Curator 135

Send us Fan Mail Episode 88 of the podcast covers days 12, 13, 14, the verdict and sentencing portions of the Pesce Family Murder Trial and chapters 20, 21, 22, & 23 of the book, A Wolf in Suburbia - The Pesce Family Murders. The trial hears from some key witnesses for the prosecution and the defense and is ultimately deliberated on for less than four hours before a verdict was reached.  Suppo...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 87 of the podcast covers days 8, 9, 10, & 11 of the Pesce Family Murder Trial and chapters 17, 18, & 19 of the book, A Wolf in Suburbia - The Pesce Family Murders. Some important witnesses are called to the stand, and health issues delay the trial by nearly one month.   Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In Part 5 of the series, we cover days 6 and 7 of the trial and chapters 15 and 16 of the book, A Wolf in Suburbia: The Pesce Family Murders.  These two days were important ones in the trial as attorneys finished up with Betty Faye Smith before moving on to a Copa Lounge bartender and the Letts family. Finally, at the end of day 7, Diane Pesce is called to the stand.  Support the...

Send us Fan Mail Episode 85 covers chapters 12, 13, and 14 of the book, "A Wolf in Suburbia: The Pesce Family Murders. The trial commences with the presentation of some key witnesses, including Doreen Beauchamp (Wolfenbarger's Girlfriend) and Betty Faye Smith (Wolfenbarger's Mother).  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Part 3 dives into chapters 8, 9, 10, & 11 of the book "A Wolf in Suburbia: The Pesce Family Murders".  The arrests of John Wolfenbarger and Dennis Lincoln, the Pesce family funeral, the community response, and the beginning of a long trial.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Part two of the story continues with chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the book, "A Wolf in Suburbia: The Pesce Family Murders." These chapters discuss the actions of Wolfenbarger and Lincoln before and after the murders and we meet William "Billy Wadd" Smith, notorious West Side Boss of the Devil's Diciples and uncle to John Wolfenbarger.  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In 2002 John Wolfenbarger and Dennis Lincoln committed one of the worst crimes in Michigan's history. Five were dead, including three children, just four days before Christmas.  It was, for the most part, an open-and-shut case but when you add in a dangerous biker gang, a drug-addicted mother, and a questionable parole policy, things can get a little murkier.  Back in 2014-20...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 81 of the podcast, we take a look at the three-year racially motivated killing spree that covered at least 11 different states. From 1977 to 1980, Joseph Paul Franklin killed an estimated twenty-one people while injuring scores of others and creating an unease that spread throughout the country. What fueled his hatred towards blacks and Jews and how was he finally broug...

Send us Fan Mail In this spine-chilling episode, we unravel the mysterious and eerie story of the Greenbrier Ghost, one of the most unique cases in American legal history. Discover how the spirit of Elva Zona Heaster allegedly returned from the grave to reveal the truth behind her untimely death, leading to a landmark court case in 1897. Join us as we explore the chilling details of this haunting...

Send us Fan Mail In the early 1900s, young men sometimes wanted to get out of their boring hometowns and out from under their parents' thumbs. The flashy lights, roar of the animals and the big top tents often seemed to call to them offering a more exciting life. Countless teens ran off and joined the circus, some made a career out of it, some came crawling back home to their parents never wa...

Send us Fan Mail In this chilling dive into the history of psychiatry, we uncover the controversial legacy of Dr. Henry Cotton, the medical director of the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane in the early 20th century. Driven by a misguided obsession with infection as the root cause of mental illness, Cotton’s radical treatments, including tooth and organ removal, left a trail of suffering an...

Send us Fan Mail In the rugged hills of post-Civil War Missouri, a group of masked men set out to restore order in a lawless land. Led by the towering and enigmatic Nat Kinney, the Bald Knobbers began as vigilantes seeking justice in the absence of reliable law enforcement. But as their power grew, so did their reputation for brutality, leading to deadly feuds, splintered loyalties, and a fall fro...

Send us Fan Mail They say that each of us has a doppelganger somewhere in the world. Someone who looks just like us... maybe acts just like us... or maybe, is us.  Do you believe in doppelgangers? Do you believe in the idea of bilocation?  These people from history certainly do. Learn about how various dignitaries, politicians, and artists from history and their run-ins with their very own doppelg...

Send us Fan Mail Find out what Halloween was like during the Great Depression. 1929 to 1939 was a tough decade for folks throughout the United States. Halloween offered a chance to come together and help children have an enjoyable evening with their friends. It also served as a time for older kids to rebel and cut loose, causing the night before Halloween to be named 'Mischief Night', an...

Send us Fan Mail I have created a new podcast section for YouTube and Curator135.com called "Down the Wiki Rabbit Hole" where I look up a search term on Wikimedia Commons. From there I find a photo related to the search term and then research the photo to find as much information as possible. The search term for this episode was "Crime Scene". In the 1940s someone was killing w...

Send us Fan Mail The Hope Diamond, The Busby Chair,  The Hands Resist Him, the Crying Boy paintings and the Dybbuk Box are five of the most cursed items in our history.  Learn how these curses grew over time and the factors behind believing something is cursed.  Is it all in our head or is there some truth to the fears?  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In the early 1890's Samuel Minshall left Chicago in search of a better opportunity in Pentwater, Michigan. Pentwater was a small, up and coming village in Western Michigan along the shores of Lake Michigan.  There he met William Sands who promised him enough work to support his family. That promise was broken and it drove Minshall mad. He couldn't stand to see the rich g...

Send us Fan Mail In 1964 three elderly siblings were brutally beaten, robbed and left in a closet to die. Learn about the Parsons; William, Hilda and Lenore, their lives and what led up to the unsolved murders that are still on the Livonia Police Department's Cold Case list sixty years later.   Support the show

Send us Fan Mail In 1982 Kimberly Louiselle disappeared from Livonia and was found deceased weeks later in a wooded area of state-owned land miles away.  The following year, one day shy of exactly a year, Christina Castiglione went missing while in Livonia. She was also found deceased later on in a remote area near Howell.  From the start, police knew that the two cases were likely the work of the...

Send us Fan Mail The crew of the Essex left Nantucket on a whaling expedition in August of 1819. They knew that they might be at sea for as long as three years but they had no idea what they were about to encounter. Find out how 20 men survived a whale attack that sunk their ship only to be forced into three small boats in the middle of the ocean.  What happens when starvation hits? When your fres...

Send us Fan Mail In the early 1940s, a well-liked man was brutally murdered in his home while his wife recovered from hip surgery in a nearby hospital. There were no signs of forced entry, plenty of cash around the home, and every door and window was locked from the inside. So who did it? And more importantly, where did the assailant go after the murder?  The house quickly gained the reputation of...

Send us Fan Mail The games of the Third Olympiad were the first Olympics to be held on American soil. After St. Louis wrestled away the chance to host the games from Chicago, they lumped the event in with the Louisiana Purchase Expo and World Fair.  The Olympic Marathon, an event that everyone looked forward to, was a mess from start to finish. Full of comedy, danger, and cheating. Travel back in...

Send us Fan Mail The early 1920's was a time that saw numerous vessels vanish in the Atlantic Ocean. The Carroll A. Deering didn't vanish, but its crew did, and then washed up on the dangerous Diamond Shoals off the coast of North Carolina. Was it mutiny? Captain Wormell and his first mate did not get along and everyone knew it. German U-boats were a thing of the past, and so were pirate...

Send us Fan Mail Arthur "Gypsy Bob" Harper (b. 1880) was one of Michigan's most notorious criminals. Murder, theft, and assault were part of his everyday life outside of prison. Luckily he only spent 15 of his 73 years out in the world. The rest of his time was spent locked up in various prisons in New York, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan.  Even that didn't stop him from comm...

Send us Fan Mail What happened at the Attica Maximum Security Prison in September 1971 should have changed how prisons were run forever.  Unfortunately, the 'tough on crime' 80's and 90's erased any of the steps that were taken. Find out what went on during the four days inside of Attica as Governor Nelson Rockefeller battled from afar to win back the prison... at any cost.  Su...