A True Crime History Podcast
On a beautiful fall day in September 1916, 68-year-old Hannah Spielman went on a picnic with her new husband, 71-year-old James Allen, in the woods outside Grand Rapids, Michigan. She
Continue readingHenry Scott Mausell: Michigan’s First Serial Killer? w/ Allie Seibert
My guest, William J. Mann, has spent years writing about Hollywood, and in his new book “Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood”, he takes a fresh look
Continue readingThe Black Dahlia: Another Suspect w/ William J Mann
On this episode of Most Notorious, I speak with author Jack El-Hai about his book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting
On October 21, 1836, crowds lined the docks of Saint John, New Brunswick, to watch the steamship Royal Tar depart for Portland, Maine – this time carrying an entire circus.
Continue readingThe Wreck of the Circus Ship Royal Tar w/ Jane Parks Gardner
At the close of the nineteenth century, serial killer Joseph Vacher terrorized the French countryside for years, eluding capture while murdering more victims than Jack the Ripper. His sprawling crime
Continue readingThe Killer of Little Shepherds w/ Douglas Starr
On April 13, 1788, outrage erupted in New York City when word spread that students from the local medical school were stealing corpses from nearby graveyards, at the direction of
Among the many murder cases handled by South Carolina attorney Dick Harpootlian, one continues to stand apart: the prosecution of Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. A serial killer and sexual predator,
Continue readingSerial Killer Pee Wee Gaskins w/ Dick Harpootlian
In January 1947, the bisected body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a firestorm of
Continue readingThe Black Dahlia & the Prairie Heiress Murders: One Killer? w/ Eli Frankel
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and
Continue reading417: The Shipwreck of the Mignonette w/ Adam Cohen
In 1942, two Abwehr German agents, including Johannes Eppler, slipped into Cairo to gather intelligence for Rommel’s desert campaign, getting help from local allies like the famous dancer Hekmet Fahmy
Continue readingNazi Germany’s Bungled Operation Condor w/ Gavin Whitehead