Historical True Crime

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was in his prime in the summer of 1921. He was paid an extraordinary $3 million over three years by Paramount Pictures to star in 18 silent pictures, and he had just agreed to a new million-dollar deal with the company, which is equivalent to nearly $13 million today. The 266-pound comic was advertised on movie posters as "worth his weight in laughs." But before the year wa...

Leo Frank's trial and lynching have long captivated historians and audiences. Factory manager Frank, a Jew from the North, was charged in 1913 with the murder of Mary Phagan, a thirteen-year-old local White employee who worked for him in Atlanta. Two deaths are intertwined in this case– one would lead to the rise of the Klu Klux Klan, and the other, the creation of the anti-defamation league. Sour...

Women who wanted a quick and simple solution for their health issues visited Dr. Linda Hazzard in the early 1900s. Socialites came to Hazzard and her cutting-edge sanatorium, Wilderness Heights, to spend weeks relaxing and cleansing their bodies. They had no idea that Linda Hazzard was a con artist. In addition to the fact that none of her remedies worked, she was a serial killer. At Linda Hazzard...

Just seven years after the horrific Whitechapel murders, the startling violence of "The Demon of the Belfry" killings prompted immediate comparisons to Jack the Ripper. Contrary to the Ripper, however, Durrant targeted young middle-class ladies by luring them into the church where they all worshipped, raping, and killing them. Source Materials https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Theodore-Durran...

By August 1918, terror had paralyzed the city of New Orleans. The Axeman of New Orleans, as he became known, broke into several Italian grocery stores in the middle of the night and attacked the store owners and their families. He killed four individuals and left four more wounded. The assaults were brutal. All of the murders that bear The Axeman's signature are cold cases, as he was never caught...

The course of Hawaiian race relations and politics was permanently altered by two highly public criminal cases, one for rape and the other for murder, both involving several defendants. The trials have all the makings of a good mystery—twists and turns, unsolved questions—and they are full of them. Clarence Darrow, America's best defense lawyer, ends his judicial career during the second of th...

In a wealthy London home, Eliza Fenning served as a housekeeper for Mr. Turner, a legal stationer. She was executed for allegedly attempting to poison him and his family by preparing arsenic-laced dumplings for the dinner table. Due to the general belief that Fenning was innocent, her trial and execution were sensational at the time. Source Materials: https://marylmmaculatelonnerholman.medium.com/...

A failed missionary, insurance salesman, and lawyer named Charles Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield as he entered the Baltimore and Potomac Railway station in Washington, D.C., on the morning of July 2, 1881. Listen to the full episode to learn why Guiteau shot Garfield and why Garfield didn't die until months later. Source Materials: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Oneida-Community https:...

The first person in Ireland to be found guilty of witchcraft was Alice Kyteler. She fled persecution but on November 3, 1324, Petronilla de Meath, one of her servants, was flogged and burned at the stake. Listen to the full story now!

Said to be the most ruthless female serial killer in history. She is only surpassed by Count Dracula in terms of her notoriety as alegendary vampire. She is suspected of killing over 600 girls inside her opulent palaces. Listen to hear the full story! Source Materials: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/countess-elizabeth-bathory-and-the-dark-truth-behind-her-killer-legend https://www.historyhit.com/t...

The 1920s saw a number of serial murderers in North America, but no one was more active than Earle Nelson, also known as "the Gorilla Killer or Dark Strangler." Nelson appeared to be able to kill at will as he wandered the country for more than a year, breaking into and out of suburban residences and boarding houses with ease. Source Materials: https://allthatsinteresting.com/earle-nelso...

Catherine Monvoisin was the wife of a jeweller and silk merchant. She had a comfortable home in the fashionable Villeneuve Sur Gravois neighbourhood in the centre of Paris. She was a mother, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and a lover of the arts. But she was also a witch, one who nearly overthrew the French aristocracy and almost succeeded in slaying a king. Source Materials: https://www.syfy....

Billy the Kid was an infamous gunfighter and outlaw in the American West. His name is synonymous with the Wild West, along the likes of the Bob Dalton Gang, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cole Younger and Jesse James. He claimed to have killed 21 people, although there's a good chance the number is less than 10. Billy the Kid was killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett when he was only approximately 21...

Many people consider Carl Panzram to be the most vicious American serial killer. The 6-foot-tall, tattooed man with icy grey eyes operated as a solitary crime wave for over 20 years. He committed robberies, rapes, and murders in numerous cities across several nations. Despite being hanged at the age of 38, he admitted to more than 20 killings and the rape of up to 1,000 men and boys during that ti...

In 1947, Jake Bird was executed for the murder of a mother and her daughter. Just before his death, he confessed to murdering 44 people, and at least 11 murders have been confirmed. The fact that Bird thought he could hex individuals with his name made him a unique serial killer. As people tried to punish him, he put the "Jake Bird" hex on them, and amazingly, several people involved in his trial...

Before mysteriously disappearing in 1908, Belle Gunness murdered two of her husbands, a number of single men, and several of her own children on a pig farm in La Porte, Indiana. A fire broke out at her farm on April 28, 1908, and a headless woman's body was found inside. Was it Belle, or did she fake her own death and escape? Listen to the entire story now. Source Materials: https://laportecountyh...

The murder of Julia Martha Thomas by her maid, Kate Webster, was one of the most infamous and heinous murders committed in nineteenth-century England. Join us to hear the full story! Source Materials: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/505155/barnes-mystery-twisted-tale-maids-murder-and-mistaken-identity https://murderpedia.org/female. W/w/webster-catherine.htm https://www.irishpost.com/news/ten-...

Marguerite Marie Alibert, often referred to as Princess Fahmy, Maggie Meller, and Marguerite Laurent, was a French socialite. She began her profession in Paris as a prostitute and courtesan. During 1917 and 1918, she had a relationship with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). When she wed the Egyptian aristocrat Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey, the media of the day referred to her as Princess. She murder...

Fred and Maria Manning's story involves love, treachery, greed, and murder. In a scheme nicknamed "the Bermondsey tragedy," they murdered Marie's affluent lover in cold blood and attempted to profit from their victim's fortune. New technologies and the newly established police units that had appeared throughout Britain in the past two decades would be their undoing. Source Materials: https://www.t...

From May 1871 through December 1872, the Bender family—better known as the Bloody Benders—operated as a family of serial killers in Labette County, Kansas, in the United States. John Bender, his wife Elvira, their children, John Jr. and Kate, made up the family. The Bender family appeared seemingly out of thin air, carried out horrifying and uncountable acts of heinous brutality, and then van...

A serial killer who went by the names The Cleveland Torso Murderer and The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run operated in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1930s. Twelve known victims were dismembered in the killings, and their bodies were dumped in the underprivileged Kingsbury Run community. These murders remain unsolved to this day. Source Materials: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/632096/cleveland-torso-m...

Jesse Pomeroy was the youngest person to be found guilty of first-degree murder in Massachusetts history in 1874. Even though he was just 14 years old, the brutal and violent atrocities he committed led to life in prison, where he died in 1932. Source Materials: https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/jesse-pomeroy https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-story-of-jesse-pomeroy-14-year-old-serial-killer/ https://...

Gilles de Rais was a Breton nobleman, a soldier with a distinguished career in the Hundred Years’ War and as Joan of Arc’s comrade in arms. Today, however, those accomplishments are only viewed in the context of the secret life he led while committing more than a hundred horrifying child killings, a spree that may have made him the first serial murderer in history. Source Materials:  Gilles d...

In an era before anaesthetics, when speed mattered in terms of agony and survival, Robert Liston was a British surgeon renowned for his quickness and skill. The West End's "fastest knife" was said to be able to amputate a leg in just over two minutes. He is also notorious for performing the only surgery with a 300% death rate in history. Please join us to learn the entire tale and the horrifying s...

Eugène-François Vidocq was a French criminal who became a detective. Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, and Honoré de Balzac were all influenced by Eugène-François Vidocq's life. The former criminal went on to develop and lead the first known private detective agency as well as the first director of the crime-detection Sûreté nationale. Vidocq is revered as the founder of contemporary crimino...