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.
The Chinatown Trunk Murder
The Awful Death Of Elsie Sigel
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Episode 33 is the sad tale of Elsie Sigel, a pretty young girl from a prominent New York family, went to work as a missionary in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In the summer of 1909, police found Elsie’s body packed in a trunk in an apartment above a chop suey joint.
Hear more stories about TRUNK MURDERS!!!
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The Man With The Twisted Foot
The Strange Death Of Edith May Thompson
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Episode 23 revolves around a friendship between a socialite and an erudite, seemingly scholarly man who came to live in her hometown on the eastern shore of Maryland. The residents of Talbot County were shocked beyond belief when a pair of crab trappers pull the body of the newly-married young woman from the Chesapeake Bay and the newcomer disappears. Adapted from the April 1930 of True Detective Mysteries by Sheriff A.E. Walsh as told to K.S. Daiger.
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The Poisoner Laughs
Tea With Aunt Carrie
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Episode 455 takes place down under when the friends and relatives of Caroline Grill of New South Wales begin falling dead from rat poisoning. I can’t quite figure out if Auntie Carrie is stupid or crazy like a fox. You tell me.
Hear FIFTEEN More Tales of POISON Murderers
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The Blonde Who Pulled The Trigger
The True Crime of Irene SchroederÂ
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Episode 32 takes place during the early days of the Great Depression, when one patrolman is killed and another seriously wounded while trying to prevent a trio of bandits who had robbed a department store in Western Pennsylvania from making a getaway. The surviving officer said it was not one of the two men who killed his partner, but the woman of the group, a young blonde, who was using her four-year-old son as a shield in the getaway. The child, recovered a few days l...
Guilty Or Not, They Hung Him Twice
The Botched Execution of George H. Painter
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Episode 27 starts shortly after midnight, the night of  May 17, 1891, when George H. Painter awoke the people living in his Chicago house shortly after midnight, shouting that his common law wife Alice Martin had been murdered. Painter himself went to fetch the police, who promptly arrested him for the murder. The trial made it a cut and dry case, and Painter was sentenced to hang, although he insisted his innocence up to the very end. His lawyers continued to investigate while Painter s...
Fingers Convict Him
On September 19, 1910, a prowler broke into the home of Clarence Hiller in the Chicago neighborhood Morgan Park. When he awoke Hiller’s 13-year-old daughter, pandemonium erupted and before it was over, Hiller lay dead at the bottom of the stairs. In breaking into the house, Thomas Jennings left his left palm print in a freshly-painted porch rail. Those prints would be the first ever admitted into evidence. The case changed police standard practices across the nation and around the world. Â
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The Last Bad Man Of The West
The Scoundrel Tom Horn
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Episode 454 takes us back to the end of the Old West era, where a cattleman’s agent is arrested for the murder of a sheep farmer’s son. Yes, that was a real conflict back then. Tom Horn, the hired gun, had a long history of adventure, deeds good and foul, but the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy was a bullet too far for the colorful Tom Horn, who wrote a book about his life and expl...
Was It Mother? Or Murder?
Pittsburgh’s Feely Murder Mystery
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You’ll need your thinking cap for Episode 129, about as cold a case as you can get. It’s about eighty years old, but even police officials at the time could not agree on what happened in the back room of that tiny home, whether it was a murder or a murder/suicide. I’m not going to say we can solve it from a few newspaper clippings, but there does seem to be something amiss.
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A French Maid's Dirty Laundry
The Ordeal Of Hattie LeBlanc
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Episode 413 is the sordid little tale of a French Canadian girl who gets wrapped up in an ugly situation involving her employers, a womanizing laundry owner and his suffering wife. It only gets uglier when the husband ends up dead, the maid arrested, but it seems to be the wife who stands trial.
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Killer Caught By A Thread
The Mulholland Drive Sack Murder
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Episode 411 details the events following the discovery alongside the famed Mulholland Drive of a body sewn up in a makeshift canvas bag fashioned from an old awning. All fingers point to her friend, a physician with a shady past, whose defense is simply the old standby: “What? Who? Me?”
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A Fatal Clang Of The Trolley
The President’s Close Call
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Episode 452 explores the aftermath of a presidential mishap when Teddy Roosevelt's carriage collides with an electric trolley racing to make up for lost time. A Secret Service guard dies immediately and the trolley driver is charged with his murder. Was this a simple accident? A case of incompetence? Or was the motorman made a scapegoat for a nation’s grief and outrage?
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Fall River Nurse Found In Tiverton Ditch
The Interstate Strangulation Of Verna Russell
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Episode 409 is the story of a spoiled young man who wouldn’t take no for an answer and let his rage get the better of him. The best evidence against him will come from the very source he turned to in order to hide his deed.
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The Girod Street Assassination Ambuscade
The City Of New Orleans Vs. The Mafia
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Episode 408 explores the lead-in and aftermath of one of the most deadly vigilante actions in American history. When the commissioner of police is assassinated on his way home, a committee of 50 citizens call an indignation meeting, and you know how those are likely to go. Just a couple of notes: One, the descriptions of the action in Act III are quite graphic, so use your discretion. And two, there are several instances of a derogatory term used in this episode, but...
Meat Juice Mischief
The Accusations Against Florence Elizabeth Maybrick
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Episode 407 is dedicated to my new friend from the United Kingdom, Joan Smith, who asked me to dig up more stories from across the great pond. This one involves an American woman who marries a Brit old enough to be her father, and is then charged with his poisoning. The bulk of this episode is adapted from a three-part newspaper series by Stewart Robinson, published after Florence Maybrick’s death in 1941, and part of it from her own account of her ordeal, a bo...
A Corpse In The Morris Canal
The Work Of The Mormon Butcher
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Episode 451 begins in the summer of 1902, when a woman’s mutilated body is pulled from the Morris Canal, and the trail leads to a blood-soaked missionary’s flat in Manhattan. The suspect: William Hooper Young, grandson of Mormon patriarch Brigham Young, whose notebook bore the chilling phrase “Blood Atonement.” This is a rich episode about the strange descent of a scholar turned tramp, and the murder that made headlines thunder with scandal, scripture, and slaughter.
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The Perth Ballroom Tragedy
Audrey Jacob Stands Trial
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Episode 406 comes from a special request from one of my many listeners Down Under, this one the tragic story of a spurned young woman who settles the score on the dance floor. And we’re not talking about a tango competition, but her trial is a dramatic one and the resolution is indeed surprising.
Hear More Stories From DOWN UNDER.
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A Mother-In-Law's Revenge
The Horrible Horner-Simpson Affair
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Episode 404 is jam-packed with crazy when a fun-loving dentist is charged with the double-barrel shotgun murder of his father-in-law. The family dynamic seems to go off the rails in the lead-in to the trial, and there are a couple of interesting subplots to keep things going, including a long-lost relative and the sad story of the only eye-witness to the affair.
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Austin Family Found In Cistern
Eugene Burt Flees From Justice
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Episode 403 explores the story of a man who leaves his family battered and murdered in a cistern under their Austin home, and heads out of town on the midnight train. He thinks he can disappear in a big city, but Chicago has another story.
Hear More Stories About The Death Of INNOCENTS
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Missouri Mob Justice
The Lynching Of Lloyd Warner
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Plus transcripts and deep-dive research for Safe House residents
Episode 449 tells the story of civil unrest sparked by reports of a young white woman being sexually assaulted by a young black male, a story all too common in American history, and like many of the others, it appears likely that the unruly mob lynched and incinerated the wrong man.
Hear more stories about MOBS & RIOTS
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Baby Amy & The Broadway Gigolo
A Fake Hold-Up Murder Plot
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Episode 402 tells the story of a discontented wife and her young paramour, who set in motion a plan to stage a robbery to get money for a quick Reno divorce. The victim, her husband. Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. There are some intense personalities in this story and a lot of theatrics, including a murder victim testifying from beyond the grave.
Hear More Stories About ROBBERIES GONE AWRY
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Petroleum, Politics, Passion
Clara Smith Hamon Takes The Stand
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Episode 401 tells the salacious story of a leading politician who shows up at a private hospital with a gunshot wound. He tells the doctor it was self-inflicted, but that turns out to be a cover story. Why the big lie? You guessed it: There’s a woman in the case, and what she has to say will blow your mind.
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Interred In An Irrigation Ditch
Josie Kensler’s Delicate Condition
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Episode 400 employs a trope we’ve seen before: the cranky old farmer whose wife takes up with the farm hand and well, it just doesn’t end well for anybody. But this one, taking place near the turn to the twentieth century in rural Idaho, has its own particular set of twists, turns, and complications, and conflicting testimony between the two accused.
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A Bloody Scream In The Night
The Axe Murder Of Alice Mallett
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Episode 450 begins with a scream in the night as the beautiful Miss Alice Mallett, her body brutally defiled, found in a bloody pool. The town of Jackson, Michigan, reels, a mob thirsting for vengeance. The twisted trail of an axe points to the fiendish George Straub, an ex-con with a dark past. But wait! Did he act alone? Or did another shadowy figure lurk in the night? With tear gas exploding and fingers pointing, justice hangs by a thread as a city demands blood!
...
The Elm City Tragedy
The Life And Death Of Jennie E. Cramer
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Episode 397 tells the story of a young girl in late 1800’s New England who falls in with a fast crowd with fatal results. Three people were tried for her murder, but it’s up to you to decide whether she was the victim of her own shame, or if the victim of an unjust patriarchal society.
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Pirates On The Penguin
The Astounding Disappearance Of Benjamin Collings On Long Island Sound
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Episode 396 relates the puzzling story of a family apparently attacked on their cabin cruiser on an inky summer night. The husband is missing and the wife and five-year-old daughter have an amazing tale to tell. But can her story hold water as well as the 26-foot cruiser?
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What Happened To Alma Kellner
The Fiendish Slaughter Of An Innocent Child
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Episode 394 relates the tragic tale of an eight-year old girl who fell into the clutches of a degenerate murderer. The hero of this story is a Louisville, Kentucky, detective who not only pieces together the crime, but embarks on a cross-country chase for the alleged murderer, who proves to be slippery even behind bars.
Hear More Murders of THE INNOCENTS
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Farmer's Wife Left For Dead
Brothers Face Gas Chamber Together
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Episode 392 explores the case of two brothers charged with the murder of a Colorado farmer and his “chore boy.” The chief witness against them is the farmer’s wife, who made a miraculous getaway and recovery.
Hear More Stories About CAPITAL CRIMES
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A Cowardly Blow In The Dark
The Barber And The Gambler’s Wife Stand Trial
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Episode 393 takes us back to the Gilded Age and the salacious story of a professional gambler who is fatally attacked as he leaves his house to go to the hotel where he operates. Blame falls on his barber, who confesses to the crime and implicates the gambler’s wife, accusing her of not only having an interracial affair with him, but also with a younger man who just moved to town. All three are arrested, but who is really the culp...
The Blue-Eyed Six
The Indiantown Creek Insurance Murder Plot
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Episode 390 explores what was reported to be the first murder case in the English-speaking world where six men receive a guilty verdict on one indictment, the result of a plot to murder a man in order to receive the benefits of a bunch of insurance policies. It doesn’t really end well for anyone.
Hear More Stories About CAPERS & CONSPIRACIES
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The Dim-Witted Milkman And The Gambler's Wife
Murder In The Attic With Pipe, Gun, and Knife
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Episode 389 details one of the clumsiest murder plots we’ve yet to encounter, and is jam-packed with some of our favorite tropes: A love triangle gone awry and a trunk murder, to name a couple, with a large dose of crowded courtroom hijinx, including a highly inappropriate kiss between defendants.
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The Servant Girl's Trunk Of Horrors
Domestic Scandal In Sioux Falls
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Episode 388 is not a classic trunk murder, per se, but one of the most dramatic scenes in the narrative comes when the prosecutor opens up a dead girl’s trunk in front of witnesses to speculate on the abuses its contents portend. Two families are ripped apart in this gripping drama where evidence is thin but accusations are as abundant and brutal as the wounds on the poor girl’s dead body.
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Sweet Singer Strangled In A Stable
The Repudiated Confessions Of Richard Ivens
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Episode 398 explores the tragic murder of a Chicago housewife and the subsequent confession of the simple minded young man who found the body in a refuse pile.
Listen To More BAD CONFESSIONS
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Dead Woman On Trial
A Hung Jury For Hazel Combs
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Episode 387 starts out conventionally enough: A woman murders her husband to collect the double indemnity insurance policy. But when after she cheats the hangman at the  end of Act II, the story doesn’t stop there. Because of the legal technicalities of the insurance she took out, a jury still has to determine whether or not she committed the crime in Act III.
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PREVIEW: A Corpse In The Morris Canal
Coming October 15!!!
The Work Of The Mormon Butcher
Episode 451 begins in the summer of 1902, when a woman’s mutilated body is pulled from the Morris Canal, and the trail leads to a blood-soaked missionary’s flat in Manhattan. The suspect: William Hooper Young, grandson of Mormon patriarch Brigham Young, whose notebook bore the chilling phrase “Blood Atonement.” This is a rich episode about the strange descent of a scholar turned tramp, and the murder that made headlines thunder with scandal, scripture, and slaughter.
Available for advance ad-free listening now at The Safe House!
Jus...
The Count Of Gramercy Park
The Slippery Scoundrel Gerald Chapman
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Episode 384 tells the story of a so-called gentleman thief who fearlessly went for the big scores, even while the object of a nation-wide man-hunt. This is another action-packed episode loaded with gunfights, jailbreaks, courtroom breakdowns, and all kinds of shenanigans. Act III starts with a rather odd, melodramatic feature story published while this creep was waiting for the hangman.Â
Jump To More Stories With PRISON BREAKS
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The Escapes And Execution Of Elroy Kent
The Vermont Desperado
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Episode 386 tells the epic story of one of New England’s most persistent scoundrels. It’s the kind of story I delight in finding, that in another context would make a great Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel, this one about a slippery but dim-witted thief, that would almost be comic if there wasn’t a tragic loss of life in Act II, and even when he gets his come-uppance in Act III, there’s still a couple of strange twists in the tale. No spoilers, but let’s just say...
Breaking News!
Our long international nightmare is over! True Crime Historian is coming off hiatus with a block of brand new episodes. The first new release comes October 1 with "A Bloody Scream In The Night: The Axe Murder Of Alice Mallett.
Episode 450 begins with a scream in the night as the beautiful Miss Alice Mallett, her body brutally defiled, found in a bloody pool. The town of Jackson, Michigan, reels, a mob thirsting for vengeance. The twisted trail of an axe points to the fiendish George Straub, an ex-con with a dark past. But wait! Did he act alone...
Under The Windsor Hearthstone
The Murderous Journeys Of Frederick Deeming
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Episode 383 is another request from a listener Down Under, the story of a man who brutally murdered his wife and buried the body inside the house, then disappeared. Although they capture him at the end of Act II, Act III reveals an even more gruesome murder on the opposite side of the globe. He’s a slippery one, but he gets his comeuppance.
Hear More Episodes About BLUEBEARDS
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The Brown-Out Strangler
The Court Martial Of Pvt. Eddie Leonski
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Episode 382 is dedicated to the Australian scoundrel Philip Quinn, a dedicated listener from Down Under who wanted to hear more about the case of Eddie Leonski, an American soldier who terrorized of Melbourne with a murder spree while the city was under mandated “brown-outs,” reductions in the use of lighting to make it less of a air raid target. The only good contemporary coverage of the case was during the trial, which was conducted by the American Army and not the local gove...
Murders Of The Buncombe County Mankiller
An Incident In The Blacksmith’s Shop
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Episode 380 tells the story of a violent rampage and its aftermath, when a jealous man shoots a rival down in cold blood and then bashes his head with a hammer. There are enough witnesses that there’s no question his guilt, and the third act details the extremes he will take to avoid a date in the electric chair.
Hear About More Murders Committed With AXES & HAMMERS!
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