Forgotten Felonies

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! A serving fork isn't supposed to be a murder weapon. In 1911, a Sunday evening argument in a Pennsylvania boarding house ended with one man dead and his wife under arrest for murder. But conflicting newspaper accounts soon turned my research into a detective story all its own. Featuring:  De Ring Tailed Coon: The Minster Singers (1911)

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! A respected fire captain. A woman dying from horrific burns. A small Connecticut town searching for answers. In this Fun-Sized Felony, Monica pieces together a forgotten case from scattered newspaper accounts dating back to 1842. What she uncovered was far stranger—and far more haunting—than she ever expected.

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In September 1902, the body of Annie Pulitzer was discovered in New Jersey's Morris Canal, weighted down and hidden from view. The investigation quickly led police to William Hooper Young, grandson of famed Mormon leader Brigham Young and a man whose increasingly erratic behavior had alarmed those around him. In this episode, Monica and Olivia follow the c...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Dr. Charles M. Clayton was having a great day... until he came home for lunch. Over the next few months he would shoot a man, face a murder charge, suffer a nervous collapse, accidentally hit a teenager with his car, paint the inside of a jail, and listen as a very nosy neighbor revealed what she'd been watching through their kitchen window... day, after d...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Jack Vincent was a stagecoach driver, prospector, practical joker, hotel deadbeat, prison escapee, alleged murderer, and—according to one newspaper—a professional bummer. In 1882, Vincent shot his brother-in-law, steamboat mate John Westfall, twice in the face during a saloon argument in Toledo, Washington Territory. Westfall survived for nine months before dyi...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! By 1925, the Jones Brothers Gang had changed. Dewey Jones was no longer part of the outlaw life, Milam Jones had vanished, and Oregon Jones was back in the Oregon State Penitentiary ready to cause more trouble. After the deadly prison break that would make headlines across the Pacific Northwest, newspapers began calling the group the Jones-Murray Gang—a nod to...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Ellsworth Kelley became tangled up with the notorious Jones Brothers Gang — a crew of young outlaws, including the elusive Oregon Jones and 20-year-old escape artist Tom Murray, whose lives became a cycle of burglaries, highway robberies, prison escapes, freight-train rides, manhunts, and violence across the Pacific Northwest during the 1910s and 1920s. This st...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In the fall of 1910, husband and father Frank E. Clark vanished from Oakland, California without a trace. His wife was left stranded in a city where she knew no one. Newspapers across California carried the story of the missing husband, while neighbors and the Catholic Ladies’ Aid society stepped in to help feed Mrs. Clark and their 5-year-old son. Had Frank ab...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! A woman’s body floats more than 150 miles downriver before finally being recovered near New Albany, Indiana. By the time she is identified as Hannah Goddard Knapp, her husband—Alfred Knapp—has already confessed to murdering her. But Hannah wasn't the first—Not by a long shot. In 1903, Alfred Knapp shocked the country with confessions involving multiple wom...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Bertha “Bessie” Boronda attacked her husband, Narciso "Frank" Boronda, in the middle of the night in their San Jose home in 1907. The newspapers called it a violent, deliberate mutilation. The court charged her with mayhem—a crime defined by the destruction of part of the human body. But no one ever said exactly what she did. Over time, the story beca...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In February of 1927, a Brooklyn father watched his six-year-old son struggle to breathe as diphtheria tightened its grip. Desperate for help, Frank Caruso called for doctors, begged for treatment, and clung to the hope that his boy might survive. But when that hope slipped away, something else took its place. Within hours of his son’s death, Frank turned his gr...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Years before this double homicide, there were already signs—clear, documented, and deeply concerning. Sarah saw them. Sarah lived with them. Sarah warned the authorities that he was going to kill her. But Jesse didn’t kill her. Even Sarah didn’t see this coming. When he couldn’t reach the person he wanted, Jesse McClure made a different choice—one that ended in...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In 1925, 29-year-old Florence Kane stepped off a subway in Brooklyn after a night out with friends. She called her mother to say she would be home in 30 minutes. In the final stretch of just 6 blocks, the unthinkable happened; Florence never made it home. As fear spread through the neighborhood, reports surfaced of other women being attacked in the same way—gra...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! This is the third and final episode in our Edmund Creffield series. By the time Edmund Creffield lay dead on a Seattle sidewalk, it should have been over. The prophet was gone; the spell should have been broken. The story should have ended, but another chapter had just begun. Because what followed was not closure… it was unraveling. As George Mitchell stands tr...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! This is the second episode following Edmund Creffield and the cult he began in Corvallis, OR, after her arrived in late 1902. In this episode, he was finally caught. After months in hiding, Edmund Creffield is pulled from beneath a house—filthy, frail, and barely able to stand—and brought into custody at last. For the people of Corvallis, it feels like the end...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! On a quiet Sunday in October of 1903, ten-year-old Hoga Iverson noticed something wasn’t right. His sister had gone inside… and never came back out. What followed was a chain of events that no child should ever have to carry: a train ride alone to find his father, a doctor turned away at the door, and a journey in the dark that would end in a discovery too deva...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In the early 1900s, a young German preacher arrived in Corvallis, Oregon with a message he believed came directly from God. Within weeks, he had gathered a devoted circle of followers who called themselves God’s Anointed. Others had a different name for them: The Holy Rollers. Their intense prayer meetings, strange teachings, and bizarre behavior quickly made t...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In the Izzo household, music filled every corner of the home. Agostino Izzo had once played in the Seneca Falls Italian Band and worked as a music teacher, passing his love of music on to his children. Several would go on to perform in orchestras of their own, carrying the family’s musical legacy far beyond their home in Syracuse, New York. But on July 13, 1926...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! On July 17, 1938, ten people were living in two small rooms above the Broadway Inn in Leechburg, Pennsylvania. By sunrise, three were dead and seven children were orphaned. In 1909, a young girl watched her father terrorize a Pennsylvania town with a shotgun. Nearly three decades later, that same girl would die in the doorway of the room where her children slep...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! On January 12, 1935, Amelia Earhart landed safely in Oakland, California after her historic solo flight across the Pacific. The nation celebrated progress, courage, and modern aviation. That same day, in a Mississippi post office, a man was arrested with a piece of human flesh in his pocket. This episode traces the story of Alonzo Robinson — known for decades a...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In November of 1913, three-year-old Winifred Byrne vanished from outside her family’s home on West 38th Street in New York City. Her father had looked away for just a moment—and that was all it took. What happened during the four days Winifred was missing was never fully explained. In this Fun-Sized Felony, we revisit the brief headlines, the unanswered questio...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In July of 1912, Emily Antone—a 38-year-old Indigenous woman—arrived at a house in Middleport, Ontario, carrying a trunk and plans to start over. She never left alive. This Fun-Sized Felony examines the murder of Emily Antone, the failures that surrounded it, and the way her story quietly disappeared from print. Using contemporary newspaper accounts, we trace w...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! In the early hours of January 27, 1891, John Heslop was murdered inside his home near Ancaster, Ontario. He was a respected township clerk, a longtime pioneer in the area, and a man whose death sent shockwaves through the surrounding countryside. What followed was an investigation shaped by footprints in the snow, conflicting testimony, and mounting public pres...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! This is another Fun-Sized Felony. Look for a full-sized episode next week! In June of 1912, seventeen-year-old Mabel E. "Dolly" Dorner vanished, leaving her parents frantic and the newspapers full of fear. Three days later, she was quietly returned by a mysterious woman who claimed to be a nurse—along with an explanation that only raised more question...

Send a message to Monica and Olivia! Not every story is told in full. This frustrates us, and now it can frustrate you! (You're welcome.) The towns of Whitman and Brockton, MA, were thrown for a loop in July of 1957 when young boys were being immorally assaulted, battered, and murdered. What happened to little Dicky Doherty? Tune in to this fun-sized episode to find out as much as we know!