Crime&Stuff

Ambroshia Fagre was just 18 and likely an innocent bystander when she was killed by police in Maine in February 2017, along with Kadhar Bailey, 25, who police suspected of an armed home invasion. The two were among 13 people shot by police in Maine that year, nine of whom died. Maine police have shot to death nearly 200 people since 1990. Like all those before, and all those after — every po...

One of Maine’s 2022 homicides was Drew McKenna, 24, accidentally shot by his older brother Shay. In 2023, the McKenna family suffered a second tragedy when the lost Shay, who was shot by police. We also update the 2023 homicide list — it’s up to 54 now, and talk about the texts dismissed by police that warned police that Robert Card was going to do a mass shooting.

We bring you our annual Maine homicide list with 2023’s 51 homicides, a record year and more than twice the average annual number. Even without the Lewiston shootings that killed 18, it was the worst year for homicide in Maine in decades. The list wasn’t yet available from the Maine Department of Public Safety, but that wasn’t going to stop use. We compiled it ourself and got all...

Enjoy the figgy pudding, fireworks, airing of grievances, or however else you celebrate! Here are some recommendations on what to watch to get you through until our next episode in two weeks. Happy holidays!

Miriam Stoltz was found shot in the head on a cold February afternoon in the woods in New Hampshire, where she’d lain for 15 hours before being found by a runner. The next day, Roger Whittemore was found dead in Miriam’s Windham, New Hampshire, backyard, shot, stabbed and beaten. Miriam wasn’t expected to recover, but she did. And her memories of what happened the horrific night...

Racial injustice on the high seas and in the courts plays out in a 1905 mass murder on a cargo ship, the Harry A. Berwind. Captain ER Rumill and three other crew members, all but one of them white, are killed, leaving just black crew members Henry Scott, Arthur Adams and Robert Sawyer to explain. The case ultimately involved two presidents and the U.S. Supreme Court. Rebecca tells the tale. Also,...

Presumption of guilt. Consciousness of guilt. The magical shell casing. Testilying. Giving the dogs credit. These are just some of the lessons learned as we wrap up discussion on the Logan Clegg murder case after Maureen spent more than three weeks in the courtroom covering it as a journalist. We also disscus the latest mass shooting in the U.S., which happened right here in our backyard of Lewist...

Andrew Denton had made it clear he wanted to die. Sidney Kilmartin, living in Manchester, Maine, 3,000 miles away from Denton’s home in England, was determined to make sure that would happen. In December 2011, Kilmartin mailed Denton a deadly dose of cyanide. What happened next tangled up the legal system for years. Rebecca tells the story. Maureen does an NNW review of the Netflix doc serie...

We’ll have Episode 148 of Crime & Stuff up shortly. But in the meantime, we have some exciting news! After a nearly four-year hiatus, our other podcast Groovy Tube: The Crimes of the Brady Bunch, is returning Nov. 6. Haven’t listened? Nows the time to catch up.

No one knows why Fred Spencer was in his friend and apartment-mate’s room on the afternoon of April 28, 1973. One thing quickly became clear — he didn’t come out alive. The outcome of the University of Maine graduate student’s case would have widespread tragic implications for decades to come. Maureen presents. Also, Rebecca does a Negative Nellies Watching review of the hi...

No one in Belfast, Maine, who knew James Cummings liked him very much. But was it OK for his wife, Amber, to shoot him to death as he slept? Turns out, it very well may have been. Rebecca explains. Maureen gives an NNW review to the audio version of the book “Vanished in Vermillion,” by Lou Raguse.

When Amie Riley disappeared from a Manchester, New Hampshire, bar on August 15, 2003, her boyfriend, mother and friends were frantic, but police weren’t. Not even a little bit. Eight months later, when her remains were found, the investigation led to an imperfect justice. In fact, you could say someone got away with murder. Maureen presents. Rebecca also gives NNW treatment to the Netflix do...

When police visited James Cameron’s house in Maine in 2007 and took his computer, among other things, most people figured there was just one crime he was likely being investigated for. And they were right – child porn. That was the beginning of a long legal circus orchestrated by the man who until his arrest was one of the state’s top drug prosecutors. And his conviction wasn&#82...

In June 2021, we brought you Gerald Goodale Part 1, the 1988 murder of Geraldine Finn. At the time her killer, Goodale, had just been arrested for the 1987 murder of Janet Brochu. His case has finally gone to court, so we we bring you Goodale’s first murder, one that could’ve been solved before he went on to kill Geraldine Finn. Rebecca has an update on Shaun Harrison, the topic of Epi...

Lillian MacDonald was just doing her job, passing out the pay envelopes on July 12, 1930, when she disappeared from her Portland, Maine, place of employment. Her grisly murder wasn’t the only injustice that happened to her as the case unfolded. Rebecca presents. We also share some feedback from “Old Growth Murder” documentarian Tom Olsen, after we did an NNW review of his film in...

People will say that in 1980, Rosie Ruiz “came out of nowhere” to win the women’s race in the Boston Marathon. But it soon became clear she came out of the crowd a half mile from the finish line. In the week that followed, it was revealed she also didn’t finish the October 1979 New York Marathon, despite her recorded 2:56.31 finishing time. As more revelations followed, Rui...

Norway’s Black Metal music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought together young men who, giving themselves nicknames like Necro Butcher and Hell Hammer, aimed to shock and act out more than make music, But the hijinks gave way to arson, suicide and murder, with the band Mayhem and its pschopathic leader Euronymous at the center of the storm. Rebecca tells the story. Also, Maureen g...

The crime of looting indigenous ancestral sites in the U.S. and around the world goes back centuries. Professor Liz makes a special guest appearance to school us on how archeological looting has led to murder in her adopted home state of Oregon. She also briefly updates the Michael Francke case, and Maureen updates the latest sanctions agains the corrupt Louisville, Kentucky, police department as...

Episode 133 told part of the story of what led police to arrest Logan Clegg in the April 2022 double murder of Djeswende and Stephen Reid in Concord, New Hampshire. With the release of the 25-page Concord Police Department affidavit filed in support of his arrest, we learn so much more, including stories from people who may have crossed his path at the Broken Ground Trail preserve in the months an...

The second-to-the-last time Bob Maze heard from his wife Rita, she was on her way home to their Great Falls, Montana, home from visiting relatves in Helena, 90 minutes away. The last time he heard from her was 10 hours later and she was calling from the trunk of her car after being attacked and abducted. Rita was later found dead in the trunk in Spokane, Washington. The mystery of her three-state...

You may have heard the Brian Walshe — arrested Jan. 17 on charges her murdered his missing wife, Ana — was once convicted of fraud “for selling two fake Andy Warhol paintings for $80,000.” That’s like saying the Titanic took on a little water. Walshe’s Warhol fraud was a long con that spanned five years, had multiple victims, involved several pieces of art both...

Arnold Nash was a “career criminal.” He was also a career escape artist from the Maine State Prison System. And the funny thing was, he was escaping because he wanted to stay incarcerated. His crimes escalated as his need to be in prison grew, until someone lost a life. Rebecca tells the story. We also update Episode 24, finally, “the Fitbit murder.” And Maureen gives NNW t...

Thirty people died of homicide in Maine this year (not including the two perpetrators in murder-suicides), the most recent on Christmas Day. That’s the most since 2008, when there were 31. While the state’s drug problems get a lot of attention — as they should — 2022 Maine homicides show that, as always, nowhere are Mainers in more danger of being killed than in their own h...

When Djeswende and Stephen Reid were shot while out for a walk in the woods in Concord, New Hampshire, police said the public was not in danger, even though they didn’t know who did it and didn’t have solid leads for weeks. But it turns out the public WAS in danger, from a man whose history of violence and illegal gun possession didn’t stop him from being armed that deadly day. W...

Azita Jamshab, 29, and newly divorced was ready to move from Maine to Las Vegas and start a new life. But her insurance agent, who was also the beneficiary on her life insurance policy, had a different plan. Rebecca presents. Maureen updates Episode 72, the Cocoanut Grove fire, and Episode 125, Katahdin Kills and Doesn’t Care, and takes the NNW machete to the Discovery plus documentary &#822...