Turns Out That True Crime Podcaster Murdered All Those People

The podcast game can be killer

Matthew Grimm
Slackjaw
3 min readSep 6, 2021

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Photo by Thomas Bjornstad on Unsplash

If I had a nickel for every time I heard, “you must know how to commit the perfect crime,” I’d stuff it in a sock, club that person over the head, then stuff their limp body in the trunk of my car. My name is Patrick Leslie Grimm and I host my own podcast, Serial Shock. I also murder people in my spare time.

Podcasting has become big business, with true crime podcasts being a huge piece of that pie. Serial Shock has 110 thousand loyal subscribers who tune in religiously as soon as I upload each week. They can’t get enough. Sponsors love it more. They throw money at it like we’re some fad that’s here to stay. As lucrative as it is, there’s always pressure to create.

There’s only so much you could do as a true crime podcaster. How many takes on Richard Ramirez or Ed Gein do we need? It’s just the same stuff over and over. Ted Bundy was super smart and normal. We get it! I could delve into those topics, but I love to keep my listeners guessing. I could talk about those serial killers, or I could talk about local crimes that have been baffling the police — crimes that I secretly committed. Listeners hang off my every word, like a severed torso hanging off a meat hook.

I didn’t follow the traditional serial killer handbook. I wasn’t neglected as a child or harmed animals. I’m not a freak. My first victim was an annoying troll named John. He’d constantly clog up Serial Shock’s Twitter account with nonsense. “This podcast sucks! What a waist [sic] of time!” He’d Tweet. For such a “waist” of time, you sure had time to make stupid comments. The police found his body (from the waist up, at least), they reported it to the local newspaper, I’d talk about it on Serial Shock, downloads soared. That was the turning point there.

As the bodies started to stack up, the audience did too. I’d horrifically murder people then talk about the case on the show, freaking the audience out knowing there’s a killer on the loose. It’s like I created my own pipeline — one that wasn’t clogged up with body parts. Confidence oozed into the microphone. The keys to being a successful podcaster and serial killers are the same: charisma and proliferation.

I started this podcast out of passion — and because interest was accumulating on my student loans and no solid job prospects. At first, it was hard to build an audience since I was one of many true crime podcasts. Maybe I took things too far stabbing those teenagers to quench my bloodlust, but the copy started to write itself. It was perfect, neither listeners nor victims knew my appearance. I could move from town to town without being noticed.

As long as you keep the content pumping, everyone wins. Listeners love it, sponsors love it, and the police stay busy. It’s funny, our latest sponsor Dazzle has been great to us. I personally love their paper towels and use them myself. It does a great job cleaning those hard-to-reach blood stains off the crawl space floor.

Now that I let you in on my secret, I’ll have to kill you… Just kidding! That’s a little serial killer humour for you. But seriously, don’t tell the police or you’ll vanish without a fucking trace. And remember to subscribe wherever you download podcasts.

The end.

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Matthew Grimm
Slackjaw

Matthew Grimm is a comedy writer and improvister based out of London, On.