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The Record, Corrected

Corrections

What was wrong, where, and what changed. Nothing here is edited away quietly.

A true crime show gets things wrong sometimes. The rule here is that a mistake in a published episode, transcript, post or page is fixed and then logged on this page with the date, so anyone who heard or read the wrong version can find out. If you have found one, write to crimetimesnacks@gmail.com.

Corrections log

  1. Episode: The Interrogation of Chris Watts

    Wrong
    The episode said Chris Watts first told police that Shanann had left with the girls around 5:15 that morning. He said she was still at home when he left for work at about 5:15. It placed his Denver7 porch interview on the evening of Monday, August 13; it was the next day, Tuesday, August 14. It also misquoted his plea in that interview as "if they're anywhere out there" and drew a conclusion from that wording; he said "if you're out there, just come back".
    Fixed
    The affected passages were re-voiced with his original account as he gave it to police and to Denver7, the correct date of the interview, and his words as Denver7 transcribed them. The analysis based on the misquote was removed.

  2. Episode: The Menendez Brothers: The Parole Years

    Wrong
    The episode said Governor Gavin Newsom announced on his podcast on March 24, 2025 a June 13 deadline for the brothers' resentencing. June 13 was the date set for parole board risk-assessment hearings on the brothers' clemency request, not a resentencing deadline, and Newsom announced it on March 11. The error came from our research notes, which have also been corrected. The episode also said there would be no third trial, a prediction rather than a fact.
    Fixed
    The passages were re-voiced. The episode now says the brothers had separately asked the governor for clemency and that he said the parole board would hold risk-assessment hearings for each brother on June 13 to help him decide, and that the convictions stand and no court has granted a new trial.

  3. Blog post: How Investigators Tied Bryan Kohberger to the Moscow Murders

    Wrong
    The post said the Idaho Supreme Court granted the change of venue on Sept. 9, 2024, that Kohberger was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution, and that Ethan Chapin was a sophomore.
    Fixed
    Latah County Judge John Judge granted the venue change on Sept. 9, 2024 and the Idaho Supreme Court moved the case to Ada County on Sept. 12; the $20,000 was $5,000 civil penalties to each of four families, with restitution decided separately; Chapin was a freshman.

  4. Blog post: Courtney Clenney: The Killing of Christian Obumseli and the Plea

    Wrong
    The post said that on the 911 call Courtney Clenney admitted killing Christian Obumseli and told dispatchers she threw the knife from ten feet away, and it gave the April 27, 2026 trial date as having been set after an April 2026 hearing.
    Fixed
    It now says the 911 call reported that Obumseli had been stabbed and that the knife-throw account was what she told police afterward; and that the April 27, 2026 date, set in December 2025, was continued in late April to August 2026.

  5. Blog post: The Delphi Murders: Bridge Guy, Richard Allen and the Appeal

    Wrong
    The post attributed Richard Allen's account of planning a sexual assault, cutting the girls' throats and covering their bodies to a defense psychologist.
    Fixed
    It now attributes that account to prison psychologist Monica Wala's clinical notes and testimony.

  6. Blog post: Genetic Genealogy Cases: What It Has Solved and What It Cannot Do

    Wrong
    The post said genetic genealogy's 651 criminal cases included 464 identified decedents; that CODIS holds about 18 million people, only felons and arrestees; that GEDmatch can find a third cousin or closer for over 90 percent of the population; that Christopher Tapp's settlement was $11.4 million; and that remains found in Madison County, Ohio were identified as Robert Earl Sanders.
    Fixed
    The 464 identified people are counted separately from the 651 criminal cases; CODIS figures and the 2018 study's 60 percent estimate are now stated correctly in the companion post; the Tapp settlement was $11.7 million; the unverifiable Ohio identification was removed.

  7. Blog post: How Familial DNA Searching Works, and Where It Is Allowed

    Wrong
    The post said the Bronx familial search was requested in 2018 and took two years, that police investigated a relative's five sons, and that the 1995 Brooklyn suspect was 55, had sealed arrests and an open warrant, and was questioned in July 2026.
    Fixed
    The Bronx search was requested in April 2019 and led to Martinez's late father, with several relatives ruled out. The Brooklyn DA says William Stephens is 54 and was arraigned Sept. 18, 2026; the unsourced details about his record and questioning were removed.

  8. Blog post: How Forensic Genetic Genealogy Works, and the Rules Around It

    Wrong
    The post said investigative genetic genealogy's 651 criminal cases included 464 identified decedents, and that a man found in a Madison County, Ohio farm field in 1989 was identified by Othram as Robert Earl Sanders of Columbus.
    Fixed
    The 2023 tally counts 651 criminal cases and, separately, 464 identified remains. The Madison County identification could not be verified in any reliable source and has been removed.

  9. Blog post: How the FBI's ViCAP Database Links Violent Crimes

    Wrong
    The post said the FBI's serial murder definition requires killings over more than one month without a cooling-off break, and that ViCAP covers seven crime types including non-violent anomalous cases and integrates with NIEM and predictive analytics.
    Fixed
    The FBI definition is two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events, with no time requirement; ViCAP accepts four categories of cases (qualifying homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons and unidentified remains), per the FBI criteria in the 2024 DOJ inspector general audit.

  10. Blog post: The Menendez Brothers: Murders, Trials, Resentencing and Parole

    Wrong
    The post said that a week after the killings Lyle made a sudden trip to Princeton to erase a new will his father had prepared.
    Fixed
    It now says Lyle made a sudden trip home from Princeton to destroy something on the family computer, and that a computer expert he hired said he was paid to make sure a new will was deleted.

  11. Blog post: Murders in Moscow: The Kohberger Plea and the Fight to Undo It

    Wrong
    The post said the Idaho Supreme Court granted the change of venue on Sept. 9, 2024, that the $250,000 fine was $50,000 per murder count, that Kohberger owed $20,000 in restitution, and that he moved to disqualify Judge Hippler on Aug. 29, 2026.
    Fixed
    Judge John Judge granted the venue change Sept. 9, 2024 and the Idaho Supreme Court moved the case to Ada County Sept. 12; the fine was $50,000 on each of five counts; the $20,000 was $5,000 civil penalties to each family, with restitution decided Nov. 13, 2025; the disqualification motion was filed Aug. 27, 2026.

  12. Blog post: The First Fingerprint Convictions: Argentina, London, Chicago

    Wrong
    The post called fingerprinting an infallible forensic tool, said Francisca Rojas received a life sentence, and listed an unrelated source (the Vallow-Daybell murders).
    Fixed
    It now notes the 2004 Brandon Mayfield misidentification and the 2009 NAS and 2016 PCAST findings on error rates, drops the unsupported sentence claim, and cites the NIJ Fingerprint Sourcebook, Smithsonian and PCAST.

  13. Blog post: The Killing of JonBenét Ramsey: The Crime and the First Investigation

    Wrong
    Said the 1999 grand jury vote stayed secret until court documents were unsealed in October 2013, and quoted DA Stan Garnett as saying Mary Lacy 'never should have written' her 2008 exoneration letter.
    Fixed
    The Daily Camera reported the vote earlier in 2013; the October 25, 2013 release revealed the charges. Garnett's documented 2016 statement is that the letter was not legally binding and was a good-faith opinion with no legal importance.

  14. Blog post: The Watts Family Murders: The Weeks Before and the Evidence After

    Wrong
    Said Watts first claimed he killed Shanann after seeing her 'smother' the girls, and elsewhere that his first account was a rage after an argument about divorce; dated the charges to August 21; called him a contractor; said he refused police entry until he arrived.
    Fixed
    Per the arrest affidavit he claimed he saw Shanann strangling Celeste on a baby monitor and described the separation talk as civil; he was charged August 20, 2018; he was an Anadarko operator; he came home from work to let police in.

  15. Blog post: What Reasonable Doubt Actually Means in a Courtroom

    Wrong
    The post said Robin Cotton testified the blood drops near the bodies matched O.J. Simpson with a 1-in-9.7 billion chance of error, and that Lori Vallow Daybell was charged with first-degree murder of Tammy Daybell.
    Fixed
    Cotton gave 1 in 170 million for the drop near the bodies; 1 in 9.7 billion was her figure for blood on a sock matching Nicole Brown Simpson. Lori Vallow Daybell was charged with murder in her children's deaths and conspiracy to commit murder in Tammy Daybell's death.

  16. Blog post: Why Eyewitness Testimony Is Less Reliable Than Jurors Think

    Wrong
    The post attributed a series of eyewitness statistics to a 2016 NIST report, FBI reports from 2017 and 2021, and several journal studies that do not exist or do not say what was claimed, misdated the Loftus and Palmer study to 1978 and misstated its result, and gave the Innocence Project's misidentification figure as 75 percent.
    Fixed
    Those figures were removed. The post now uses the Innocence Project's figure (69 percent of 375 DNA exonerations), the 1974 Loftus and Palmer result (16 of 50 versus 7 of 50 recalling broken glass), the 2014 National Academy of Sciences report and Brandon Garrett's 2020 Judicature review.

  17. Blog post: How Wrongful Convictions Happen and How They Get Undone

    Wrong
    The post said Archie Williams was exonerated by DNA, that Ryan Ferguson was represented by the Missouri Innocence Project, that Michael Morton's prosecutor was convicted of withholding evidence and jailed four days, and gave several outdated or unsupported Innocence Project statistics (1-10% innocent, 40% perpetrator identified, 375 exonerations 'as of 2022').
    Fixed
    Williams was cleared by a fingerprint database match; Ferguson's lawyer was Kathleen Zellner; Ken Anderson pleaded to criminal contempt and agreed to a 10-day sentence; the statistics now match the Innocence Project's own figures (2.3-5%, 50% as of 2018, 375 reached in 2020) and the National Registry's October 2026 count.

  18. Blog post: Chain of Custody: When Evidence Handling Sinks a Case

    Wrong
    The post said that gaps in the chain of custody are challenged through a motion to suppress and lead to evidence being thrown out so the jury never hears of it.
    Fixed
    Under Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009), gaps in the chain normally go to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility; exclusion happens only when the item cannot be authenticated under rules like FRE 901, and motions to suppress concern constitutional or statutory violations.

  19. Blog post: Why Some Cases Stay Cold for Decades

    Wrong
    The post said 350,000 homicides since 1965 are unsolved and the total grows by about 6,000 unsolved murders and abductions a year; that forensic genetic genealogy solved the Karen Klaas murder in 2017; and that the FBI is still switching from IAFIS to NGI.
    Fixed
    The Murder Accountability Project counts more than 345,000 people killed in unsolved homicides since 1965 and at least 4,000 killers getting away each year; Klaas's killer was identified through a familial search of a state DNA database, announced in 2017; NGI replaced IAFIS in 2014.

  20. Case page: Murders in Moscow: The Plea

    Wrong
    The page description showed the internal writing brief for the episode ("DO NOT RETELL THE MURDERS...") instead of a description of the case.
    Fixed
    The brief was replaced with a plain summary of what the episode covers. The same fix was applied to the three other follow-up case pages (Delphi, Menendez, JonBenet) whose descriptions were writing instructions.

  21. Transcripts: every episode voiced in the studio (Golden State Killer through The Murdaugh Family Murders, eleven episodes)

    Wrong
    The transcripts were a speech recogniser's guess at the audio, labelled as generated from the script. On The Murdaugh Family Murders that produced "Maggie Murdoff", "Eilinton" for Islandton, "Mowry Beach" for Mallory Beach, "Calton County" for Colleton County, "Tim Palmback" for Tim Palmbach, a blood alcohol content of "28.6" for .286, and times written "10,006 p.m." for 10:06 p.m. None of it was in the script or the audio.
    Fixed
    Every studio transcript is now the fact-checked script itself, timed to the recording, and the label says so. The studio cannot publish a guessed transcript again.

  22. Transcripts: the episodes recorded before the studio (2022 to 2025)

    Wrong
    Names were misspelled throughout: "Jean-Benet" for JonBenet across the 2022 episode, "Coburger" for Kohberger, "Zana Cronodal" for Xana Kernodle, "Leyta" for Latah, "Shanaen" for Shanann, "Oseol" for Oziel, "Cadel" for the author Cheryln Cadle, "Rossi" for Rozzi, and "ancestryinme and 123inme" for Ancestry and 23andMe.
    Fixed
    Re-transcribed with a larger model primed with the names in each case, then corrected by hand. These are recordings without a script, so the page still says the wording may contain minor errors.

  23. Homepage and About page

    Wrong
    The site claimed "a new episode every week" over a feed with a seventeen-month gap in it, and showed a "5.0 Listener Rated" figure that rested on a single rating.
    Fixed
    Both claims were removed. The About page now describes how an episode is made, including the parts that are automated, and the schedule is stated as what it is: weekly since September 2026, with an archive back to 2022.

  24. Merch page

    Wrong
    Thirty-four designs were listed "from $28" over a store that did not exist.
    Fixed
    Prices and the pre-order markup were removed. The page says there is no store and offers the files as downloads.

  25. Episode: The Interrogation of Chris Watts

    Wrong
    The first release was withdrawn the same day: the audio audit that had just been built found paragraphs where the cloned voice did not say what the script said.
    Fixed
    The affected paragraphs were re-voiced, checked against the script, and the audio and transcript were replaced.

  26. Episode: The Disappearance of Gabby Petito

    Wrong
    For six days after release (12 to 18 September 2026) the audio said "Capra One" where the script said Capital One, and stuttered on a word the script did not have.
    Fixed
    The affected paragraphs were re-voiced and the audio and transcript were replaced. An audit of every render against its script was added to the studio the same day and now gates every release.