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On a September night in 1922, a small-town minister and a choir singer he'd been having an affair with were shot dead and laid out side by side under a crab apple tree in a New Jersey lovers' lane — his hat over his face, her scarf around her throat, torn love letters scattered between them, and his own calling card propped at his feet like a signature. The crime scene was never secured: within days it was pulling an estimated thousand cars a day, with vendors selling balloons and twenty-five-cent bags of dirt scooped from under the tree until souvenir hunters had stripped the bark off it. Four years, a missing grand jury file, and a witness testifying from a hospital bed later, the reverend's widow and her two brothers stood trial in the biggest media circus American journalism had seen before Lindbergh — and walked out acquitted. This week, Eli makes the case that the acquittal was the only honest verdict a badly-compromised, circumstantial case could produce. Simone isn't ready to let a filed-down pistol, a changed story, and a family with the money to buy the best defense in the state off the hook that easily.

Want to see for yourself? The case file has the full story in writing, and the source list shows which claims are confirmed, which are disputed, and which rest on a single account.

Case file: https://precisionandinstinct.com/cases/hall-mills-murders/

Source list: https://notes.precisionandinstinct.com/episodes/14-the-hall-mills-murders.html

CONTENT NOTE: This episode covers a real, unsolved 1922 double homicide and the 1926 trial of four named historical defendants — Frances Hall, Henry Stevens, Willie Stevens, and Henry Carpender — all of whom were acquitted or never brought to trial and were never legally found guilty of anything. All named principals in this case, including both victims and the prosecution's central witness, died between 1930 and 1992; there are no living subjects and no sensitivity sign-off gate on this case. Standard care applies throughout to any language implying guilt, since the jury's verdict stands and has never been overturned — the episode itself argues both sides without resolving which one is right.

The hosts are characters created by Verb Editorial. Their voices are AI-generated. All research, writing and production are done by a human team.

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EPISODE 13: The Mad Gasser of Mattoon (Mattoon, Illinois, September 1944)

EPISODE NOTES:

In September 1944, in the small Illinois railroad town of Mattoon, a woman named Beulah Cordes picked up a cloth left on her own front porch — and within seconds her lips were swelling and her mouth and throat were burning, with a skeleton key and a lipstick tube, neither hers, sitting beside it. Over the next two weeks, dozens of residents reported a mysterious "gas maniac" breaking into homes at night to leave people gassed and paralyzed, drawing in the Illinois State Police and the FBI, before the panic collapsed within days of the police chief publicly doubting it — and no suspect was ever arrested or charged. This week, Eli and Simone dig into a case the town's own public health commissioner couldn't fully settle in real time: whether this is one of history's clearest documented cases of mass hysteria, or whether one badly-explained porch means something in Mattoon actually happened.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses a wartime panic involving documented chemical injury to a real, named private individual (Beulah Cordes) and references to wartime loss (a household member killed at Normandy) as historical context, not as a focus of grief or tragedy narration. One contested historical candidate (Farley Llewellyn) is named once, sourced to a single self-published book flagged as unreliable by Wikipedia's own editors; no motive, personal life, or biographical detail about him is discussed. No suspect was ever arrested or charged in this case, and it remains officially unresolved.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/13-the-mad-gasser-of-mattoon.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.

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In August 2010, a 31-year-old GCHQ mathematician on secondment to MI6 vanished for over a week without anyone at his own intelligence agency raising an alarm. When police finally checked his Pimlico flat, they found him dead inside a padlocked holdall bag in the bathtub. What followed was a 2012 coroner's inquest that found it "likely" he was unlawfully killed — and a 2013 Metropolitan Police reversal calling it "probably an accident." Neither has ever been proven. No one has ever been charged. As of a 2023 forensic review, the file remains officially open. This week, Eli and Simone dig into a case where two of Britain's own institutions reached opposite conclusions from the same evidence, and neither has ever closed the book.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses an unresolved death that remains an open case; Gareth Williams's family has publicly and repeatedly disputed the official "accident" finding as recently as 2013. The episode also discusses aspects of Williams's private life (a fashion-course enrollment, a wardrobe of women's clothing, and visits to bondage-related websites) strictly within the framing the coroner herself established at inquest — this is not tabloid speculation, and neither host draws conclusions about his sexuality or private life beyond what the official record supports. Neither host reaches a verdict on whether Williams was unlawfully killed or died by accident; the case remains genuinely unresolved.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/12-the-death-of-gareth-williams.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.

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In March 1970, a Los Angeles highway construction supervisor named Mack Ray Edwards walked into a police station, set a loaded handgun on the counter, and confessed to killing children for sixteen years. Only three of those killings were ever charged. The rest of his claimed victims - a number that grew to as many as eighteen or twenty across his own retellings - were never charged, and the sites he directed investigators to, decades apart, have all come up empty. This week, Eli and Simone dig into what's left when a confession outruns the evidence behind it: a freeway built over one victim's grave, two more empty excavations under freeways and overpasses across two counties, and a debate about how much a dying man's word should count when the physical record can't confirm or rule it out.

CONTENT NOTE: This episode discusses the murders of children, including cases involving surviving family members who may still be living. Several of the discussed cases remain open, unresolved cold cases with no other suspect. Neither host resolves any specific uncharged case as fact - the debate stays at the level of how much an uncorroborated confession should be credited.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/11-the-confessions-of-mack-ray-edwards.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.

Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note.

Every case has a body, a mystery, and no confession. Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show built around two hosts who never agree: Eli argues the hard evidence, Simone argues the pattern underneath it, and neither one wins. There's no narrator telling you what to think — just two sides of every case, and you decide which one holds up.

New cold cases, argued out in full, every episode. First case drops soon — a man found dead on an Australian beach in 1948 with no name and no explanation. Follow now so it's waiting for you the moment it's live.

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Episode 1: The Somerton Man

Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show. Every episode, Eli argues the hard evidence. Simone argues the pattern. Neither one wins — you decide.

December 1st, 1948. A man in a full suit and tie is found propped against a seawall on a quiet Australian beach, legs crossed, arms folded, like he simply sat down and never got up. No wallet. No ID. Every label cut out of his clothes. Seventy-five years later, nobody has ever definitively said who he was — and the deeper the case goes, the stranger it gets: an unclaimed suitcase, a scrap of paper reading Tamam Shud sewn into a hidden pocket, a rare book with an unbreakable code scrawled in the back, and an unlisted phone number belonging to a nurse who denied everything.

Eli says it's a man who built himself to disappear — no conspiracy required. Simone isn't so sure. Tonight, they argue it out, and you get to decide who's right.

A note before you press play: this episode covers a real, still-unidentified death. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/01-somerton-man.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.

Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note.

Episode 2: The Real Exorcist

Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show. Every episode, Eli argues the hard evidence. Simone argues the pattern. Neither one wins — you decide.

Episode Notes

January 1949, just outside Washington, D.C. A thirteen-year-old boy starts exhibiting behavior no one in his family can explain — scratching in the walls, furniture moving on its own, welts spelling out words on his skin. A Lutheran pastor witnesses it first. Then two Jesuit priests at Saint Louis University get involved, and over the following weeks perform what's become one of the most famous exorcisms in American history — the real case that inspired the novel and film.

Eli says there's not a single neutral witness in the entire record. Simone says you don't get this many independent, credible people converging on the same specific claims by accident. Along the way: a diary that sat sealed in an abandoned hospital room for decades, and a detail from a single, less-reliable source that — if true — reframes the entire case.

A note before you press play: this episode covers real events involving a minor experiencing significant psychological and physical distress. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/02-the-real-exorcist.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.

Hey! We would love to hear your thoughts, send us a voice note.

Episode 3: The Springfield Three

Precision and Instinct is a true crime debate show. Every episode, Eli argues the hard evidence. Simone argues the pattern. Neither one wins — you decide.

Episode Notes

June 6th, 1992. Two friends come home from graduation parties to spend the night at a mother's house in Springfield, Missouri — the safe option, the responsible choice. By morning, all three women are gone. Cars still in the driveway. Purses, keys, shoes all left behind. The only thing broken in the entire house is the porch light.

Over thirty years later, there's still no body, no arrest, and one prime suspect who told a reporter from prison that he knew where they were buried — then called the question "frivolous" when asked directly if he did it. Eli says over five thousand tips and decades of searches have never produced a single piece of physical evidence. Simone says a two-dollar broken porch light might be the most important clue in the whole case.

A note before you press play: this episode covers a real, still-unsolved disappearance. We approach it with the same care we'd want if it were someone we knew.

You'll find the source list here: https://verbeditorial.github.io/precision-and-instinct-notes/episodes/03-the-springfield-three.html

The hosts' voices in this episode are AI-generated. All research, writing, and production are done by a human team.