Criminal
Criminal is the first of its kind. A show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Named a Best Podcast of 2023 by the New York Times. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
The Big Lie
In the early 2000s, the hip hop group Silibil N’ Brains seemed like they were on the brink of becoming very famous. They had a record deal with Sony, had been on MTV, and were talking about making a TV show. But they weren’t who they said they were.
Gavin Bain's book is California Schemin'.
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Captain's Orders (Criminal+)
This episode is unlocked and available for everyone to listen to!
Phoebe tells a story about an uncooperative plane passenger. Plus, Lauren and Phoebe discuss what embarrasses Phoebe the most, the intentional vagueness of Criminal episode descriptions, and whether or not Phoebe is a "finger princess."
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The Test
When Mike Williams went missing while duck hunting on Lake Seminole, investigators wondered if he had been eaten by alligators. But Mike’s mother was sure something else had happened.
Mikita Brottman’s book is Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida.
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An American Original
In 1963, Jeanne and Alan Abel traveled to Washington, DC to picket in front of the White House. They said they were part of a campaign that wanted to put clothes on animals — including the first lady’s horse.
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Amok
While investigating a murder, a Polish detective discovered an unusual clue – a novel that contained an odd number of similarities to the real-life crime.
David Grann is the author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon, and his article about Krystian Bala is contained in his collection The Devil and Sherlock Holmes.
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Gone
One night in 1989, Karen Palmer got in her car with her husband and two daughters and drove away from their home in California. They didn’t tell anyone where they were going.
Karen Palmer’s memoir is She’s Under Here.
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Like a Bad Dream
One day in 2011, Lindsey Schweigert’s roommate came home to an open garage, a missing dog, and an overflowing bathtub. Lindsey remembers waking up in police custody.
Ramya Nagesh is the author of A Practical Guide to Insane and Non-Insane Automatism in Criminal Law – Sleepwalking, Blackouts, Hypoglycaemia, and Other Issues.
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Sister Helen
In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, “I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber.” When we spoke to her in 2021, she was 81, and had been present at the executions of six men.
Sister Helen’s book, Dead Man Walking, is about her time as a spiritual advisor to Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie.
This episode was originally released in 2021...
The Speeding Duck, the Hungry Javelina, and “Leonardo da Pinchy”
Stories of animals really going for it.
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Episode transcripts are posted on our website.
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The Knock
On Christmas morning, Laura Nowlin was in her living room with her infant son. They were getting ready to leave to spend the day with family. Then, Laura heard a knock on the door. She says it sounded frantic.
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Fall River
In 1833, a writer named Catharine Williams began working on a new book. She’d published books of poetry and about the Revolutionary War before, but this book was going to be different. It was going to be about a Methodist minister, a mill worker, and a murder.
Kate Dawson’s book is The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne.
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The Manual
In 1993, a family was found murdered in their home. A Maryland police spokesperson described the homicide investigation as the most “exhaustive and labor intensive” in the department’s history. And then investigators found a strange manual - written by someone calling themselves Rex Feral.
This episode was originally released in 2018.
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The Post Office
Scott Darlington ran the post office in a village outside Manchester for four years. One day, the computer system told him there was money missing from the branch – and he was accused of theft and fraud. “I started thinking, ‘Maybe I’ve done this and I just haven’t realized that it’s been me.’”
Nick Wallis’s book is The Great Post Office Scandal. Scott Darlington’s book is Signed Sealed Destroyed.
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The Boy Scout
When David Hahn was 16, he started working on something that caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the FBI.
Ken Silverstein’s book is The Radioactive Boy Scout.
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Rogers Park
The story of one day in one neighborhood in Chicago – and the people living there who try to stop ICE agents from arresting their neighbors.
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...Ghostwatch
On Halloween night, in 1992, an unusual television special aired on the BBC. Nobody expected what happened next. “The technicians were looking up at the big screen in the lobby, saying to each other, ‘My God, what's going on in Studio One?’”
This episode was first released in 2022.
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The Custom of the Sea
In 1883, a sailing captain named Thomas Dudley accepted a job no one thought was a good idea: to sail a small ship called the Mignonette halfway across the world.
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The Tusker
When Audrey Ryan’s father told her he once found 20 pounds of hash while he was fishing for scallops, she didn’t believe him. But he said that he wasn’t the only one who had found drugs in the ocean.
Audrey Ryan wrote about the Tusker for Boston Globe Magazine.
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Zak and Michelle
In 2006, a group of young men and teenagers were arrested under the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act for planning to set off bombs in Toronto. They were known as the Toronto 18. One of the group’s leaders was a 20-year-old named Zakaria Amara.
Michelle Shephard wrote about Zakaria Amara for The Walrus magazine.
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Patience
One Saturday morning in 2018, the police showed up at Patience Rousseau’s door, and started asking her questions about something she'd posted on Facebook after she'd had a miscarriage.
Caroline Kitchener’s article for The Washington Post is “She said she had a miscarriage — then got arrested under an abortion law.”
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The Phone Call
Bow Suprasert had just returned from a trip abroad when she got a strange phone call, saying a man had been caught traveling with a passport in her name. But Bow’s passport was still in her suitcase.
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The Compound
In 2023, a woman named Jella got a new job. On her first day, she got in a car to go to her new office. Then she got a feeling that something wasn’t right.
Denise Chan hosts the podcast Scam Factory.
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This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS
Phoebe tries to scam an English grandmother named Daisy over the phone. But Daisy isn’t just any grandmother.
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E. Jean
We visited E. Jean Carroll at her house in the woods to talk about her two trials against President Donald Trump.
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The Bus Ride
Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit, people who lived in the Fischer Housing Projects were still trapped – and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming to help. So 20-year-old Jabar Gibson came up with a plan.
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Kids on the Case
The summer after Jessica Maple finished 6th grade, she found out that her great-grandmother’s house had been burglarized. So, 12-year-old Jessica got out her notebook, looked for fingerprints, and decided she would conduct her own investigation. This week, four stories of kids who cracked the case.
This episode was first released in 2020.
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The Clock Starts Ticking
On October 11, 2008, an 18-year-old was shot by someone firing a gun from the back seat of a car. A couple of hours later, homicide detectives arrived on the scene. And so did the camera crew for a reality television show.
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Death in Eden
In the early 1930s, eight people settled on an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. Within five years, two were missing and two were dead.
Abbott Kahler’s book is Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II.
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...
The Double
In 2023, two men told police the same story: each man said that his name was William Woods, and that his identity had been stolen.
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<...The Man Nobody Killed
On September 15, 1983, Michael Stewart was on his way home from a nightclub when police arrested him. Thirteen days later, he was dead.
Elon Green’s book is The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York.
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The Clearwater Monster
Early one morning in 1948, a phone call woke up the police chief in the small town of Clearwater, Florida. The caller said he’d seen something strange at the beach. Residents had found an odd set of footprints in the sand, and a rumor began circulating that Clearwater Beach had a sea monster.
Listen to other episodes of This is Love at https://thisislovepodcast.com/.
This episode was first released in 2020.
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...Uncle Harold
In 1997, Eric Konigsberg received a strange voicemail from someone in prison — a hit man who had confessed to at least ten murders. Eric and the man had never spoken before, but Eric had a hunch about who it was: his uncle.
Eric Konigsberg’s book is Blood Relation.
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By Any Means Necessary
In July 2010, a woman was on vacation with her boyfriend of six years — they were traveling around Italy in a van. One day, she was looking for a pair of sunglasses in the glove box, and she found a passport. It had her boyfriend’s photo — but a different name.
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The Guru
In the late 1960s, a yogi named Swami Rama came to the United States. His followers believed he could read their minds, visit them in their dreams, and manipulate reality. Shruti Swamy was one of them.
Shruti Swamy wrote a version of this story for the June 12th issue of The Believer. You can find it at https://www.thebeliever.net/.
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Professor Quaalude
John Buettner-Janusch was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. He held prestigious faculty positions at Yale, Duke and NYU, before surprising everyone with a series of increasingly bizarre crimes.
Phoebe and Lauren got to visit the Duke Lemur Center in person – hear all about it in our latest episode of Criminal Plus. Use the promo code “JOINUS” for 20% off an annual membership. You’ll get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more.
Peter Kobel’s book is The Strange Case of the Mad Professor...
Thin Ice and Unusual Punishments
Two years ago, we started making Criminal Plus episodes — behind-the-scenes conversations featuring Phoebe and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohrer. Today, we’re sharing some of those conversations with you — about everything from Phoebe’s jangly bracelets to the reason a judge ordered a man to watch Bambi. And we’re also sharing a promo code if you’d like to support our work and join our membership program. Use the code “JOINUS” for 20% off of an annual Criminal Plus membership, at thisiscriminal.com/plus.
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Action Park
“Anyone who went to Action Park understood you could get really messed up going there. It was part of why you wanted to go.”
Seth Porges made a documentary about Action Park, along with Chris Charles Scott. It’s called Class Action Park.
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No Hint or Help
In the 1950s, a new television quiz show premiered called Twenty One. But the first episode was a disaster — so the producers decided to try something.
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False Positive
The night before she gave birth, Susan Horton had a salad for dinner. The next day, doctors told her she’d tested positive for opiates - and reported her to child welfare authorities.
This episode is from our friends at the Reveal podcast. Listen to a longer version here.
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Tabatha
When Tabatha Trammell was 50 years old, she started studying to become a doula — a support person for pregnant women. Today, most of her clients are incarcerated. She says she always tells them her own story when she meets them: “I went down that same road. But I'm here today. And I'm going to tell you how to navigate this prison system.”
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