Same Crime, Different Time: A Historical True Crime Podcast With Jen Chambers

A small memorial marks the spot in the tiny unincorporated town of Bly, Oregon where the only fatalities from enemy action in WWII occurred in the continental United States.May 5 was a sunny day in 1945 when Archie Mitchell, a pastor from Bly, his wife, Elsie Mitchell, 26, and five kids who went to Elsie’s Sunday School class decided to go for a picnic on nearby Leonard Creek. They saw a curious...

On October 15, 1973, Deborah Lee Tomlinson disappeared from Creswell, Oregon on the evening of her sixteenth birthday. A small town in Lane County, Creswell had few mysteries then and still has few answers now. According to public records and missing-person databases, Deborah left with a teenage female friend and was never seen again.For decades, law enforcement officially classified her...

In January 2006, actor Joe Pichler left his apartment in Bremerton, Washington. He was never seen again. Joe had grown up in the public eye, appearing in popular films as a child. But by the time he disappeared at just 18 years old, his life looked very different than the one audiences remembered. This episode talks about the potential act of suicide. Help is available. Call 988 for the Suicide...

In boxcars and rail yards, places a lot of us pass without a second glance, men were being murdered. Many were unhoused. Many were transient. Many were dismissed.This week’s episode of Same Crime, Different Time examines the case of Robert Joseph Silveria Jr., known as the Boxcar Killer, whose crimes began in Oregon and spread across multiple states. It’s a story about violence, but also about...

In November 1988, Deborah Lee Atrops vanished after an ordinary evening in Washington County, Oregon. She was 30 years old. A bookkeeper. A new mother. A woman navigating the complicated end of a marriage and trying to build a future for herself and her daughter.Two days later, her body was found in the trunk of her car on a quiet dead-end road.For decades, Deborah’s case sat unresolved. She was...

In 1975, in a Soviet town defined by factory work and strict silence, Vladimir Sarenpya began a spree of violence that the state tried to hide.This week on Same Crime, Different Time, we’re going behind the Iron Curtain to explore a case of “The Ripper” you’ve likely never heard of, who may have started in tiny Coos Bay, Oregon. We discuss the victims, the chilling “signature” left at the crime...

The Brother Jonathan struck an uncharted reef near Point St. George off Crescent City, California, on July 30, 1865. The wreck is one of the deadliest maritime disasters on the Pacific Coast in the nineteenth century. Today, the story of the Brother Jonathan: the ship, the disaster, the salvage, and the strange afterlife of a shipwreck that has become both legend and litigation. This is a public...

This week on Same Crime, Different Time, we head deep into Oregon’s Molalla Forest. It’s the site of one of the state’s most chilling serial murder cases. Dayton Leroy Rogers targeted some of Portland’s most vulnerable women, and hid his violence beneath the pines.I revisit this case with new context, including insights from my book Murder & Mayhem in the Willamette Valley. This episode is...

The double life of Robert Lee Yates , the Spokane serial killer who hid behind the façade of family, career, and community honor while murdering at least 13 women throughout the 1970s–1990s. Drawing exclusively from newspapers, court filings, and documented reports, this episode traces his timeline, victims, investigative missteps, and the complex social dynamics that shaped the case. It’s a...

Oregon isn’t just forests and craft beer. It’s also home to whispered rituals, mysterious architecture, and a few cults that slipped under the national radar.This week on Same Crime, Different Time, we explore: A rumored Bigfoot-worshipping group at Cultus Lake The eerie Temple of Oculus Anubis An Oregon-linked Mother God cult La Luz del Mundo’s Oregon branchWhy here? Why these groups? And what...