#79- Murder Mysteries and True Crime Part 2- 18 MORE Popular English Words

Are you an English learner who loves talking about true crime, murder mysteries, and criminal investigations? Or maybe you just need to learn about this topic so that you can talk about current events with confidence? In Part 2 of our murder mystery and true crime series, you'll learn 18 essential phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang expressions that native speakers use when talking about crime, investigations, and even just everyday drama.

You'll learn useful idioms, slang and phrasal verbs such as:

• On the right track
• A bombshell
• A cover story
• To take the fall
• Flip on someone

 …and more.

These expressions show up everywhere: in TV shows, news reports, documentaries, podcasts, and even everyday conversations. Even when we’re not talking about crime, native speakers use many of these phrases in daily conversation.

If you want to:

• Understand American TV and true crime shows
• Improve your listening skills
• Learn real conversational English
• Sound more natural and confident

…this episode is for you.

Also, in order for you to really remember this vocabulary and use it with confidence, download the episode study guide! 

It includes:

• All 18 vocabulary words with clear definitions
• Example sentences
• The full story from the episode
• Practice activities to help you remember and actually use the language
• A transcript that you can easily follow in order to improve your listening and vocabulary 

To get the Study Guide, click >> HERE <<

With the episode + study guide together, you’ll get exposures to the vocabulary, which is exactly what you need to remember and actually use new English words confidently.

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Get the FREE Study Guide:

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Transcript

[00:00:00]
 On this episode of The Real Life English with Gabby podcast, you'll be getting part two of our murder mystery and true crime series. In this episode, you'll be learning 18 more popular phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang. For true crime, you'll be learning vocabulary like on the right track, a bombshell, a cover story, to take the fall, flip on someone, and more. Let's get to it.

Hey there. Welcome to the Real Life English with Gabby podcast. I'm your host, Gabby, your fun and friendly English teacher from the one and only New York City. My goal is to teach you phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang that will help you speak English confidently and understand real American conversations.

Are you ready to improve your English skills? Let's jump right in.

Hey, hey, [00:01:00] hey. Welcome back. Greetings from New York City. Welcome to episode number 79. If you have not listened to part one, go back and listen to episode number 78 because you're gonna need it before we do this episode. This is part two of our murder mystery and true crime series.

For a little update before we get into the episode, things remain crazy in the United States. There's a lot to say, but I don't know if I am in the right headspace to talk about it now because it's just constant chaos here. My family and I are currently thinking about what to do. You know, I love New York City, but the prices in the United States are getting so expensive because of Trump's tariffs and wars, and it's getting really expensive here.

It's [00:02:00] getting a little bit intense, so, you know, as an English teacher, I'm thankful that I have the freedom to go to a lot of different countries because English teachers are needed everywhere. So my husband and I, we're just trying to figure out what to do, and we will probably figure it out later in the year.

But yeah, you know, here, aside from that, New York City, we just had the craziest winter. We had a huge blizzard, we had multiple smaller snowstorms, we had freezing temperatures. I haven't had a winter like this in New York City in a long time, and it's been intense, you know, being inside a lot. My husband has been working a lot, so things have been really crazy. Along with the baby, it was very intense, but now things are calming down, thankfully.

And I just wanna say, I have a lot of fun and exciting updates that you'll hear about starting April 1st. There's a lot of stuff [00:03:00] behind the scenes. I'm looking for ways to make things more active, where I can get more time with all of you and do some monthly challenges and some other courses, and really start interacting with you and getting you guys to interact with each other. You know, the world is a dark place right now, and I find that communicating with people online from all over the world is a really good way to bring some joy into all of your lives.

So you'll be hearing more about that soon. Stay tuned. If you are not on my email list yet, definitely get on it. You just click the link where you get the study guide, and you'll see that's kind of a way to get in. But a lot of exciting things are coming, so I'm very excited.

We'll talk about them soon, so let's get back to this episode. In the [00:04:00] last episode, I told the first part of a murder mystery, and the story got a little intense. You know, we have a crime, we have multiple suspects, and a story that's not as simple as it seems. In this episode, we're gonna continue the story and uncover what happened. We're gonna get to the conclusion.

More importantly, though, you are gonna be able to keep building your English vocabulary and your English skills in a way that reflects how people actually use English in real life, which is my goal for this whole podcast, as you know. As I mentioned in the last episode, topics like crime, investigation, and murder mysteries are really popular in English-speaking countries, but also in the USA. So you'll hear this type of language everywhere, from TV shows and movies to news reports and even in [00:05:00] everyday conversations because a lot of these can be used not just for crime and murder, but for things that happen in our everyday life.

So this is a really powerful way of improving your listening, expanding your vocabulary, and training your brain to understand English in context.

Before we talk about the vocabulary for this episode, I just wanna remind you that all of the episodes come with study guides. These study guides help you take it one step further than just listening to the podcast because this gives you an opportunity for more repetition and practical ways to learn this vocabulary and really become a confident English speaker.

The study guide has the transcript, it has the words, definitions, example sentences. Most importantly, it has practice activities [00:06:00] that will give you quizzes on what you learned from the episode, and this is the best way for you to get these vocabulary words and expressions into your brain.

In order to get the free study guide, just click the link in the episode description, and you'll have access to the folder that has all of the study guides from every episode and some of the bonuses that I've given out with some episodes as well.

Alright, so now let's talk about the vocabulary that you are going to learn in this episode.

We have leave no stone unturned, on the right track, a bombshell, an inside job, track down, get your hands dirty, to be caught red-handed, to have blood on your hands, a cover story, [00:07:00] to take the fall, cover up, set someone up, to frame someone or be framed, get away with, spill the truth, to flip on someone, crack the case, take down, and case closed.

Now I'm going to read part two of the story, which brings everything to its conclusion. While I'm reading, listen for all of the vocabulary and see if you can figure out the meanings based on their context. Then, after the story, we are gonna talk about the definitions, and you'll hear some new example sentences.

Here we go. When we left off in our story, we saw that Detective Lewis had five suspects for the murder of a famous art dealer: one client, [00:08:00] two employees, an ex-girlfriend, and the assistant. However, through his investigation, he had narrowed it down to the assistant after it was discovered that her alibi was a web of lies. So Detective Lewis knew that in order to solve the case, he had to leave no stone unturned.

He remembered a cold case from two years earlier and pulled those files. As he started to look through the files, he was sure that he was on the right track. About an hour into reading through that case, he discovered a bombshell: the assistant had been framed.

It wasn't just a simple cover-up. Someone had tried to set her up so they [00:09:00] could get away with murder, and it appeared to be the same exact murderer as the cold case two years earlier. You see, in that case, an art exhibition had been robbed, and the security guard had been killed. The killer got away with $5 million in valuable artwork.

However, there were no signs of forced entry or a break-in. It seemed like an inside job because whoever had broken in knew all of the security codes. Detective Lewis knew that he had to track down the real killer from the original case because it was the same killer as this case.

Detective Lewis immediately looked for connections between the two cases and couldn't believe the connection that he found. Because of this [00:10:00] connection, he knew who the killer was, so he immediately called in all of the main suspects again.

He first questioned the two employees but then let them go after about an hour. Then he questioned the assistant, but he let her go as well. Lastly, though, he questioned the client and then brought the ex-girlfriend in for questioning along with him.

By the end of the interrogation, here is what Detective Lewis confirmed: the ex-girlfriend, Miranda, committed both murders with the help of the client, Robert. Let me explain how it all went down.

The ex-girlfriend named Miranda was actually working with the client named Robert. Two years earlier, they had [00:11:00] conspired together to rob an art gallery, and so Miranda started dating the security guard at the bank while Robert pretended to be interested in buying a $100,000 painting.

They didn't want to go to jail or get their hands dirty, so they decided to try the robbery without hurting anyone. So one night, Miranda visited the security guard at work, drugged his coffee, stole his security badge, and let Robert into the building. She and Robert then used the security badge to disarm the alarm system and steal the painting. Since they got away with the crime the first time, they decided to do it again.

After studying this art gallery and planning the crime, Miranda started dating the victim, [00:12:00] Charles Smith, who was the director of the art gallery and a popular art dealer.

The problem this time, though, was that Mr. Smith had broken up with Miranda a week before the robbery. This complicated their plans, which is how Mr. Smith ended up dead. Mr. Smith entered the gallery while the burglary was taking place, and he caught them red-handed.

While he was fighting with Miranda and Robert, he fell, hit his head, and died. Because they now had blood on their hands, they realized they needed a cover story, so they quickly came up with a plan to set up the assistant so that she would take the fall for the crime.

When Robert was interrogated by Detective Lewis, [00:13:00] he spilled the truth and flipped on Miranda. When Miranda saw that she had been caught, she had no choice but to come clean. Thankfully, Detective Lewis was able to crack the case and take down the real murderers. Case closed. The end.

All right, now let's define these words and get some more examples. First up, we have leave no stone unturned. This is an idiom, and this is talking about how Detective Lewis really wanted to do a good job with searching for answers. Leaving no stone unturned means to investigate every possible clue or option and to be very thorough in your search for truth.

[00:14:00] A stone is like a rock, right? So it's like you're looking for something and you're picking up every stone and looking for clues or looking for the truth. For example, the detectives promised to leave no stone unturned until they found out who committed the crime.

Next step, we have to be on the right track. This is another idiom, and it means to make progress toward discovering the correct answer or solution. So a track is the metal rails that a train travels on. And so if you're on the right track, it really means that you are moving in the right direction. So imagine a train being on the right track or on the wrong track.

We call these train tracks. This is where the idiom comes from. So we use this when we wanna talk about making progress. We wanna [00:15:00] discover the right answer, the right solution. For example, after reviewing the security videos, the investigators felt they were finally on the right track.

Next up, we have a bombshell. This is a noun. We sometimes use it as an adjective, like saying a bombshell discovery. A bombshell is shocking or surprising information that suddenly changes a situation. It changes the whole case, the whole investigation. For example, the journalist dropped a bombshell when she showed proof that the mayor was corrupt and had stolen money from the city.

Next up, we have a popular phrasal verb that we've talked about in past episodes all the way back in our first crime series in episodes two and three. And cover up means to hide the [00:16:00] truth about something, typically something illegal, something embarrassing, something wrong. We are hiding it. We are covering it. We say cover up. For example, the company tried to cover up the financial scandal before the media discovered it.

Next, we have to set someone up or a setup. This is actually a phrasal verb, set up, but it can also be used as a noun, a setup. This is to trick someone into appearing guilty of something that they didn't do. For example, someone planted the stolen jewelry in his car to set him up. They're making him look guilty.

[00:17:00]
 This sentence has a little bonus word, to plant something. That is to put something somewhere that it wasn't naturally. So imagine someone's cell phone is missing. The person who stole the cell phone put it in a different place in order to make it seem like someone else took it. They planted the stolen jewelry in his car.

Now I'm gonna teach you another bonus expression, and this is to be framed or to frame someone. It's very similar to set up, and you heard me use it in the story that the assistant had been framed. She had been set up. This is when someone plants evidence on you or they point all of the clues toward you to make it look like you committed a crime or you did something that you didn't actually do.

Next up, we have a [00:18:00] three-word phrasal verb. Get away with. This is to avoid punishment or avoid consequences after doing something wrong. Basically, you escape without punishment. So we have get away and get away with, and this is where English can get a little confusing. You might be watching a crime show and they say, “Oh, where’s the robber? Where’s the burglar? Oh, he got away.” This means to escape. But when you add “with,” get away with, the meaning shifts, and it means that you got away with murder, you got away with $40 million. You avoided punishment or consequences. For example, he thought he could get away with the robbery because there were no witnesses.

Next up, we have the [00:19:00] expression, an inside job. This is a phrase that we use commonly. An inside job is a crime that's committed by someone within the organization or within the group that's involved. For example, police suspected the robbery was an inside job because there were no signs of forced entry. The crime or job, we say, was an inside job. It came from the inside of the company, the inside of the family, the inside of the business.

Next up, we have track down. So Detective Lewis wanted to track down the criminals. Track down is a phrasal verb. This means to locate someone or something after searching carefully for them. Imagine that you lose your phone and your phone has location services, right? So you track your phone, you [00:20:00] look at the location and you follow it. That's track. To track down is typically to locate someone or something after you carefully search for them. Like, “Hey, did you track her down?” You were searching for something. This is a little bit different than just tracking something, which is just watching the location of something. For example, the detective managed to track down a witness who saw the suspect leaving the building.

Next up, we have an idiom, to get your hands dirty. This is to become directly involved in something difficult, something unpleasant, something illegal. You get your hands dirty. Your hands are not clean. For example, the crime boss never committed the robbery himself, but he ordered others to get their hands dirty.

Next up, I'm gonna teach you one idiom that has changed from generation to generation. So [00:21:00] first, let me give you the original idiom, caught red-handed. This means to be caught while actively doing something wrong or illegal. Someone sees you doing something wrong. It could be on video, it could be in person. Now, caught red-handed is the original idiom. This is the idiom that my parents would probably still use, but now for my generation, millennials, maybe Gen Z, we might say caught in the act. But this idiom actually recently evolved, and now younger generations are starting to say caught in 4K because of 4K video on our phones. And so this is an example of how English is such a living language. We are constantly evolving. So if I'm in a conversation with people from three different generations, one of them will say the guy got caught red-handed. Another one would [00:22:00] say, “Oh, he got caught in the act,” and another one would say he got caught in 4K, meaning there's some kind of video documentation, video evidence. And so this is a really cool example. I love teaching my students this just so that they understand, and just so that everyone who's learning English knows English is a very living language, which is why if you learned English five years ago, 10 years ago, the grammar is going to be the same, but the expressions, the vocabulary, are going to really be changing. And that's why I love doing this podcast, because it keeps you up to date on all of the changes within the English language. The security guard caught the thief red-handed while he was stealing cash from the register.

Next up, we have to have blood on your hands. This is an idiom, and it means to be responsible for someone's death or serious harm. [00:23:00] To have blood on your hands is similar to get your hands dirty. It refers to something illegal, but to have blood on your hands specifically is about hurting people, killing people, doing really bad damage to humanity. This means actual blood. She has blood on her hands, meaning she's responsible for someone's death. So we use this a lot for politicians. So if one president, for example, in the United States, bombs another country and people die, we would say that president has blood on his hands. I say my government has blood on their hands. So we typically use this for institutions, for politics, for government leaders, as well as criminals. For example, if the suspect planned the murder, he has blood on his hands.

Next up, we have a cover story. A cover [00:24:00] story is a false story or a false explanation that is created in order to hide the real reason for something, typically a crime. But it could also be a surprise. So a minor example would be, let’s say that you want to surprise your friend with a birthday party. You need to come up with a cover story, a fake reason, a fake explanation that's hiding the real reason. So this is an innocent way to use it, but as you saw in the story, they committed the crime, but they needed an alibi. They needed an excuse or an explanation for the police, and so we call this a cover story. For example, the suspect told police he was visiting a friend, but it was clearly just a cover story.

Next up, we have the idiom to take the fall. I love this expression. I love this idiom. I love teaching students this because [00:25:00] it's really unique. To take the fall is to accept blame or accept punishment for something, but it's often to protect someone else. So imagine that your younger brother or younger sister did something really bad and you don't want them to get in trouble. So you accept blame, you accept the punishment. So we would say you took the fall for your brother, you took the fall for the crime. Really, really popular idiom. You might see it on a police show, but then you also might use this in real life. For example, the young employee agreed to take the fall for the crime to protect his boss.

Next up, we have to spill the truth. This is an idiom, and this means to reveal secret information, often after some kind of pressure, some kind of questioning. [00:26:00] So you go to the police station, and this is what happened in the story. The minute the police started asking questions, he spilled the truth. So if you know that your friend has a secret, you might say, “Alright, spill,” like, tell me, spill. And that's where this comes from. Very common expression that we use in day-to-day life here. For example, after years of questioning, the suspect finally spilled the truth.

Next, we have to flip on someone. This is slang, but it's also a phrasal verb. To flip on someone means to betray a partner in crime by cooperating with authorities, cooperating with the police. So if you and someone else commit a crime, but then the police are interrogating you, asking you questions, and you decide to betray your partner, we say you flipped on them. You decided to be honest and leave that person behind because [00:27:00] I'm sure it works the same way in most of your countries. But if you commit a crime with someone else and then you tell the truth first and you agree to be honest, you have a decreased punishment. For example, one member of the gang flipped on the others and told the police everything.

Next up, we have to crack the case. This is an idiom, and it means to successfully solve a difficult investigation. So to crack something, to crack a code, to crack a puzzle, to crack the investigation, this means to solve. You've been really working hard trying to solve something difficult, and you did it. For example, the detective finally cracked the case after discovering a hidden clue.

Next up, we have a phrasal verb, take down. To take someone down or to [00:28:00] take something down means to successfully arrest, defeat, or dismantle, like take apart, a criminal, a criminal organization, or something involved in crime. And this is why it's really important to look at phrasal verbs in context, because the phrasal verb take down could be like, “Hey, can you take down the clock off the wall? Can you take down the poster?” meaning to remove. In this context, it means that some kind of criminal or criminal organization is being arrested or defeated. For example, after a year-long investigation, the police managed to take down the entire drug gang.

And lastly, we have case closed. This is a popular idiom or expression, and this is a [00:29:00] statement that's used a lot specifically by police, by judges, detectives, and it's used when an investigation is finished and the answer is confirmed. You solved the crime, everything is good now. We say case closed. We actually use this a lot in debates and arguments with our friends. Let's say I am talking about politics and I prove my point. I say, “Oh, case closed,” like I just finished this argument and I won. For example, once the suspect confessed and the evidence was confirmed, the detective said, “Case closed.”

Well, guess what? You just learned 18 popular phrasal verbs, slang words, and idioms that Americans use often. But don't stop here. If you really [00:30:00] wanna get this vocabulary stuck in your brain, you need repetition and more exposure. So this is a reminder to download the study guide. Once you have the study guide, do the practice activities, read through the definitions, expose yourself to these words as much as possible. But after you do this, I want you to use these words because that is the best possible method for you to really become comfortable and confident using this vocabulary.

So pick five to seven of your favorite vocabulary words and expressions from this episode and find a way to use them this week. You can write an email to a friend, you can teach them to a friend who wants to learn English, you can write them in a journal, or even record yourself and make an audio file of you using these words in a story or a sentence. [00:31:00] However you try to use these, just make sure that you do it because that is getting you one step closer to speaking beautiful, natural, confident English.

Well, that's a wrap for today’s episode of The Real Life English with Gabby podcast. Be sure to download today’s study guide so that you can learn how to use this vocabulary confidently. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe for more weekly adventures in English learning. Also, I’d love to hear from you, so please leave me a review.

Thanks so much for tuning in.