Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary

Mackenzie Shirilla has been found guilty of thirty-two out of thirty-six conduct violations inside the Ohio Reformatory for Women — and in every phone call home, she still insists she had a car accident.
The record starts quiet. Months without a single citation after arriving in August 2023. Then a steady escalation: unauthorized medication belonging to another inmate, photographs depicting drug use, repeated alterations to prison-issued clothing, concealed contraband, disturbances, violations of video visit rules involving seven flagged calls with a single visitor, and most recently, a flat refusal to carry out a work assignment. A former inmate who served alongside Mackenzie described her as someone who showed no remorse and compared her to the character Regina George — daily makeup, social positioning, as if the facility were a high school cafeteria with a longer dress code.
But the violations are only half the picture. Recorded phone calls between Mackenzie and her parents reveal a family locked in a shared delusion. Mackenzie tells her mother Natalie that she does not need to be rehabilitated. Natalie agrees, saying rehabilitation is for “actual criminals.” Mackenzie calls herself the third person harmed by the crash. Natalie calls the family of the young man her daughter killed “evil.” Steve Shirilla, now on leave from his teaching job, argues publicly that his daughter is innocent — while a judge’s finding that her actions were deliberate and purposeful sits unchallenged in the court record. During the trial, prosecutors decoded calls in which Mackenzie and Natalie communicated in a private language, and in one of those decoded calls, Mackenzie allegedly asked her mother whether they could tell police she had a seizure.
Tony Brueski examines the violations, the calls, the parents, and the psychological pattern that ties them together: a person whose pathology has never been challenged by anyone close enough to matter.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.

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Two cases. Two different kinds of evidence problems. Mackenzie Shirilla's own family is building the record against her on monitored prison calls — while in the Anna Kepner cruise ship case, the DNA points one direction and a federal judge just said the prosecution's case isn't strong enough. Defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis examines where both cases stand.
Shirilla has thirty-six conduct violations in under three years at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, guilty on thirty-two. On recorded calls she refuses rehabilitation, calls herself the third victim, and discusses plans for a post-prison career. Her father Steve lost his teaching position after appearing on a Netflix documentary defending her. Her mother Natalie was recorded calling the Russo family "evil people" — and prosecutors have decoded separate calls in which mother and daughter used a fabricated language to evade monitoring, including an exchange about claiming Shirilla had a seizure.
In the Anna Kepner case, a hundred and forty-five pages of unsealed transcript revealed the prosecution's full theory months before a September trial. The DNA odds are 120 sextillion to one against Timothy Hudson — but an FBI agent admitted on the record he cannot connect that DNA to Anna's cause of death. Judge Torres described the case as "a much closer call" with "various defenses."
Faddis breaks down what the parole board does with an institutional record like Shirilla's, whether Natalie's conduct on monitored calls carries legal consequences, and what the gap between DNA identification and proof of cause of death means for the Kepner trial.
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Jesse Vang had a felony conviction for harming a child when he was seventeen. He’d been charged with conspiracy to commit human trafficking — with the alleged victim being the same woman who later placed her three-year-old son in his care. He had a federal drug conviction. He was still on supervised release when Katrina Baur drove her son Elijah Vue two and a half hours across Wisconsin and left him in Vang’s apartment for what she called “disciplinary reasons.” She told investigators she wanted Vang to teach Elijah “how to be a man.” The child was three years old.
According to the criminal complaint, Vang described the arrangement as “boot camp.” He forced Elijah to stand for up to three hours at a time as punishment. He subjected the boy to cold water. He took away the child’s only toy. He changed his diaper once a day. Their text messages show two adults coordinating what was happening to this child — and Baur’s deleted photograph, recovered by investigators, showed Elijah blindfolded with bruising on his face and neck at 3:13 in the morning. She erased it within the hour. Eight days after Baur dropped Elijah off, Vang reported him missing. He told police the boy walked away while he slept. Within one minute, Baur messaged Vang telling him what to say. She deleted that message too. Investigators found it anyway.
The community searched for seven months. Elijah’s remains were found in a wooded area three miles from the apartment — discovered by a hunter on private property. Doctors found healed fractures on his skull and face. His death was ruled a homicide. Vang now faces life in prison. Baur faces up to sixty years. Both have pleaded not guilty. The evidence in this case raises a question that goes beyond the courtroom: how does a three-year-old end up in the hands of someone like Jesse Vang — and who is supposed to stop it?
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The DNA odds are 120 sextillion to one pointing at Timothy Hudson. But an FBI agent admitted on the record that he is unaware of any DNA evidence directly connecting Hudson to Anna Kepner's cause of death. That admission — buried inside a hundred and forty-five pages of unsealed transcript — may be the single most important sentence heading into a September trial. Defense attorney Eric Faddis breaks down what the evidence can and cannot establish.
Anna Kepner was eighteen when she was found dead aboard the Carnival Horizon during a family cruise in November. Her cause of death was mechanical asphyxia. Hudson, her stepbrother, was initially charged as a juvenile and later indicted as an adult on first-degree murder charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
The unsealed transcript from a February detention hearing laid out the prosecution's full theory — CCTV footage, phone records, Snapchat timestamps showing Anna was active at 8:14 in the evening, and a timeline placing her alone with Hudson in their shared cabin for roughly three hours. Prosecutors say he was seen looking both ways before exiting the room. Her body was discovered the next morning concealed beneath the bed.
The transcript also revealed that Anna had an encounter with a second juvenile male aboard the ship before her death. The FBI obtained his DNA, tested it, and excluded him. The defense has signaled they intend to use this information at trial.
Judge Torres, who heard all of this evidence, stated from the bench he would not call the government's case strong and described it as "a much closer call" with "various defenses." Faddis analyzes what that language means for trial strategy, how a defense attorney attacks the gap between DNA identification and cause of death, and whether the prosecution's decision to put their entire theory on the public record months before trial gave the defense an unusual advantage.
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Ted Bundy spent ten years on death row making absolutely sure of one thing: that the country would never get the why.
The Chi Omega trial in Miami, summer 1979 — the first criminal trial broadcast nationally on American television — was his stage. He fired his attorneys. He rehired them. He fired them again. He cross-examined witnesses, including Nita Neary, the woman who had seen him on the stairs. The bite mark evidence cut through all of it. Guilty. Sentenced to death.
Judge Edward Cowart called him a bright young man and a tragedy, on the record, in front of the cameras.
In Orlando in January 1980, during his trial for Kimberly Leach, he proposed to Carole Ann Boone on the witness stand with a notary in the room. Convicted. Third death sentence.
Death row. Florida State Prison. Nine years. Two journalists, Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, recorded him for hundreds of hours. He would only profile the killer in the third person. FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier visited for three years and became something close to a confidant.
In his final week, Bundy summoned detectives from four states and handed them women's names like currency. Healy. Manson. Rancourt. Campbell. Cunningham. Culver. Kent. When Hagmaier asked if thirty-six was closer to the real number, Bundy said: add one more digit and you have it.
On January 24, 1989, he was pronounced dead at 7:16. A field of several hundred people cheered the hearse.
He gave the country a count he probably understated, an explanation he chose for the listener, and a confession he could keep at arm's length. What he never gave was the why.
This is the fifth and final conversation in Ted Bundy: History's Hidden Killers. The women's names come last, because the last word is theirs.
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