True Crime Historian
Tales of classic scandals, scoundrels and scourges told through vintage newspaper accounts from the golden age of yellow journalismBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.
Episodes
A Bloody Family Bed
The Triple Confessions Of Willie LeeJump To AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 374 tells the story of an awful family murder in Boonville, Indiana, when a lazy young man takes an axe to his parents and brother on the eve of his wedding day. …
Mystery Tour In A Buick 8
The Vanishing Of Clyde ArmourJump To The AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 373 tells the story of two young men who go on a road trip together, but only one of them makes it as far as Santa Fe, and he pretends to be the other. In the meanwh…
Atrocity At St. Peter Street
La Chataine Juliette And The Perverted Professor Of Magnetic PhysiologyAd-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 372 delves into the history of one of the most hideous villains to ever stalk American streets, a predator so vile that he ranks up the…
The Main/Swayne Affair
The Napavine Hatchet MurderJump To AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 371 seems to start out as a salacious story of a seedy sexual situation gone awry, but the sleaze paves the way to a more interesting subplot of a district attorney forced…
The Plymouth Sex Murder
A Band-Aid Solution To The MysteryJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITION!!!!Episode 370 tells the story of a World War II era veteran whose mental issues earned him an honorable discharge from service, but he slips through the system, wreak…
Mr. & Mrs. Bluebeard
Martha Beck’s Lonely Hearts ClubJump To AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 368 tells the tragicomic tale of a romantic and business partnership that goes awry when a woman’s jealousy overpowers her professional detachment. It’s also a love s…
Hard Cider And Insults
Struck By An Axe And KilledJump To AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 367 is a holiday tale more bone-chilling than heart-warming. It takes place the weekend after Thanksgiving, when family and friends get together for games and good times. …
An Acid Bath For The Suffragist
The Lillian Scheib Mystery Jump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 366 tells the sad story of a woman found dead in a bathtub, so decomposed that police first assume it is her husband, as she is sick and convalescing somewhere. When the t…
Attacked In The Courtroom
The Buffalo Thanksgiving MurderJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 365“I’ll get you a Thanksgiving dinner if I have to kill someone to get it!” the young thug promised his girlfriend. Dinner, however, was not forthcoming.Listen To Mor…
The Lake Bluff Furnace Girl
The Burning Love Of Elfrieda KnaakJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 364 tells an unusual story of a broken-hearted young woman found naked and fatally burnt in the basement of a police station. Her family, the police, and the genera…
The Boy Said 'Papa Shot'
The Cuba Triple MurderJump To The Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 363 takes place in rural Ohio, when a woman, her daughter, and her daughter’s suitor are gunned down in front of three young children. The daughter’s ex-husband says he arr…
Evil Plan Drunkenly Botched
The Greenlease Kidnapping TragedyJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 362 takes on one of the most evil crimes imaginable as told from the point of view of the perpetrator. By the time police caught up with Carl Austin Hall, he had mad…
Duchess Spinelli's Crime School
The Halfwit Gang Of Golden Gate AvenueJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionAlthough there’s nothing funny about real-life murder, if Episode 361 were fictional, you could shelve it right next to Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen and the wacky cha…
Allegations Of Arsenic Ice Cream
The Father Stood TrialJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 359 details one of the most chaotic cases I’ve yet to come across. The investigation left a lot of unanswered questions and the prosecution seems motivated by political pressur…
The Largest Sheriff In Oregon
The Terror Of All Toughs Killed By Horse ThiefJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 358 is dedicated to the Safe House Scoundrel Marlene Resch who required a story from her home town of Eugene, Oregon, and we are happy to oblige. The vi…
The Mysterious Postmistress Of West Palm Beach
The Trial Of Lena ClarkeJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 357 is a crazy blend of murder, embezzlement, and a ghost story. When a former post office clerk is found murdered in the hotel room of a woman who had been a co-worker, …
Blinded By Murder
The Senator, The Embezzler, And The Girl They LovedJump To AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 356 takes a look at a scandalous murder and failed suicide attempt that leaves the perpetrator blind and a state senator defending not only his own…
The Dandy Sheriff Of Dona Ana
Killing Billy The KidJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 355 takes us back to the Old West with a profile of one of the classic rivalries of the era: The lanky Sheriff Pat Garrett v. the notorious William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid…
The Duquesne Door-To-Door Killer
HA Debaucher Of Children Gets His RevengeJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 354 is a real trip to the dark side as it recounts the rampage of a local beat patrolmen the result of having his ugly perverted secrets revealed. Althou…
Ready For Rope
The Murder Of Sheriff Rogers At GlencoeJump To The Ad-Free SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 353 takes place in late 19th century Minnesota, but plays out like a classic Western tale. You know the one, where a pair of strangers come into town, shoo…
Tragedy At The Trysting Place
The Ladies’ Man Lawyer & The Mysterious BlondeJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 151 recalls a fatal shooting on a dark country road when a pair of unemployed thugs set out to rape and plunder unsuspecting couples looking for a quiet…
Gin! Jazz! Guns!
The Real ‘Chicago’ MurdersEpisode 352 explores the two murders that inspired the hit musical “Chicago,” which was based on a play by Maurine Watkins, who did some reporting on both cases as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I’ll be joined…
The Bad Butcher Boy Of Hollywood
The Murder Of Myrtle MellusJump To Ad Free Safe House EditionEpisode 350 relates the tale of a love triangle ending in tragedy when a Hollywood socialite is found murdered after one of her regular trysts with her young lover. There’s a lot …
Blood On The Bridge
The Murder Of Bessie LittleJump To The Ad-Free SAFE HOUSE editionEpisode 348 takes place in Dayton, Ohio, just up the Great Miami River from my hometown. I'm trying to come up with a name for this particular narrative trope, the murder of a…
Secrets Of A Meddling Mother-In-Law
The Trunk In Minnie Lee Griffin’s BasementJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 347 is a cautionary tale about what can go wrong if you get too involved in the lives of your grown children. When the widow Minnie Lee Griffin thought that…
The Candy Kid Escapes
Demise Of The Whittemore GangJump to the Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 345 follows the end of the career of the leader of a notorious East Coast gang that terrorized Baltimore and several New York Cities in their bloody quest for money…
Assassination Of The Gambler
The Corruption Of Lieutenant Charles Becker.Jump to Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 116 is a story about police corruption in New York’s Tenderloin District at the turn of the last century. The Tenderloin District around Broadway was so n…
Under The Haunted Oak
The Brutal Murder of Gussie PfeifferJump To The Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 115 is a baffling case indeed. The body of a young factory girl who had been missing for three days is found “brutalized,” as the euphemism goes, before being…
Mother Chose Murder (Part 2)
The Cleveland Kaber ConspiracyBy Marjorie WilsonJump to Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 114Back in the golden ages of newspapers, it was common for them to publish serialized novels of romance, adventure,and intrigue, but true crime seria…
Mother Chose Murder (Part One)
The Cleveland Kaber ConspiracyBy Marjorie WilsonJump to Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 114Back in the golden ages of newspapers, it was common for them to publish serialized novels of romance, adventure,and intrigue, but true crime seria…
Shoot-Out At Wolf Creek
The Scoundrel Albert BrownleeJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 344 takes place in the Pacific Northwest and follows the career of a World War I veteran who returns to a life of crime. This fellow’s a peck of trouble, and since the H…
Rampage On Seventh Street
The Scoundrel Herman KabanskyJump To Ad-Free Safe House EditionThere’s a lot of action packed into Episode 343. In addition to a drunken shooting spree and a heroic policeman, the story packs in an escape from jail, an attempted suicide, an…
The Hawes Family Horror
A Bloody Riot In BirminghamJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 342 is dedicated to listeners Paula Wellman and Marcie Braden, who along with the Historic Birmingham Facebook group suggested this case and provided me with tons of r…
Jealous Murder At The Brown Palace Bar
The Degradation Of Sassy SpringerJump To Commercial-Free SAFE HOUSE EditionEpisode 340 tells of a double murder--one intentional, one accidental--arising out of an unusual love triangle, a married wealthy Denver socialite and two men, both …
The Torch Singer & The Tobacco Heir
Scandal At ReynoldaJump to the AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 338 weaves the tale of mystery surrounding the shocking death of the youngest son of the tobacco king R.J. Reynolds when he is found dead in the family’s palatial North Caroli…
Death Of A Ghost Writer
The Australian Aviatrix And Her SuitorsJump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 341 tells the scandalous story of one of Miami, Florida’s most sensational murders when a young writer is found dead in a sleeping porch, a bullet in his h…
A Hatchet In Her Handbag
The Murder Of The Butcher Pops Wagner Jump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 117 tells the story of sweet 16-year-old Lena Theresa Neinstedt, known as Terry, a pretty eighth-grade dropout with a habit of stealing government checks ou…
True Crime Shorts
Episode 118Jump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITION"Murder For Two Dollars And Forty-Five Cents" tells the story of how a newsboy finds the clue solving a professional (well, sorta) murder."The War Hero's Love Letters Sentenced Him To Die" (1…
A Tale Of Two Wives
A Double Dose Of ArsenicJump to the AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 119 tells the sordid tale of Edith Carew, an English society woman living as an expatriate in Japan, who goes to trial for poisoning her husband. The the press couldn’t h…
The Boy With One White Eye
The Brutal Crimes and Punishment of Jesse Pomeroy Jump to the AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONEpisode 121 concerns one of the most heinous crimes ever committed by a teenager. Jesse Pomeroy was but 14 years old when he was arrested for abducting …