by Tales From the Glovebox
Tales From The Glovebox is your ride into real-life mysteries, true crime, and scary stories that follow you home. For Video Episodes, check out our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox Buckle up for true crime, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, and unexplained events that take a dark turn. Each episode will make you check your rearview mirror. If you like MrBallen, Lore, Nexpo, NightMind, Disturbed Podcast, or CreepsMcPasta, you're in the right car.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/27/2026
Pitch yourself as a guest, propose sponsorships, or reach out directly to the host.
June 22, 2026
<p>In the spring of 1979, a six-year-old boy in lower Manhattan woke up excited. His parents had finally said yes to something he had been asking about for weeks. He could walk to the school bus stop by himself. It was only two blocks away, past stores the family knew, through a neighborhood where everyone recognized everyone. His mother watched from the fire escape as he headed down the street in his blue jacket. He turned the corner. And that was the last time anyone ever saw him alive.The school called that afternoon. His mother ran the two blocks to the bus stop and found nothing. By nightfall, hundreds of neighbors were searching basements, rooftops, and alleyways. Police set up headquarters and began talking to every person who lived or worked within ten blocks. A witness at a store on the boy's route said he had seen the child that morning, walking alone, looking happy. Another thought they had seen a boy getting into a car, but the details were fuzzy. Nothing led anywhere.Days became weeks. The FBI got involved. Divers checked the river. Tips came in from Pennsylvania, California, and a dozen other states. None of them were right. As spring turned to fall, the trail went cold. No body. No clear witness. No physical evidence. The boy's parents refused to give up, kept his room exactly as he had left it, and marked every birthday he missed.The case grew into something America had never seen. The boy's face appeared on flyers, then on national television, then on something that sat on breakfast tables in households across the entire country. His disappearance became the reason the United States created National Missing Children's Day, observed every May 25th, the date he vanished. New laws were passed because of him. New systems were built because of him. For a generation of American children, his face was simply part of the morning, and most of them had no idea who they were really looking at.A man named Pedro Hernandez, who had worked at a small store near the boy's bus stop, became a suspect more than thirty years after the disappearance. His brother-in-law came forward in 2012 saying Hernandez had confessed to something terrible involving a child. When detectives brought Hernandez in, he told them everything. He said he had lured the boy into the basement with the promise of a soda, strangled him, and put the body in the trash. By the time the massive search began that afternoon, the boy was already in a landfill, already lost forever.The trial lasted months. Hernandez's lawyers argued there was no physical evidence, no body, no forensic proof. Some details in his confession shifted between retellings. The jury deliberated for nine days before returning a guilty verdict on murder and kidnapping charges. Hernandez was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. The boy's father wept in the courtroom. His mother sat quietly. They had waited for that answer since 1979.That little boy was Etan Patz. His face was the first missing child photograph ever printed on a milk carton, a campaign that changed how America searches for lost children and eventually helped shape the Amber Alert system. His killer walked free for thirty-three years while Etan's face sat on kitchen tables from coast to coast. Etan Patz was six years old. He just wanted to walk to the bus stop by himself.</p><p>For the FULL experience, watch this story as a Video on our YouTube channel here:</p><p><a href="youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox</a></p>
June 19, 2026
<p>On a Saturday afternoon in October 1984, a fire broke out inside a hardware store in South Pasadena, California. It moved fast. By the time the alarm went off, four people were trapped. A woman named Ada Fair. A two-year-old named Matthew Troydill. Two other people who had gone out to run a weekend errand. None of them made it out. When investigators arrived they knew immediately this was not an accident. They had seen this exact fire before.The same device. The same type of store. The same aisle. A cigarette bound to a book of matches with a rubber band, sitting on a folded index card on the shelf. Simple enough to build in minutes. Effective enough to give whoever planted it time to walk out to the parking lot before the first flame appeared. No panic, no running. Just a person walking out like everyone else. Fires matching this signature had been turning up across Southern California since the early 1980s, always in retail stores, always in the soft goods aisle, always during the day when stores were full of people.A task force formed across several fire departments and law enforcement agencies in the Los Angeles area. They mapped every fire and built a profile. Patient. Careful. Disciplined. Someone who understood exactly how fires behave, who knew how investigators worked, and who had the calm to walk away from a burning building without looking back. Over a decade they tied more than fifty fires to the same person. Four people were dead. The fires kept happening and the task force kept chasing.Their strongest lead pointed at a transient with a criminal record spotted near several fires. Detectives followed him for months, checked his movements against the dates and locations, and kept him on the list. He was never cleared. Meanwhile similar fires turned up in Central California around Fresno, same device, same stores, no witnesses.The break came from a craft store in Bakersfield in 1991. The device failed to ignite. Investigators pulled a partial fingerprint from the scene, ran it, got no match, and put it in the file.Around the same time a self-published novel was circulating through fire investigation circles, passed from one investigator to the next. It was called Points of Origin. It followed a serial arsonist targeting retail stores with a device made from a cigarette and a book of matches. The fires in the novel matched the real fire locations with an accuracy that was hard to explain away. The details were not things you could learn from a textbook. They were things you would know if you had done this yourself.The task force ran the author's fingerprints. The partial from Bakersfield matched.His name was John Leonard Orr. He was the fire captain who had led the task force from the beginning. He attended meetings about his own crimes. He responded to scenes he set and wrote the official reports. In one documented case he walked into a fire he started and wrote in his report that it appeared accidental. When they arrested him he was at a fire investigation conference, surrounded by colleagues who had trusted him for years and had no reason to doubt him.The novel was not a confession that slipped out. It was a trophy. He wrote it and handed it to the people hunting him because he was certain they would never figure it out. He was almost right. John Orr was convicted of four counts of murder and dozens of arson charges. He is serving life without the possibility of parole.<br>For the FULL experience, watch this story as a Video on our YouTube channel here:</p><p><a href="youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox</a></p>
June 15, 2026
<p>In March of 1928, a nine-year-old boy named Walter Collins left his home in Los Angeles with some money for the movies and never came back. His mother Christine was already raising him alone. Walter's father was in prison. She worked long shifts at the telephone company and paid every bill herself. When Walter disappeared, she waited. For five months she heard nothing.Then the police called with good news. They had found him. Walter was alive and on a train back to Los Angeles. Christine went to the station to bring her son home.She stood on that platform, the train came in, a boy stepped off, and she looked at him and said flat out that he was not her son. The LAPD told her she was wrong. Captain J.J. Jones of the LAPD had already announced to the press that the missing boy was home safe. The newspapers had printed it. The city had its good news story. And one woman standing on a train platform saying otherwise was not something they were going to tolerate.Captain Jones told Christine she was a grieving mother who had been under too much strain. He told her to take the boy home and give it time. She did. And from the first day she kept careful records. The boy was three inches shorter than Walter. His teeth were shaped differently. A physical mark on Walter's body was not present on this boy. She brought in Walter's school principal, a man who had known her son for years. He looked the boy over and told her quietly that he did not believe this was Walter Collins.She brought all of it back to the LAPD. Captain Jones told her that memory is unreliable, that she had been under enormous strain, and that she needed to trust the department. When she kept coming back with the same evidence and the same questions, the LAPD had Christine committed to the psychopathic ward. Captain Jones signed the order himself. The designation they used was called a Code 12, a classification that allowed police to lock up anyone they decided was a public nuisance. No warrant. No hearing. No release date.She stayed in that ward for eleven days until a lawyer forced her out. While she was locked up, investigators outside Los Angeles had found something that would change everything. A fifteen-year-old named Sanford Clark had been living on a ranch owned by his uncle Gordon Northcott. Sanford told police that boys had been brought to that ranch over the past two years and that some of them never left. One of the names that kept coming up was Walter Collins.Gordon Northcott was arrested and tried. Bones were recovered from the ranch property. And the boy the LAPD had insisted was Walter Collins fell apart under closer scrutiny. His real name was Arthur Hutchins. He was twelve years old, a runaway from Illinois who had read about Walter's disappearance in the newspaper and spent time memorizing the details. He wanted to get to Hollywood. This was his way to do it.Christine Collins had been right from the moment that boy stepped off the train. Walter was never coming home. Gordon Northcott was convicted of murder and executed in 1930. Captain Jones was suspended from the LAPD but never charged with a crime and never served a single day in a cell. Christine won her lawsuit against the city. Jones went home.<br></p><p>For the FULL experience, watch this story as a Video on our YouTube channel here:</p><p><a href="youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox">youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox</a></p>
Have a different question and can't find the answer you're looking for? Reach out to our support team by sending us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
Tales From The Glovebox is your ride into real-life mysteries, true crime, and scary stories that follow you home. For Video Episodes, check out our YouTube Channel at youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox
Buckle up for true crime, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, and unexplained events that take a dark turn. Each episode will make you check your rearview mirror. If you like MrBallen, Lore, Nexpo, NightMind, Disturbed Podcast, or CreepsMcPasta, you're in the right car.
This podcast updates daily.
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.
Pod Engine is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected with any of the podcasts displayed on this platform. We operate independently as a podcast discovery and analytics service.
All podcast artwork, thumbnails, and content displayed on this page are the property of their respective owners and are protected by applicable copyright laws. This includes, but is not limited to, podcast cover art, episode artwork, show descriptions, episode titles, transcripts, audio snippets, and any other content originating from the podcast creators or their licensors.
We display this content under fair use principles and/or implied license for the purpose of podcast discovery, information, and commentary. We make no claim of ownership over any podcast content, artwork, or related materials shown on this platform. All trademarks, service marks, and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
While we strive to ensure all content usage is properly authorized, if you are a rights holder and believe your content is being used inappropriately or without proper authorization, please contact us immediately at hey@podengine.ai for prompt review and appropriate action, which may include content removal or proper attribution.
By accessing and using this platform, you acknowledge and agree to respect all applicable copyright laws and intellectual property rights of content owners. Any unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or commercial use of the content displayed on this platform is strictly prohibited.