No Safe Hour: Between Daylight and Darkness
American Hauntings Podcast
Cody Beck and Troy Taylor
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early 1980s, Springfield, Illinois learned there was no safe hour.
On this episode of American Dread, we examine two unconnected crimes that unfolded just one year apart — one in broad daylight, the other in the dead of night — and how both shattered a city’s sense of safety.
In 1981, an axe attack inside Lauterbach Cottage Hardware left one man dead and a killer who vanished without a trace.
In 1982, a brutal double murder inside a family home was solved — but its consequences would resurface decades later in a devastating way.
These cases aren’t linked by suspects or motive.
They’re linked by place, time, and a chilling truth: violence doesn’t wait for darkness.
American Dread is part of the American Hauntings Podcast Network.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Springfield, Illinois has always been the kind of place where life runs on routine. |
| 0:20.1 | Morning traffic moves the same way it always has. |
| 0:23.5 | Neighborhoods settle in at night. People believe there are certain hours when nothing bad is |
| 0:29.0 | supposed to happen. Daytime feels safe. Nighttime feels private. And somewhere between the two, |
| 0:43.4 | we convince ourselves, we understand the rules but in the early 1980s springfield learned something that never forgot that violence doesn't follow schedules |
| 0:50.3 | it doesn't need chaos and that some of the most disturbing crimes don't arrive |
| 0:56.9 | screaming for attention. They arrive quietly, calmly, and in control. On one morning, a man |
| 1:06.0 | walked into a neighborhood hardware store while the city was wide awake. |
| 1:11.0 | On another night, a door opened without force while the city slept. |
| 1:18.1 | Different hours, different places, different people. |
| 1:22.6 | But the same result, life's ended violently, families shattered, and questions that never found answers. |
| 1:34.3 | This is American Dread. True Stories of Tragedy and Terror from the Dark Side of American Heartland. |
| 1:41.3 | American Dread is part of the American Hauntings podcast network. |
| 1:45.0 | I'm your host, Adam White. |
| 1:48.0 | On this episode, we're going back to Spreeville, Illinois, to a time when two crimes, just a year and a half apart, |
| 1:55.0 | forced an entire city to confront an unsettling truth. |
| 1:59.0 | That safety is thinner than we think. that trust can be used as a weapon |
| 2:04.0 | and that control not chaos is often what makes violence most terrifying one crime unfolded under |
| 2:13.1 | harsh store lighting in full daylight on a busy street. |
| 2:17.6 | The other crept in quietly after midnight behind locked doors. |
| 2:22.7 | They're not connected by suspects. |
| 2:25.2 | They're not connected by motives. |
... |
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