In the first half we have true crime news, followed by murderous mothers.

As promised, here is video of an attempt to dispose of a whale carcasses with explosives, that went dangerously awry.

The second half the show features three stories of murderous mothers.

First up is the story of Diane Downs, who shot her children in order to be with her married lover.

Downs in 1984, rocking the Princess DI look.

The website of author Ann Rule, author of the book that helped make Downs a national story, Small Sacrifices, has updates on where Down’s children are today and how Downs has fared in prison.

Rule’s book was made into this movie, starring Farrah Fawcett as Downs.

Diane Downs youngest daughter has made TV appearances and given interviews while shopping a book idea. As far as I know the book has never been published.

Downs with her children before shooting. The fourth child was born as the result of an affair she had with a reporter during her trial.

Next up is the story of Lianne Smith, who seemed to be okay with sexual abuse of her children, but murdered them rather than let them be taken by social services.

And lastly we have Andrea Yates, convicted of murdering her five children by drowning, a verdict later reversed and changed to not guilty by reason of insanity.

For those wondering “where is Andrea Yates today?” this article in The Atlantic catches up with her in 2012.

Andrea Yates mugshot.

Some podcast housekeeping, we have had some reports that people have trouble streaming or completely downloading our podcast. We have been creating MP3s at a 128 kb/s bit rate. That was way too high. For music sure, it’s great. But the BBC, pretty much the gold standard for audio, suggests 64 kb/s for voice and 128 or higher only for music. So who are we to try to out guess them?

I reduced the bit rate to 64 and was surprised to see the file size not reduced by half, but instead it is less than a third of some recent episodes. This is in part due to this week’s episode being a little on the short side, but mainly due to the reduction in bit rate.

If you notice any decrease in quality let us know. But this is something we did in direct response to listener feedback, so I really hope it helps with slow or incomplete downloads. Thanks to everyone who brought this to our attention. We listen to the show on a variety of devices, but there are so many different platform, device and carrier combinations that we can’t know there is an issue unless someone lets us know. Sure it works fine for me on a Windows phone, using Verizon in Florida, that doesn’t mean I can assume it’s working for someone on an Android device using Vodafone in New Zealand.

As always, our heartfelt thanks to the band sHeavy for allowing us to use their song, Revenge of the Viper Three, in our opening.