True Crime Historian

Bannon Buries Bodies In The Haven BarnA family of six goes missing, and the only clue is a badly misspelled letter from a post office box that doesn't exist. Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 312 tells the story of a disappearing farming family in North Dakota, who were said to have gone out West for the health of the wife and mother. But the young man left in charge has a strange story to tell, and it keeps changing. When the truth is revealed, if it is revealed, the community seeks its own justice.More Mob JusticeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-17

01:05:55

The Lady Bluebeard Lyda SouthardAd-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 310 is the tale of Lyda Trueblood Meyer Southard, who is credited with killing four husbands, a brother-in-law, and her own baby. Along with a sordid marital history, this tale has the bonus of a daring prison escape and a 15-month flight from justice.Culled from the historic pages of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the Salt Lake City Telegram, and other newspapers of the era.More Serial KillersBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-14

01:08:52

Mrs. Creighton’s Cocoa And Egg NogThe epic saga of Mary Frances Creighton and her web of adultery, pedophilia, and murder.Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 307 is the epic tale of the serial killer Mary Frances Quevada Avery Creighton, who is generally credited with three poisonings, although she was acquitted in court on the first two. But 12 years later, she will find herself ensnared in a tangled web of adultery, pedophilia, and murder when she conspires with her live-in lover to poison his wife so that he can marry her teenage daughter. It’s a long and sordid tale, so settle in with your favorite beverage.More Serial KillersBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-12

01:54:34

Special Triple FeatureEpisodes 306, 309, 311Jerry The WildcatAd-Free Safe House EditionAdapted from True Detective, vol. 56 no. 4, February 1952By Jonas BayerA cowboy rolls into Miles City, Montana, on his way back home to Iowa, and stops in a local cafe to buy a fellow ranch hand a drink. When he's found later, beaten nearly to death in an alley and his roll of bills missing, officials set out to find the fiery red-head he had been talking to in the bar. There was only one clue as to who murdered the drunken cowboy: The fiery red-headed teenager he escorted out of the cafe.More Wild WesternsThree Women In BlackAd-Free Safe House EditionMidnight. A few harsh words. A glint of steel. Murder.More Femmes FataleThe Gatton MurdersAd-Free Safe House EditionWhen the grown Murphy children failed to return home from a dance, a wobbly wagon trail leads to a most horrible scene. Episode 311 explores one of Australia's historic mysteries, the death of a man and his two sisters -- and  an old horse -- found dead in an isolated paddock, the girls raped and all of them brutalized. More Unsolved CasesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-10

01:35:28

The Lizzie Halliday HorrorsAd-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 305 kicks off Lady Serial Killers Month with the strange story of Lizzie Halliday, the perpetrator of at least five, maybe six murders, and once you hear about those, you’ll wonder if maybe there weren’t a few more than that. In addition to six murders, the spice in this tale includes a near-lynching and the lunatic antics of the prisoner, the first American woman to receive a death sentence in the electric chair.More Serial KillersBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-06

01:17:12

The Racine Street Bridge HorrorWhen 14-year-old Hattie Zinka disappeared, people feared her body would be found in the river. It wasn't, but it was just as bad.Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 303 takes us back to 1909 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where a teenage girl disappears while walking home from her married sister’s house. The area was known as a dark, dangerous place, but she’d made the journey many times. Until one fateful dark night... Culled from the historic pages of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other newspapers of the era.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-04

59:24

The Brutal Murder Of Ethel Mae AtkinsAd-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 301 is an especially sordid tale, and I don’t belive all of the lurid details were revealed, although many of them hinted at as police and people who knew her inadvertently reveal uncomfortable truths even as they try to protect the dignity of the victim. But I think she just went on a bender and things took a dark fatal turn. What do you think?More stories of Capital CrimesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

03-02

01:03:50

The Brutal Murder Of Mayme ShermanA True Crime Short Story by Richard O JonesAd-Free Safe House EditionOne of the factors behind my interest in historical true crime is that my hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, seems to have a particularly rich history of crime--murder in particular, but not just murder. I’ve done several local programs about the safecrackers, bandits, and other notorious characters. This short story, “Bacon On The Table,” concerns the third of three “bluebeard” killers in the first decade of the 20th century. The first was the murder of Hannah Knapp by Alfred Knapp in December, 1902. This is the subject of my book, “The First Celebrity Serial Killer.” But even before this crime came to light, Samuel J. Keelor tried to decapitate his wife on Valentine’s Day, 1903. You can read more about that story in my ebook, “The Sleepwalking Slasher.”The following year, just a week after Knapp paid the ultimate penalty for his crime, Charles Victor Sherman commits the horrible crime detailed in this episode.In more recent days, Hamilton is the hometown of “the Cross Country Killer” Glen Rogers, who murdered at least five people in 1994 and 1995, and probably more than that. He is currently on death row.And perhaps the most sensational of all Hamilton stories is the Easter Massacre of 1975, in which James Urban Ruppert gunned down his mother, his brother, and his brother’s wife and eight children. But friends, this was not Hamilton’s first mass family murder, but our third. In 1925, Francis Lloyd Russell shot eight members of his family one hot summer night (see the Two-Dollar Terror “Massacre On Prospect Hill”). And in October, 1929, the barber Charlie King opened the gas pipes in his house while his wife and five sons slept, then hopped on a northbound freight train (see the Two-Dollar Terror “The Gas Fume Fugitive”).I am also descended from murderers, although their crimes weren’t in Hamilton but in various Kentucky locations. Maybe I’ll tell you about those someday.More Hometown HorrorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

12-11

29:30

The Saga of the Scoundrel Thomas McGehanA true crime short story by Richard O JonesAd-Free Safe House Edition-Episode 28 takes place on Christmas Eve 1870, when three men attack a local politician with boulders and slungshots, and at least a dozen men scramble for the door while five shots pepper the faro room at the American Saloon in Hamilton, Ohio, the hometown of True Crime Historian Richard O Jones. One of the bullets kills the politician, Thomas Myers, but in their haste none of the gamblers see who fired the shot. The blame falls on the leader of the gang of thugs who attacked Myers, his political rival Tom McGehean. At his trial, the famed former Congressman, exiled Copperhead, and gubernatorial candidate, Clement Vallandigham literally gives his life for McGehean's defense.Read-Along (more or less. It's not the exact same text)More Hometown HorrorsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

12-02

51:06

The Atrocities Of Albert FishI'D TURN BACK IF I WERE YOU!!!Episode 191 is without a doubt the vilest case you'll ever hear on this program because I don't think I could find a worse one if I tried. There's a lot of evil discussed here: torture, cannibalism, and more. Consider this your trigger warning: I'd turn back if I were you! Or at least put the kids to bed and plug in your ear buds. Keep this between us.Ad-Free EditionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

05-27

01:39:55

The Murder Of Mary PhaganEpisode 183 tells of one of the most infamous cases of an innocent man wrongly accused. When a teenage factory girl is found dead in the basement of an Atlanta pencil manufacturer, blame falls on the mild-mannered Jewish superintendent of the plant, and the jury takes the word of a drunken janitor. It’ll take 70 years for the truth to come out.Ad-Free EditionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

04-17

02:12:44

The Reily Mattock MurderEpisode 198 is centered on one of my favorite murder tropes, the so-called “eternal triangle,” between the cranky old farmer, his fading wife, and the handsome young farmhand. Yeah, that’s not going to end well, but they might have gotten away with it if they had just put the body across the tracks. It’s all in the details.Culled from the historic pages of the Hamilton Journal-News and other newspapers of the era.Ad-Free EditionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

01-05

02:04:10

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 by my colleague Susan Ferman, whose own podcast Catastrophic Calamities, will premiere next week on the Pulpular Media network. Susan will read about the case of Beulah Annan, who became Roxy Hart on stage. I will read the case of Belva Gaertner, who became Velma Kelly.Culled from the historic pages of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and other newspapers of the era.This episode includes a reference to a fellow murderess Sabela Nitti, whose story you can hear about in True Crime Historian 230, The Ugly Duckling Murderess.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

12-16

01:41:37

The Trial Of Rattlesnake James, The Red-Headed BluebeardEpisode 192 gets a bit epic, but it’s the story that keeps on giving, with two botched murders and moral charges to boot, and things go from crazy to crazier when they bring a pair of rattlers named Lethal and Lightning into the courtroom.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

12-03

02:35:40

A Litany of HorrorEpisode 12 is a reading of the chilling confession of Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, one of the most remarkable serial killers in American History. The whole nation was shocked and outraged in the waning years of the nineteenth century by the gruesome deeds of one Herman Mudgett, the arch fiend who took on the pseudonym H.H. Holmes as he prepared his famous "Castle of Death" in downtown Chicago. He was arrested for an insurance fraud in November 1894, but his string of murders, perhaps 200 in all, were soon revealed. He was convicted of one capital crime in Philadelphia, and while he awaited execution, he penned a confession detailing 27 murders that was published in newspapers across the country. He would recant this confession before he hanged, but really, you can't make this stuff up.Ad free Patreon edition with subscriptionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.