Shadows From the Tree

In this episode, we’re traveling back to the late 19th century to meet two women whose stories left behind questions that still haven’t been answered. Florence Maybrick was convicted of poisoning her husband with arsenic—but was she really a murderess, or did a scandalous marriage, an affair, and a web of suspicious circumstances condemn her?And then there’s Jesse Booth, a mother accused of something even more unthinkable: killing her own baby. But did she really commit the crime, or was she another woman caught in a story where suspicion proved easier than certainty? Listen in as we draw parallels to the current Lindsay Clancy case. Two women. Two shocking accusations. And two cases where the truth may be far more complicated than the headlines made it seem.

Season 4 is coming!. Starting back up again October 2026, we will dive even deeper into forgotten family histories. We’re uncovering forgotten stories of unsung heroes, industrial disasters, imposters, complicated love triangles, and remarkable survivors. New mysteries, new voices, and more stories waiting to be unearthed from the past.

History remembers the names of men first. It carves them into buildings, headlines, and verdicts, while the women caught between them become footnotes. They were called muses, temptresses, excuses. In tonight’s episode, we follow two love triangles separated by circumstance but bound by pattern: one played out beneath the electric lights of Gilded Age New York, the other behind closed doors where jealousy and control went unnoticed until it was too late. At the center of both is not romance, but power masqueraded as love, and violence justified as passion. The real story lived in the silence history left behind.

In this episode, we shine light on two stories involving arsenic poisoning. First is the true story of the Watkins family of Manchester, Michigan, whose children were slowly poisoned by arsenic-laced wallpaper in their Victorian home. As well as the infamous tale of Belle Gunness, who had a habit of collecting insurance payouts from fires and the deaths of her husbands.

In this episode of Shadows from the Tree, we discuss the 19th century fear of being buried alive, taphophobia. This wasn't an abstract of irrational fear for people of the era, but a response to genuine medical uncertainty. Listen in to hear more about the tales of Essie Williams Dunbar, a South Carolina woman with 2 funerals. As well as the interesting lengths the Pursel family of Pennsylvania, went to avoid such a fate.