Tell Me What You Did Summary: A Dark Vigilante Thriller
The Confession Is the Show
Every episode of Tell Me What You Did works the same way: strangers call in and confess their darkest secrets to host Poe Webb.
Then one caller flips the format, claiming he murdered her mother seventeen years ago.
Carter Wilson builds his thriller around that single reversal — the woman who harvests confessions becomes the one hunted for hers.
Set in a New England October that turns abruptly to snow, the novel follows Poe through live streams, burner phones, and fan-group sleuthing as an enemy she has never met closes in.
What follows traces the full story, its cast, and the ideas underneath it.
Explore the Complete & Detailed Tell Me What You Did Summary of All Chapters
TL;DR: The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
- Poe Webb hosts a top-ranked true-crime podcast where anonymous callers confess secrets.
- A guest calling himself “Ian Hindley” claims he killed Poe’s mother — and knows what she did in New York.
- A stalker campaign escalates into an abduction and a forced, live-streamed confession.
- The finale exposes the caller’s real identity and a family motive Poe never saw coming.
- It ends with a guilty plea, a short sentence, and a fragile kind of peace.
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Tell Me What You Did Summary: The Whole Story
Spoiler warning: this section recounts the complete plot, including the ending. Stop here if you want to go in cold.
Poe Webb was thirteen when her mother, Margaret McMillian, was stabbed to death in the family’s Manchester, New Hampshire home. Poe walked in on the killing. The attacker zip-tied her and threatened to kill her and her father if she ever spoke.
She spent three months unable to say a word, then kept the secret for seventeen years. What she never told anyone was that she had discovered her mother’s affair beforehand and come home early to catch the lovers.
Years later, burning with rage, Poe moved to New York to hunt the man she believed was her mother’s lover and killer: Leopold Hutchins.
She built a fake dating profile from her mother’s photo, lured him to her apartment, poisoned him, and suffocated him.
She buried the body near Lake Assunpink in New Jersey, then moved to Vermont with her black Lab, Bailey, and launched her podcast.
In the present, Poe records her 312th episode while her producer and boyfriend, Kip Nguyen, senses she is hiding something. Her next guest, using the name Ian Hindley, describes small acts of cruelty before saying the words that end the session: I killed your mother.
Poe cuts the feed, but the caller keeps coming — texting from a burner phone, calling himself Leopold Hutchins, and demanding a live broadcast.
Desperate, Poe drives to Manchester and confesses everything to her father: the murder she witnessed as a child and the murder she committed in Queens.
Her father answers with a confession of his own. His affair came first, and it drove her mother into another man’s arms.
Then the stalking turns physical.
The intruder rotates a framed photo of Poe’s mother, dumps raw meat in her driveway, breaks into her farmhouse, and mixes ant poison into Bailey’s bowls. Officer Jeff Gadecki’s investigation uncovers a hidden camera mounted on her gutter.
Poe and her father retreat to a rented cabin in Stowe, but the stalker rams their car off an icy road. On Halloween, he emails a video showing he has kidnapped Kip — and severed part of his pinky.
That night, more than eighty thousand listeners tune in. With Kip’s life on the line, the caller reverses the premise of Tell Me What You Did and forces Poe to become the confessor.
She admits on air to killing “Leonard Avery” in New York. He stabs Kip anyway and cuts the broadcast.
The internet takes over from there. Members of Poe’s private fan group trace the caller’s image to a mugshot: he is John Worbly, a convicted murderer released months earlier.
The timeline cracks open — Worbly was in prison when Margaret McMillian died, so he cannot be Hutchins.
Poe recognizes a streetlight in his webcam feed and realizes he broadcast from the empty house next door.
Armed with a hatchet, she slips inside and finds Kip alive, tied to a chair. Worbly confronts her with a gun and explains everything.
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“Leonard Avery” was Leonardo Worbly, his beloved older brother — the real serial killer who murdered Margaret McMillian and five other women. Leonardo used to call John in prison and brag about his kills in fishing metaphors.
When Leonardo vanished after meeting Poe, John deduced the truth and built the entire scheme to make her confess in public before she died.
Worbly forces Poe and Kip into a final game: kill each other, or he visits their families. Poe’s father bursts in with a baseball bat first, smashing Worbly to the floor.
Poe takes the revolver; after Worbly taunts her with a lie about a “third brother,” she shoots him dead.
Vermont accepts her self-defense claim for Worbly’s death, but Carter Wilson’s heroine refuses to hide behind it.
Poe pleads guilty to second-degree manslaughter for Leonardo’s murder and serves fourteen months.
From prison she runs a weekly podcast for inmates, accepts an invitation from Alice Hill to join a stalking-advocacy group, and reunites with Kip, her father, and Bailey.
The book closes with Poe dancing alone in her cell, free of the terror that shaped her life.
This book suits readers who like true-crime-adjacent thrillers, stalker suspense, and protagonists with blood on their hands. The vigilante element places the story squarely in moral gray territory rather than clean detective territory. The pacing is fast and escalating. Wilson breaks the plot into 100 short chapters across three parts, and the story builds through dread and escalation rather than a whodunit structure. Readers who enjoy dual timelines, transcript-style inserts, and a climax built around a live broadcast will find the format familiar in the best sense. Continue Reading: Listen for the Lie Summary: Darkly Thriller by Amy Tintera Mister Tender’s Girl by Carter Wilson — Alice Hill, who appears in this book mentoring Poe, gets her own story here. It shares the stalker thriller DNA and an obsession born from violence. The Father She Went to Find by Carter Wilson — A suspense novel about buried family secrets and memory. An excerpt is included in this edition. The Boy in the Woods by Carter Wilson — Another standalone from the author built on long-buried guilt and a crime that resurfaces. Are You Sleeping by Kathleen Barber — A true-crime podcast reopens a closed case and drags a family’s secrets into the open, mirroring Wilson’s podcast-frame premise. Sadie by Courtney Summers — A podcast-format investigation wrapped around a story of revenge for a family death. Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera — A woman becomes the subject of a true-crime podcast investigating a murder she may have committed. None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell — A podcaster’s interview subject turns the lens back on her, echoing the reversal at the heart of this novel.
Is Tell Me What You Did Right for You?
Characters In This Book
Character Role Poe Webb (born Dylan Poe Webb) Host of the Tell Me What You Did podcast who witnessed her mother’s murder at thirteen and later killed the man responsible. John Worbly (alias “Ian Hindley”) Ex-convict who stalks Poe under a false name to force a public confession for the murder of his brother. Kip Nguyen Poe’s producer and boyfriend, abducted and injured by Worbly during the finale. Poe’s Father Retired claims adjuster in Manchester who receives Poe’s confessions and intervenes in the final confrontation. Margaret McMillian Poe’s mother, stabbed to death seventeen years before the present story. Leonardo Worbly (“Leo” / “Leonard Avery”) John’s brother, a serial killer who murdered Margaret McMillian and five other women before Poe killed him. Alice Hill Coffee shop owner and stalker-attack survivor who advises Poe and later visits her in prison. Officer Jeff Gadecki Burlington police officer who investigates the break-in at Poe’s farmhouse. Bailey Poe’s aging black Labrador retriever. Grimm Poe’s father’s fifteen-pound cat. Effia Poe’s childhood best friend in Manchester. Tell Me What You Did at a Glance
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