Published April 28, 2026 04:06AM
True crime podcasts are experiencing a surge in popularity the past few years, with roughly 50 percent of Americans exploring the genre, and 34 percent regularly listening.
Outside recently launched a text-to-speech feature, making it possible to consume long reads like your favorite podcast, on cold cases and recent disappearances in the harshest elements or on our public lands. There are between 6,000 and 10,000 unsolved murders each year in the country. Researchers believe that up to 1,000 disappearances happen annually in our national parks.
You will find some of those stories here. Now, thanks to the new audio feature on Outside, this content is much easier to consume on the go, just like your favorite podcast.
Here are our most bone-chilling mysteries, available only to O+ members.
A Death at Sea on the ‘Row of Life’
At 59 years old and with a preexisting condition, Paralympic rower Angela Madsen had plenty to worry about as the coronavirus spread across the country. So she dipped the oars of her small rowboat in the Pacific and pointed the bow toward Hawaii. She never returned.
Deb examined Madsen’s path on the GPS to see if there was any forward momentum to indicate rowing. Instead, the Row of Life looked like it was floating with the current. It was also heading south, a direction Madsen was avoiding at all costs. Around 10 P.M., Deb picked up her phone to text Simi, the filmmaker, who was in nearby Marina del Rey, packing her things to leave in a few days for Oahu, where she would await Madsen’s arrival. “Now I’m concerned,” she wrote. Later, Deb would describe feeling a “horrible dark weight” in her chest.
The Yosemite Horror
In a setting of beauty and grandeur, a twisted soul was on the loose, a murderer who revived gnawing fears that our national parks are no longer safe. New evidence reveals the confessed killer’s tortured past—and his bizarre obsession with Bigfoot.
In a narrow ditch filled with three feet of still water, Kidd spotted a key ring glinting in the sun. Just beyond it lay something else: a woman’s body, clad in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. As Kidd drew closer, he noticed something that nearly made him gag. “Jesus,” he said, and ran back to the ranger in charge. “We have an 11-44,” he said, using the police code for a dead body. “And she’s been decapitated.”
The Creepiest Unsolved Mysteries in U.S. National Parks
From a severed hand in Yosemite to missing honeymooners in the Grand Canyon, our national parks are home to some curious and strange tales.
Everglades National Park is a large, jungle-like expanse of mostly water covering 1.5 million acres in Southern Florida. It’s also mysterious as hell, the site of more than 175 unsolved murder cases since 1965. Blame the remote nature of the park and its large population of man-eating beasts like alligators and bull sharks; a section of U.S. 41 running through the park, known as Alligator Alley, is a notorious place for murderers to dump bodies.
How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace
When 18-year-old Joe Keller vanished from a dude ranch in Colorado’s Rio Grande National Forest, he joined the ranks of those missing on public land. No official tally exists, but their numbers are growing. And when an initial search turns up nothing, who’ll keep looking?
Joe left his phone and wallet at the ranch house. He wore only red running shorts, blue trail shoes, and an Ironman watch. Shirtless, with blond anime hair and ripped muscles, he looked more like a California lifeguard than a Tennessee farm kid. At 4:30 p.m., the friends started out on a run together. Neither runner knew the area, but old-timers will tell you that even a blind man could find his way out of Conejos Canyon.
Joe diverted paths from the others. The crew got back to the ranch house and waited. An hour later, they started to worry.
David Paulides, founder of CanAm Missing Project, has spent hundreds of hours writing letters and Freedom of Information Act requests in an attempt to break through National Park Service red tape. He believes the Park Service in particular knows exactly how many people are missing but won’t release the information for fear that the sheer numbers—and the ways in which people went missing—would shock the public so badly that visitor numbers would go down.
Murder on the Appalachian Trail
In 1990, a grisly double homicide on America’s most famous hiking route shocked the nation and forever changed our ideas about crime, violence, and safety in the outdoors
The climb over lichen-flaked stone and loose scree ended at Hawk Rock, a promontory offering a sweeping vista of the town, rivers, and rolling farmland below. From there they faced an easy two miles of ridgetop to Thelma Marks—which waited, dark and droopy, its back to the AT, at the bottom of a steep 500-foot side trail.
Geoff and Molly likely arrived there sometime after 5 P.M. The graffiti-carved plank floor slept four or five comfortably, eight in a pinch. They would have had plenty of room to unroll their sleeping gear and spread out a bit.
Sunset came at 7:22 P.M., but the shelter was hunched against the mountain’s eastern flank, in the shade of the ridgetop.
Night fell fast.
