Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

On June 25th, 1973, Suzie Jaeger was abducted from her tent while camping with her family in Montana. The FBI was baffled by the mystery, until two agents began using new profiling techniques to narrow in on a local oddball named David Meirhofer. Assisting them was Suzie's brave mother, Marietta Jaeger, who over a series of phone calls with the killer was able to provide invaluable clues that help...

Journalist Wayne Hoffman had been long intrigued by a family story, vague on details, about the murder of his great-grandmother Sarah Feinstein at the hands of a sniper in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Encouraged by his mother, he decided to search for the truth behind the tale, but his research journey became more difficult when his mother's health began to suffer due to Alzheimer's. In his book, "The End...

In October of 1946, a chiropractor and rancher named Willis "W.D." Broadhurst was beaten with a wrench and finished off with a shotgun on a lonely eastern Oregon road. Investigators would soon accuse his wife Gladys of plotting the doctor's murder with the help of his young cowhand and her lover, Alvin Williams. Stunning details of her deception would be revealed during the trial, including accusa...

In this second half of my interview with Steve Oney, he shares details of the dramatic events that unfolded after the trial of Leo Frank for the murder of thirteen-year-old factory worker Mary Phagan. Steve Oney is author of "And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank". He has spent forty years researching and investigating this electrifying case. His book can...

In 1913, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was found brutally murdered in the basement of the Atlanta pencil factory where she worked. The factory manager, a college-educated Jew named Leo Frank, was arrested, tried and convicted in a trial that seized national headlines. When the governor commuted his death sentence, Frank was kidnapped and lynched by a group of prominent local citizens. In part one...

On the heels of Lizzie Borden's infamous double murder, another woman named Lizzie was arrested for a series of killings, this time in New York's Catskill Mountains. Lizzie Halliday was arrested in September of 1893 for not only her husband Paul's murder (found buried under the kitchen floorboards of their home) but also for the murder of two women discovered decomposing in a crawl space under the...

Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary has a rich and fascinating history. Built in the 1820s as a place to reform criminals, it saw an increase in violence over the decades before finally closing in 1971 as a working prison. It now operates as a history museum. Among the more notorious inmates was Willie Sutton, who was involved in the most famous escape in the prison's history, and Al Capone....

Elizabeth Bigley - better known as Cassie Chadwick - might be the most successful confidence artist in American history that you've never heard of. She swindled her way across the eastern United States during the height of the Gilded Age, committing fraud at every opportunity. In her greatest con, she posed as the illegitimate daughter of robber baron and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, bilking ban...

In July of 1908, the bludgeoned body of a young woman named Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York. In the following weeks investigators would be flummoxed by the mystery of not only who Hazel's killer was, but why she had decided to travel to the rural location fashionably dressed and alone. This is the real-life crime that Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost stated was the i...

In April of 1830, Joseph White, an aged, wealthy and despised resident of Salem, Massachusetts was discovered murdered in his bedroom by servants. The city - still suffering from the stigma of the Salem Witch trials 140 years earlier - brought in famed orator and lawyer Daniel Webster to prosecute the men who were suspected of conspiring to kill White. The case was so famous in its day that Nathan...

Happy Holidays everyone! In late November of 1912, a schooner named the Rouse Simmons, heavily laden with Christmas trees, made its way across Lake Michigan with Chicago as its final destination. Once there, Captain Herman Schuenemann and his family planned, as they had in years past, to decorate the ship with festive lights and sell their trees to eager Chicagoans. Unfortunately the ship never ar...

In November of 1971 a man who would come to be known as D.B. Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, ultimately parachuting out of the Boeing 727 in spectacular fashion, along with $200,000 in ransom money, presumably somewhere in Washington State. Who he was and what happened to him after he jumped is one of the most enduring true crime mysteries in American history. My guests are Darren Sch...

On November 2nd, 1892 a ten-year-old boy named Anton Woode led a hunter to a secluded area of woods a few miles north of Denver, Colorado and shot him dead. Local papers would nickname him "The Boy Murderer". My guest is Dick Kreck, author of "Anton Woode: Boy Murderer". His book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Anton-Woode-Murderer-Dick-Kreck/dp/1555915787 Become a Most Notorious pat...

Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky lived a fascinating and turbulent life. He served a sentence in a Siberian prison camp and suffered from depression and a gambling addiction that kept him destitute for years. But through these challenges he wrote some of the greatest fiction of the 19th century, including his masterpiece "Crime and Punishment". Dostoevsky drew inspiration for the novel from a seri...

In January of 1923, a 20-year-old dancer named Fritzie Mann left home to meet a mysterious man for what she told her mother was a house party. When she was discovered dead on a remote beach a few miles north of San Diego, police were puzzled by the clues. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? The fact that she was pregnant deepened the mystery even further. Soon two men - a Hollywood actor and a...

One of the most powerful secret societies in 1880s Chicago was the mysterious Clan na Gael, run by Irish-American kingpin Alexander Sullivan. When Dr. Patrick Cronin questioned Sullivan's management of the organization, embrace of the controversial "dynamite policy", and disappearance of society funds, he was targeted and eventually murdered. My guest is Gillian O'Brien, author of "Blood Runs Gree...

New York City in the mid to late 19th century was host to some of the most colorful criminals in American history - and equally colorful policemen who battled them. Police Chief Thomas Byrnes was considered one of the best sleuths in the world, yet there were always plenty of sensational cases to solve and elusive crooks to catch. My guest John Oller is author of "Rogues' Gallery: The Birth of Mod...

On this special Halloween-themed episode of Most Notorious, my guests - professors Lester Friedman and Allison Kavey - talk about Mary Shelley's early 19th-century literary classic, Frankenstein. They explore Shelley's creation of her timeless gothic novel and how her background and circumstances likely influenced her writing, offer some fascinating interpretations of the book's themes, and explai...

My guest, Western author and historian G.R. Williamson, appeared on Most Notorious a couple of years ago to talk about gunfighters Ben Thompson and King Fisher. He joins me again, this time to tell tales from his book "Notorious Gamblers of the Old West", which includes accounts of colorful card-playing characters like Charles Cora, Lottie Deno and Poker Alice. He also explains how the popular gam...

October 8th, 2021 marks the 150th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, the legendary disaster that destroyed a third of Chicago and made 90,000 residents homeless. While Mrs. O'Leary and her cow are usually portrayed as the culprits behind the catastrophic blaze, my guest, Carl Smith, doesn't believe history has treated her fairly. Professor Smith is the author of "Chicago’s Great Fire: The Dest...

We're back again to the Hundred Years War in this episode of Most Notorious - this time in England. Sir William Cantilupe, a battle-hardened knight who had recently been acquitted of murdering his brother Nicholas, was discovered dead in a lonely field in May of 1375, in what appeared to be a staged crime scene. And it was his wife Maude and their household staff whom authorities would soon accuse...

On November 1st, 1843, a dejected servant named Amelia Norman followed her former beau Henry Ballard to the steps of the Astor House Hotel in New York City. There she stabbed him with a folding knife, barely missing his heart. The city's newspapers and moral reformers quickly embraced Miss Norman's cause, seeing it as an opportunity to change seduction laws and expand workers' rights. My guest, Ju...

In November of 1407, Louis I, The Duke of Orleans and brother of France's "Mad" King Charles VI, is murdered on a street near his home in Medieval Paris. A police investigation ensues, surprisingly as thorough and detailed as any modern day crime investigation. My guest, Eric Jager, is the author of "Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris". Not only does he share details...

On April 24th, 1891, a Bowery prostitute named Carrie Brown (known locally as "Old Shakespeare") was found murdered and mutilated in the seedy East River Hotel. With the Jack the Ripper murders unsolved and still news, many believed that the notorious killer had traveled across the Atlantic to continue his bloody work in the United States - and this was his first victim. My guest is George R. Dekl...

On March 25, 1935, little George Weyerhaueser, heir to one of the biggest fortunes in America, was kidnapped on his way home from school in Tacoma, Washington. His abductors would keep him manacled in a pit in the middle of the forest as they negotiated a $200,000 ransom with his frantic family. What soon followed would be the largest manhunt in the history of the Pacific Northwest. My guest is Br...