2406: The Real Life Grinch

PRETEND

Javier Leiva

Society & Culture, True Crime, Technology

4.7 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

'Tis the season for true crime chaos! Hosts Kristen Seavey from Murder, She Told, Javier Leiva from PRETEND, and Shaun from Sins & Survivors join forces to explore Christmas crimes gone horribly wrong. From a bath salts-fueled home decorator in suburban Ohio to a serial burglar stealing Robert De Niro's wrapped presents right from under his tree, these real-life Grinches prove that the holidays bring out the worst in some people. The hosts also dive into the disturbing case of postal workers who intercepted letters to Santa meant for underprivileged children...stealing laptops, iPads, and gift cards intended for kids in need. But the main event is a fresh-off-the-press case from Bangor, Maine. When a couple woke up to find a stranger sleeping on their couch surrounded by their unwrapped Christmas presents. Police body cam footage reveals just how terrifying this "funny" story really was. Want to see the footage? https://youtube.com/shorts/XOBl40Ky6Dc Murder, She Told: https://www.murdershetold.com/episodes/bertha-cote-1 PRETEND: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vaCjR7UvlN9aTIzW6kNCo?si=6c96588b93d04eb3 Sins & Survivors: https://open.spotify.com/show/1W2swCx9LP38sFY06294pB?si=4b64a4ba692a4025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	True Story Media.
0:05.5	Hey everyone, it's me.
0:08.7	Javier, Leva, with the pretend podcast.
0:10.6	And I'm joined today by Kristen with the Murder She Told podcast and Sean with the Sins and Survivors podcast.
0:18.3	What?
0:19.0	Are we doing this again?
0:20.2	We are doing this again. We got such
0:23.6	great feedback from our last episode that we figured, hey, why not? Let's do this again, right? But this
0:29.2	time it's Christmas and we should do a Christmas episode, right? Yes, agreed. Yeah. So today,
0:37.1	we are going to talk about real-life Grinches.
0:40.3	Okay, these are stories of Christmas gone wrong and boy, do we have a doozy?
0:47.3	Kristen, kind of give us a preview of the main story that we're going to talk about, which is just wild.
0:56.0	So this actually happened in Bangor, Maine, which is very, very close to me.
1:01.2	And it's a recent. It was over Thanksgiving. And I have not heard about this before you brought
1:07.6	it to me. By the way, I'm sick. This is not what I normally sound like.
1:15.7	So thank you for bearing with me. But, I mean, both of my stories are kind of home invasion stories with a grinch twist. And I just think it's fascinating and a little bit terrifying.
1:21.2	Let me add a little bit to your tease because after we found this story and like you said, it just happened.
1:29.2	Like, just, just happened.
1:31.0	And I quickly whipped up an email to the Bangor Police Department asking for a records
1:36.0	request, not knowing what I was going to get.
1:38.9	I was just like, hey, here's a suspect.
1:41.4	Here's the case file.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Javier Leiva, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Javier Leiva and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.