Belle Gibson had the kind of cancer story people desperately wanted to believe. She said she'd been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given months to live. Instead of accepting that prognosis, she changed the way she ate, turned to alternative therapies, and somehow survived. Years later, she wasn't just alive. She looked remarkably healthy. She had a hugely successful wellness app, a cookbook published by Penguin, the attention of Apple, and hundreds of thousands of people following along as she shared what she'd supposedly learned about healing. There was just one fairly significant problem. Belle Gibson had never had cancer.

Robert Hansen has gone down in true-crime history as the serial killer who "hunted" women through the Alaskan wilderness, which makes him sound considerably more formidable than he deserves. But in 1983, a 17-year-old girl named Cindy Paulson found one thing Hansen hadn't accounted for: an unlocked car door. Her escape eventually helped expose the quiet Anchorage baker behind a string of murders—and makes the mythology surrounding him look very different. This week on Pretty Evil, we're looking at Robert Hansen, the women he targeted, and what "winning" actually proves when the contest is rigged in the first place.

In 1939, six children at an Iowa orphanage who spoke normally were told by researchers that they were developing a stutter. Something else also happened that the data wasn't designed to capture: Some of the children became quieter, more hesitant, and afraid to speak. The Monster Study began as an experiment about speech, but nearly 90 years later, it leaves us with a much more personal question: How much of who we become is shaped by what other people repeatedly tell us we are?

Richard Chase became known as the Vampire of Sacramento after murdering six people in just one month. Years before the murders, he had been diagnosed, hospitalized, and repeatedly identified as a serious psychiatric concern. Nurses begged for him to remain hospitalized. Doctors documented his delusions. His deterioration was visible to almost everyone around him. So why was he released?

Many of the people accused of witchcraft weren't outcasts; They were healers, midwives, and respected community members. Their neighbors relied on them, and then those same neighbors decided they were servants of the devil.

He smiled, he charmed, and he got what they wanted. Behind the polite conversation and polished veneer lay a different kind of brilliance — the chilly, calculating mechanics of manipulation. In this episode, we peel back the mask to reveal how ordinary people are coaxed into extraordinary betrayals, why charisma can be a weapon, and what subtle signs most of us miss until it's too late.