NEW SERIES: The Deadly Seven

Ashley Wilcott, a former TV anchor, judge, and trial lawyer, opens her new podcast series The Deadly Seven with a blunt observation: almost every case she has covered over the years intersects with one of the seven deadly sins—pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. These are not just religious concepts, she argues, but the actual engines behind why criminals commit crimes. "They cannot resist their temptations," she says, and the series sets out to examine both the biggest and the lesser-known cases to uncover that "why behind the crime, the motive."

The Framework: Sin as Motive

Wilcott positions the seven deadly sins as the opposite of the seven heavenly virtues, but her interest is not theological. It is forensic. She treats each sin as a distinct motivational category that can explain seemingly inexplicable behavior. Rather than looking at the surface details of a crime—the weapon, the scene, the timeline—she pushes toward the psychological and moral impulse that set the event in motion. This framework allows her to group cases by the underlying human failing rather than by the type of crime, which can reveal patterns that a purely legal or procedural analysis might miss.