Bad Elizabeth

The United States of America is almost 250 years old, and political violence has been here the whole time. On this episode of Bad Elizabeth Kathy and Gideon look at Betty Ann Duke, a Texas-Born woman who joined a bunch of domestic terrorists (or are they Freedom Fighters?) called the May 19th Communist Organization. The May 19 Group started as an offshoot of The Weather Underground and was a women...

Bad Elizabeth co-hosts Kathy Egan-Taylor and Gideon Evans look into the life of Queen Isabella of Castile, known to many as Queen Isabel of Spain. And, yes, "Isabel/Isabella" is a legit variation of the name Elizabeth. The show is as much fun as you can have while also discussing some very dark subjects including The Spanish Inquisition, Torture, and Colonization. If you don't laugh you cry, right...

This week on Bad Elizabeth we double the intrigue and mystery with a sensational story about twin sisters accused of murder. In 1992, Betty Wilson and her twin sister Peggy Lowe were both put on trial for murder, accused of plotting to kill Peggy's opthalmologist husband Dr. Jack Wilson, who was found in a puddle of blood on the landing in his house, with an aluminum bat next to his body. This cas...

This episode is a little different, we have a theme going on here - Bank Robberies. We will feature not one, but two Elizabeths from different historical periods, with bank robberies in common. Part One is about a Gilded Age con woman named Elizabeth Bigley, but she used many different names and personas in order to accomplish some pretty impressive scams. Many scammers take money from regular fol...

The "Bad Elizabeth" podcast series with Gideon Evans and Kathy Egan has a rather simple concept, each episode is about a different person named Elizabeth (or variation of that name, like Liz, Betty, or Beth) who is notorious. These folks can be figures from history or true crime, or they might just be a big ol' a-hole. We are happy to report that more bad Elizabeths are headed your way shortly. We...

There will be more Bad Elizabeths in the new year, but right now we bring you a recommendation from Kathy Egan-Taylor and Gideon Evans: "Origin Stories", a podcast from Campside Media hosted by Matthew Shaer, is a terrific deep dive into how great projects begin. Matthew hosts many fascinating guests from Mitch Albom, to Dan Taberski, to Evan Ratliff, to Stephanie Foo. In this clip we hear from st...

In this episode, Gideon and Kathy delve into the sordid, gory story of Countess Erzsebet (the Hungarian variation of Elizabeth) Bathory,  AKA “The Blood Countess.” Born into an aristocratic family with lots of in-breeding in 1560 in the Kingdom of Hungary (an area that is part of Slovakia today), Bathory came to believe that blood was the tonic that could help her achieve eternal youth, and s...

This episode Kathy and Gideon look at Elizabeth "Betty" Broderick whose case was chewed over by Daytime Television hosts of the 1980s like Oprah Winfrey and supermarket tabloids. Elizabeth and Dan Broderick were the couple who seemed to have it all, but once infidelity became an issue in the marriage, all hell broke loose. Betty stalked and terrorized Dan and his new girlfriend including driving h...

Kathy and Gideon talk about the woman many consider the worst Canadian serial killer - Elizabeth "Bethe" Wettlaufer. Wettlaufer, who grew up near Woodstock, Ontario, fits into the True Crime sub-genre of Nurses Who Kill. She worked at various rehab and medical facilities and administered deadly doses of insulin to many of her older patients, but the horrible things she did didn't come to light unt...

Halloween is almost here (at the time of posting) and doing a show about the Salem Witch Trials is perfectly on-brand for this spooky holiday. The Elizabeth that our episode is about is Elizabeth Parris - whose child Betty Parris and her niece Abagail Williams - were the first to be "afflicted" by alleged Satanic influences in 1692. Parris with her husband, Samuel, and another neighbor diagnosed t...

Queen Elizabeth I is known as the steady, confident ruler who beat the Spanish Armada, supported the arts, and led to England's golden age. But her reign also had a darker side, including killing of Catholic priests, terrorizing Puritans, and speculation she might've been part of a plot to kill a lover's wife. In this episode Gideon and Kathy look past the legend to the woman behind the crown - pa...

Gideon and Kathy discuss the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous CEO of Theranos. Holmes dropped out of college like Steve Jobs, she wore black turtle necks like jobs, and created a tech product like Jobs. But unlike Jobs, Homes' product didn't do what she said it would do and she lied about it repeatedly. The Theranos idea was to have a fast and easy way to run many medical tests usin...

Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were found hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts over one hundred and thirty years ago, yet everyone today still knows her name. Kids dress up like Lizzie carrying bloody axes for Halloween, or spookily recite the famous nursery rhyme “ Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks/When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-o...

Elisabeth Finch was an ambitious writer and producer of the hit ABC series Grey’s Anatomy . As talented as Finch was at crafting episodes of the beloved hospital drama, she was even more talented at lying her ass off about her own life. Finch got ahead in Hollywood by making up a sob story about having and inoperable spinal cancer. She shaved her head, and pretended to throw up in the restroom at...

Bad Elizabeth. Hosted by Gideon Evans & Kathy Egan-Taylor. Coming soon...