Box in the Basement

Texas’s Oldest Unsolved Family Massacre: What Really Happened to the Arellanos?

Episode 76

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In 1968, five members of the Arellano family were slaughtered outside a remote Texas farmhouse, after two blown out tires in the middle of nowhere. Like out of a horror movie, the whole family was found shot, stabbed and beaten to death, with one sole survivor, 5-year old Manuel Jr. He claims a cowboy good Samaritan who helped with their flat tire was the perpetrator, a man police never found. 

With renewed attention from journalists, podcasters, and even the Texas Rangers, pressure is building to uncover the truth. New evidence and theories, was it a sole man, or multiple perpetrators? 

Join Arlene and Leah as they examine the victims, the timeline, the eerie silence of the investigation, and the lingering shadows cast by one of Texas’s most baffling mass murders.

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