The Crack City Strangler - Interview w/ Author B.R. Bates

Mysterious Circumstances

Age Of Radio + Bleav

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

'THE CRACK CITY STRANGLER: The Homicides Of Benjamin Atkins' offers a chilling, in-depth account of the horrifying crimes committed by one of America's most notorious serial killers. In this interview, award-winning journalist B.R. Bates delves into the twisted life of Benjamin "Tony" Atkins, whose reign of terror in Detroit spanned less than a year in the early 1990s. Known for targeting vulnerable women in Detroit's most dangerous neighborhoods, Atkins attacked at least 12 women along a mile-and-a-half stretch of Woodward Avenue, one of the city's most iconic streets. Known as "the nation's fastest serial killer," Atkins' crimes were brutal and relentless, leaving victims abandoned in the dark corners of the Cass Corridor and Highland Park. Only when the lone survivor of his horrific spree came forward did law enforcement begin to connect the dots and ultimately capture the monster behind the killings. You can pick up the book here.... https://www.amazon.com/Murders-in-the...

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast contains adult content.
0:06.5	Some of the themes or topics may include.
0:10.1	Information on murder, kidnapping, torture, dismemberment.
0:15.3	Maybe some demonic content.
0:17.2	With information on positions.
0:20.6	And paranormal activity. This podcast will also include explicit
0:25.3	horrible and foul socially unacceptable totally uninhibited adult themes language so if you're
0:34.1	easily offended if you're easily triggered, if you're easily triggered, then I highly suggest you turn this off now.
0:42.5	And if not, just keep in mind.
0:46.1	Parental discretion is advised.
0:50.1	Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances Podcast.
0:52.8	I am your host, Justin, and I am joined by B.R. Bates, who wrote a fantastic book, and we are going to talk about that today. It is called the Crack City Strangler, and it's the Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Adkins. And I was just telling, uh, BR here that I, being so close to
1:14.1	Detroit, I've never really heard of, of this before. And there were 12 victims and one survivor,
1:19.1	if I'm not mistaken and super intrigued. And BR, welcome to mysterious circumstances.
1:26.0	Thank you. Good to be here.
1:27.9	So tell us how you got started in the genre and what pulled you to this case in particular.
1:33.5	Well, I didn't start out writing in true crime.
1:36.5	Definitely not.
1:37.4	And I really didn't even have an interest in it until I would say the last 10, 15 years I started watching the TV shows and the many, many TV shows that are out there in true crime, like all this stuff on the Oxygen Network these days.
1:50.8	I remember when Oxygen used to be like just women's programming when it wasn't completely true crime.
1:56.9	But yeah, I started watching all of those shows and I really found myself very intrigued by these cases, especially like with Dateline because a lot of the Dateline episodes that I watched, it would start out with a crime, but they wouldn't tell you who did it and they would unfold everything gradually and they would do interviews with people who were involved.
2:17.2	And you kind of had to guess a lot of the time okay who actually committed the crime i loved that stuff
	...

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