 20 people, most of them people taken from donut shops. “Families Who Kill: The Donut Shop Murders” recounts the wild and deeply disturbing story of an unhinged American family and the terrible brutality they unleashed. The podcast features the taped confessions of one of the killers, given when he was serving a life term in Colorado.

All episodes of Families Who Kill are available now. You can binge the series ad-free on Wondery+ or on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or Amazon Music Unlimited subscription.

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Lifelong petty thieves Carl Taylor and Sherman McCrary, facing heat in their hometown of Athens, Texas, gather their family and take to the highways in search of criminal opportunities in the American West. In Utah, Carl and Sherman’s small-time cons suddenly escalate when they rob and kidnap 17-year-old Sheri Martin from a Winchell’s Donut Shop, killing her in the Nevada desert. The men’s bloodthirst is awakened.

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Carl, Sherman, and the fam head to the peaceful suburban community of Lakewood, Colorado, and strike again — this time robbing, raping, and killing 20-year-old donut shop cashier Leora Looney. As police circle the McCrary family they skip town and return to their homebase of Athens, Texas. A razor-sharp young detective, Joe Fanciulli, is on their scent, but his efforts are hindered by glacially slow 1970s police forensics.

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Carl and Sherman, now accompanied by Sherman’s son Danny, kidnap a young couple, Forrest and Jena Covey, from a Mesquite grocery and ruthlessly murder them in an old barn. In harrowing testimony from Carl, we learn how Forrest was killed first as Jena was forced to look on. Jenna Covey’s niece recounts the brutalizing effects her aunt’s murder had on her father and her family in general. Meanwhile, we learn the tale of the Bloody Benders, a 19th century clan of killers who bear similarities to the McCrarys.

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An intriguing debate emerges: Were the McCrarys, in a technical or criminological sense, serial killers? Or were they spree killers, or something else? Experts debate the similarity of the McCrarys’ killings to those of John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Andrew Cunanan. The family heads to the Pacific Northwest, where Carl and Sherman kidnap and kill a bizarrely nonchalant young hippie named Cynthia Glass. The Bloody Benders story continues as the family kills a dozen people at their inn in Labette, Kansas.

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After their murder in Portland, the police probe begins to tighten like a vise around the McCrarys. They stop the killings and move to Santa Barbara, CA, to focus on armed robberies. As Sherman’s alcoholism spirals out of control, Carl attempts to rob a large supermarket on his own but screws it up and winds up shooting a patrolman at the scene. Meanwhile, Texas police issue a nationwide “Traveling Criminals Bulletin” fingering the McCrarys as a violent clan who may have committed up to 20 murders in six states. Finally, the Benders story concludes as the murderous family is run out out of Kansas.

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Santa Barbara cops chase Carl Taylor and his wife all the way back to Texas, where Carl and his wife are cornered and arrested. Sherman and his wife are arrested back in California. During the trial, Carl and Sherman, once close partners, turn on each other, each saying the other pulled the trigger. Carl mounts an insanity defense, claiming he was not of sound mind during the killing spree. The family’s brutal saga comes to an end.

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Sheree Warren left her job in Salt Lake City on a mild October evening in 1985. She told a coworker she was headed to meet her estranged husband, Charles Warren, at a car dealership. But she never made it, Sheree vanished. When her car mysteriously surfaced weeks later, hundreds of miles away in Las Vegas, no one could say how it got there.

When a young mother disappears under unexplained circumstances, police always turn suspicious eyes towards the husband. And although there was distrust around Charles Warren, he wasn’t the only suspect when Sheree went missing. She also had a boyfriend, a former cop named Cary Hartmann, who lived a sinister double life.

Season three follows two suspects– men who both raised suspicion for investigators. But with two strong persons of interest with competing facts and evidence, it muddied the murder investigation. This season, host Dave Cawley, digs into the lives of these two men, the details of the case and examines the intersections between domestic abuse and sexual violence. The COLD team seeks to answer the question: what really happened to Sheree Warren?

Hey Prime Members, you can binge all 10 episodes of COLD: The Search for Sheree ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today: Wondery.fm/FWK_ColdS3

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