Crime&Stuff

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two thieves dressed as police officers talked their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, tied up the two guards on duty and walked off with art that’s now valued at $500 million. Nearly 28 years after what is considered the biggest art heist in history, the paintings are still gone and their empty frames haunt the museum. Over...

On a November Sunday in 1965, the extended Francis family’s home was invaded by five hunters from Massachusetts. By the end of the day, one member of the family would be dead. Join us for a story that still resonates in Maine more than 50 years later.

What’s the true meaning of Christmas? No, really, what is it? In this very special Christmas episode, in partnership with our sister podcast, Groovy Tube, we find out through That Girl, Mary Tyler Moore, Adam 12 and Starsky & Hutch. Sure, Santa gets arrested. But it’s warmer than eggnog by the fire.

One of them went outside to shoo hunters away from her property as her year-old twins played in the house; another was removing a log that blocked his family’s camp road, anxious for a weekend away with his fiancee; another was hunting for gems on her country property; another was splitting wood, careful to wear hunter orange; another, 18, was hanging around outside with her brother. All of...

Something different this episode! We interviewed four Maine Crime Writers at the annual New England Crime Bake mystery writers conference. Writers Dick Cass, Brenda Buchanan, Barbara Ross and Bruce Robert Coffin — all who write different subgenres of crime and mystery fiction — talk about their books, writing, crime and Maine.

Nichole Cable, 15, told her mother she was going down to the end of their street in a small Maine town to “get some smokes” from an acquaintance. It was the last conversation they’d have. Cable was murdered, her body found weeks later. But not by a stranger, but by a young man who lured her with a fake Facebook profile. What happened? Listen and find out.

Swedish journalist Kim Wall was doing what she did best when she climbed aboard Denmark inventor Peter Madsen’s homemade submarine August 10: chasing a great story. But Wall never got off the sub alive, her dismembered remains later found in the strait between Sweden and Denmark, and Madsen charged in her death.  

More than 2,100 miles, 14 states and, since 1974, 11 murders. The Appalachian Trail is a pretty safe place to be, unless you run into the wrong crazed killer. All of the 11 people who were killed on the trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine were killed by a stranger. At least those whose murders were solved. Join us as we discuss those hikes into hell.

Carol Jenkins was 21 and on the first day on the job selling encyclopedias when she made the mistake of agreeing to go to Martinsville, Indiana. She didn’t make it out of town alive. That was 1968, and her racially motivated murder is still considered partially unsolved in a town that seems more concerned about defending itself against charges of racism that finding justice for a young woman...

In the summer of 1977, New York City was terrorized by a killer who shot his victims at close range, eventually killing six people and wounding seven. He was eventually called the Son of Sam. While not history’s most prolific killer — or even 1977’s — his brazen attacks, which police determined began in July 1976, made national deadlines. David Berkowitz’s arrest in A...

The relationship between Massachusetts teens Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter was one that only could have happened in the 21st century. They lived less than an hour from each other, but rarely met in person. But they communicated nonstop by social media, and in the weeks leading up to Roy’s July 12, 2014, suicide, they exchanged more than 1,000 texts. Carter’s conviction was the first i...

Malaga Island residents (malagaisland.org photo) In 1912, the state of Maine bought Malaga Island and evicted its mixed-race residents, placing eight of them — an entire family — in the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded and casting the rest adrift, some with tragic results. The move came after a several years of denigration of the people of the island by newspapers, politicians and ar...

Soooo… it’s been 31 episodes. And it’s July in Maine. And we have day jobs (kind of). So we’re taking a break for a few weeks from Crime & Stuff. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to say… We discuss what we’re reading, watching, doing (Maureen’s reading 75 self-published books as a contest judge. By August 1. You can imagine what...

  In the ongoing Maine case of Anthony Sanborn, the man who served 27 years for a 1989 murder he may not have committed, the most recent twist is that a profiler has linked that murder, of Jessica Briggs, to another in 1987 in Vermont. That murder, of Barbara Agnew, was the last in a string of New Hampshire and Vermont killings that may have been done by one killer. The Connecticut River Vall...

On June 4, 2010, Kyron Horman’s stepmother took him to school in Portland, Oregon. There was a science fair that morning and Kyron, 7, was excited about his tree frog exhibit. His stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman, snapped a picture of him to post on Facebook later. It would be the last photo of the little boy ever taken. Terri says the last time she saw Kyron, he was walking to his classroom...

Annie Dookhan is arrested. (Boston Globe photo) Annie Dookhan, a chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory in Boston, was loved by prosecutors — she was a whiz, testing more drug evidence than everyone else in the lab, and she always got them the results they wanted. Although some of her coworkers wondered just how she got it done, no one else was very concerned because she was helping put peop...

  Joyce Carol Vincent was pretty, bubbly, smart and talented. She also didn’t talk about her past and had parts of her life even those closest to her knew nothing about. Still, when the remains of a woman were found in a London bedsit in January 2006, about three years after the woman died, none of her friends or acquaintances realized it was the Joyce they had known. It just wasn&#8217...

You might remember Phil Hartman from Saturday Live, where in the 1980s he was uproariously funny as Frankenstein in the ongoing Frankenstein, Tarzan and Tonto bit, or as the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (“Your world frightens and confuses me…” Trust us, it was funny). Or maybe you loved him on The Simpsons, where he did another lawyer, Lionel Hutz, and Troy McClure, a newscaster and f...

When Blanche Kimball was stabbed to death in her home in Augusta, Maine, in 1976, police were stymied. She’d been stabbed 44 times and left to die, only found by police after neighbors became concerned at least a week after she was killed. Gary Raub — then Gary Wilson — was at the time tearing an alcohol and violence-fueled path through central Maine, but somehow avoided serious...

So, what do you do with a musical genius who loves guns and scares the hell out of people? Lana Clarkson Well, since he’s rich, more famous than famous and influential, nothing. Until someone gets hurt. Phil Spector, whose “wall of sound” production transformed the music of the 60s, spent decades bending people to his will with crazy antics and the threat of violence. Lana Clarks...

Connie and Richard Dabate in happier times. In April, Richard Dabate was arrested on charges he murdered his wife in December 2015. The evidence against Dabate is a cyber-crumb track of electronic device information, the biggest ones provided by the Fitbit his wife was wearing when she was shot in their Connecticut home. Investigators said it’s the first time a Fitbit has been used to help b...

Updates on Logan Marr (episode 18) and Anthony Sanborn (episode 22). Find out how Logan Marr’s sister, Bailey, turned out. Some good news for a change. On the other hand, in the ongoing saga of Anthony Sanborn, the Portland, Maine, man recently freed on bail after 27 years in prison, find out what a case investigator had in his attic all these years. Hint: The defense might have liked to see...

Frances Schreuder wanted desperately to be a member of high society, but she just didn’t have enough money to bankroll it. So she did what a lot of women would do — got her teenage son to kill her incredibly wealthy but tight-fisted father. You may not recognize the names now, but the murder of Franklin Schreuder spurred several true crime books and two — yes TWO — TV docud...

Portland Press Herald Photo   When 16-year-old Jessica Briggs was found dead under the Maine State Pier in Portland in May 1989 — stabbed, beaten and eviscerated — police quickly narrowed their focus to her fellow street kids. They arrested her sometime boyfriend Tony Sanborn in 1990, he was convicted of her murder in 1992 and an appeal failed in 1994. In April, after 27 years beh...

Today’s quiz: After 9/11, what was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil? You know, the one that killed more people than any other? That’s right, Oklahoma City. Don’t you feel people have kind of forgotten about that one? In any case, we talk about Tim McVeigh the twisted white supremacist whose bomb killed 168 people, including 19 young children in a day care center in 1995, i...