The 9-part limited investigative series debuts November 5, 2025

Listen to the official trailer now, HERE

WHAT: The chart-topping true crime iHeartPodcast “Paper Ghosts” is back for its fifth season. The new installment, “Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders” will take listeners back to 1983, when two teens were found murdered, execution-style, on a hill in Weatherford, Texas. The investigation was botched with rumors and speculation running rampant throughout the town and into the surrounding areas. Over the next 42 years, law enforcement got close to finding answers but always backed away.

Michelle “Shelly” Cauliflower, 14, and Vincent Tejerina, Jr., 16, were out on their first car date but failed to come home. The next morning, Vincent’s father found the teens shot dead inside Vincent’s car. Their deaths were just two in a series of local teen murders, strange “suicides” and “accidents” which still need to be accounted for and explained.  

Veteran investigative journalist and host M. William Phelps has spent several years putting together a case and uncovering answers families have been waiting on for decades. Over 9 episodes, the podcast will dig into more than 100 hours of Phelps’ completed interviews from scores of witnesses and experts including law enforcement and anonymous sources no one has spoken to before, putting together a case so unfathomable it has become almost hard to believe, cracking open a narrative of what likely happened and who is responsible.

“The parallels between this case and the television series ‘Breaking Bad’ seriously made me take a look at if the TV producers used this case as the basis for their show,” said Phelps. “The answers go all the way up to the top of the law enforcement chain and there are people out there who need to answer for these crimes. We all know the hierarchy of sheriffs’ departments in this country and how they seem to have their own version of justice. In Texas, they say, everything is bigger—and that certainly includes all the corruption.”

WHO: Executive-produced, written and hosted by M. William Phelps—veteran podcaster of the chart-topping hit iHeartPodcasts “Paper Ghosts” and “White Eagle,” and hit weekly show “Crossing The Line With M. William Phelps.” Phelps is a New York Times bestselling author of nearly 50 true-crime books, an investigative journalist and tv personality. The series is co-produced by M. William Phelps, LLC and iHeartPodcasts.

WHEN: The first episode will premiere November 5, 2025 with new episodes weekly on Wednesdays.

WHERE: “Paper Ghosts: The Texas Teen Murders” will be distributed by iHeartPodcasts and available on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard. Listen to the trailer now HERE.

PODCAST PLAYER EMBED:

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About M. William Phelps

M. William Phelps is the New York Times best-selling author of 46 nonfiction books and winner of the Excellence in (Investigative) Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Phelps has written for numerous publications, including the Providence Journal, Connecticut Magazine and Hartford Courant. Diversifying his talents, Phelps consulted on the first season of the hit Showtime cable television series Dexter and has executive produced and starred in over 350 hours of true crime television. All of which gives him a confluence of expertise and experience to bring to true crime fanatics. Phelps grew up in East Hartford, Connecticut, and now splits his time between Tolland County and Stonington, CT. In July 2017, he published his definitive, 10-year project about Happy Face Killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson, DANGEROUS GROUND: My Friendship with a Serial Killer. Reach Phelps at mwilliamphelps@comcast.net/860-519-9382 - @mwilliamphelps across all social media.