Control Studies: True Crime Behavioral Analysis cover art

Control Studies: True Crime Behavioral Analysis

Control Studies: True Crime Behavioral Analysis

By: J.R. Maren
Listen for free

Control Studies is a true crime podcast that goes beyond the case — analytical deep dives into the predatory psychology and operational failures of real killers across history and around the world. How they got caught. What broke their methodology. What the serial killer mindset looks like when it's functioning at its most disciplined — and where it fails.

Each episode is a behavioral analysis of a real case. No sensationalism. No horror. Just the killer methodology, the failure, and the forensic psychology behind it.

For true crime listeners who want to understand how killers think at the level it actually operates.

A J.R. Maren production — author of The Syllabus series.

J.R. Maren
True Crime
Episodes
  • Black Widower: Thomas Randolph and the Dead Witness That Convicted Him
    Sep 20 2026

    Thomas Randolph — the man the press called the Black Widower — married six times, and four of those wives died. He was convicted of two murders in Las Vegas, and the evidence that convicted him came from his own attempt to fix an earlier mistake.

    This episode is a behavioral analysis of what prosecutors said the pattern was — insurance taken out early, deaths that arrived with an ordinary explanation already attached, the act outsourced to a recruited man — and how removing the one weakness that nearly ended him in 1986 created the scene that convicted him in 2023. He was acquitted of his second wife's death and never charged over his fourth or fifth. A clinical deep dive into predatory psychology and what a truly disciplined approach would have looked like.

    The behavioral patterns explored in this episode are fictionally examined in the novel Adam by J.R. Maren — available on Amazon Kindle. Control Studies.

    Read ADAM:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQQSH5D1?maas=maas_adg_704A694E91015D9545573371F3063441_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas

    Show More Show Less
    18 mins
  • Keffe D: Duane Davis's 29-Year Evasion and the Ego That Ended It
    Sep 2 2026

    Keffe D survived 29 years without charge in the Tupac murder — then dismantled his own evasion through a book and a media tour. This episode is a behavioral analysis of how Davis built a 29-year institutional evasion system — the code of the streets, dead witnesses, a proffer agreement — and how the recognition need, triggered by a cancer diagnosis, made him voluntarily destroy it. A clinical deep dive into predatory psychology and what a truly disciplined approach would have looked like. The behavioral patterns explored in this episode are fictionally examined in the novel Adam by J.R. Maren — available on Amazon Kindle. Control Studies.

    Read ADAM:

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQQSH5D1?maas=maas_adg_704A694E91015D9545573371F3063441_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas


    Show More Show Less
    21 mins
  • Peter Tobin: Evasion Methodology, the Alias Collapse, and Operation Anagram
    Aug 16 2026

    Scotland's serial killer Peter Tobin operated undetected across the UK for 15 years — constant relocation, shifting aliases, zero geographic pattern — until a single photograph ended it all in hours. This episode is a behavioral analysis of how Tobin constructed his evasion system — geographic mobility across multiple jurisdictions, shallow alias use, and opportunistic victim selection — and how the structural failure of those aliases and his on-site disposal methodology led directly to Operation Anagram and the discovery of two victims buried for sixteen years. A clinical deep dive into predatory psychology and what a truly disciplined approach would have looked like. The behavioral patterns explored in this episode are fictionally examined in the novel Adam by J.R. Maren — available on Amazon Kindle. Control Studies.

    Read ADAM:

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GQQSH5D1?maas=maas_adg_704A694E91015D9545573371F3063441_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas


    Show More Show Less
    40 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet