The Golden Age of Murder: A True Crime Podcast

The hosts look back on what was explored in the series, their further thoughts on the subject and what reflections doing it has brought on humanity and the specters that haunt our species and our lives together

To those who knew him David Parker Ray was a skilled mechanic and park ranger, the definition of trusty and reliable. To anyone else he happened to encounter David Parker Ray came off as a laconic, trusty buckaroo of the American southwest. He had no criminal history or shady reputation following him as he drifted around the American west in the last several decades of the 20th century, amassing w...

Interview with Dr Peter Vronsky, author of "Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present", the book which more than any other has been foundational to informing the development of this podcast series. Dr Vronsky talks about how he developed his theory regarding the historical and neurobiological roots of serial murder, and his chance encounters with two infamous seri...

In the 1980s and 1990s Views on criminal justice shifted right-ward and one reason for this was that serial predators,Kenneth McDuff and Arthur Shawcross among them, were wrongly let out of jail and unleashed once again on the public. McDuff, known as the Broomstick killer, was sentenced to death in Texas in1966 for 3 murders. When the US Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1...

On July 22 1991, in an unassuming apartment complex in Milwaukee, police arrested Jeffrey Dahmer and removed barrels and vats containing body parts of his male victims. Dahmer, known popularly as the Milwaukee Cannibal, has since become a Bogey of popular American folklore for his predation on young men and boys and specifically for consuming their flesh. Between the years of 1978 and 1991 Dahmer...

In the past 30 years there have been over 500 identified killings along the busiest highways and interstates in the country.  At least 25 serial killers currently imprisoned for murder are truck drivers though the total number is limited only by the length of paved road stretching from coast to coast. The most infamous is  Robert Ben Rhoades, a sexual sadist who kept women in an area of his long h...

Among those victims criminologist Steven Egger refers to as the "Less than Dead" female prostitutes are the most represented demographic, especially those in high risk environments such as in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver or in Los Angeles, where at the height of the crack epidemic the targeting of those in crimed sometimes referred to as NHI, or No Humans involved. Lonnie Franklin jr, now kn...

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka are the most infamous criminals in Canadian history, a young couple who in the early 90's raped and murdered at least three teenage girls, the first of which being Karla's younger sister Tammy. Prior to this, between 1987 and 1992, Paul Bernardo was the predatory menace known as the Scarborough Rapist, who had viciously assaulted and raped at least 18. The dreadful...

While California may be the serial killing capital of the country the Pacific Northwest, stretching from northernmost California to Vancouver in Canada, has itself seen a great number of serial murderers. 20% of the world's documented serial killers are from this region, a whopping 277 from Washington alone. These include two of the most prolific, Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway. Ridgway, targeting pro...

In the mid 1980's, in a cabin and associated bunker in  the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, ex-marines Leonard Lake and Charles Ng ran a deadly operation of abduction, torture and murder. Using a variety of aliases and schemes the duo killed many to variously steal their identification, possessions or in the case of an unknown number of women, to keep them as captives in a dungeon hi...

Robert Hansen was a successful baker and prize winning hunter who murdered 17 women between 1971and 1983 and raped an additional estimated 30 in Anchorage, Alaska. He largely targeted sex workers who he would lure or abduct, hold in a room for several days then fly out on a private miniplane to the wilderness where they would be killed and dumped, sometimes after having been shot by a hunting rifl...

In 1983 two ragged drifters, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, were arrested for what was at the time unlawful firearm possession and arson. This would grow into an escalating series of claims on the part of both law enforcement and the men themselves that Lucas and Toole had, while traversing the country by car,  committed hundreds if not thousands of murders. Lucas had served time for killing his...

This episode features comedian Jake Flores (@feraljokes) the host of popular podcast Pod Damn America to discuss his state's most frightening killer the Night Stalker. Few figures loom as menacingly in the modern American imagination as The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez a murderous predatory loner who, modeling himself after his war criminal cousin and dedicating his war against society to th...

On this episode we are joined by comedian Sean P McCarthy to discuss a 1970s podophile group encompassing several significant serial killers and covered up by the government. Sean P McCarthy is a comedian and podcaster whose interests include current affairs, inequality and government conspiracies. In the 70's and 80's huge numbers of boys and young men went missing in the US. Some of them...

In late Dec 1978 the bodies of 26 boys were excavated from under the house of local businessman and democratic precinct captain John Wayne Gacy. Gacy would go on to be convicted of 33 murders of young men and boys, the most prolific case of serial murder the US had seen to that point and a bookend to a decade of escalating serial murder inducted by Houston's Dean Corll who had murdered at leas...

Throughout the 70's and early 80's a mysterious and elusive counterfeiter known as "The Mall Passer" was sought by the US secret service for distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit bills across 38 states. The culprit ended up being James Mitchell "Mike" Debardeleben, a lifetime menace who beyond printing and passing counterfeit money (among ot...

In the late 1970’s as the post-war wave of violent crime headed towards its peak, dead bodies mostly of young men and boys began to litter the sides of the California freeway in droves. The police knew two distinct killers at least were responsible. One of them, William Bonin, drove a van and had accomplices the other, Randy Kraft, often jettisoned bodies while traveling at high speeds, hundreds o...

The Golden Age of Murder podcast returns with the Dating Game Killer.  A contestant on the Dating Game Show 13 September 1978 in which he won the date. Rodney Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor) on August 23, 1943. Alcala's grew up in a normal immigrant family, was popular and well liked, possessed an IQ of 170 and attended film school under director Roman Polanski. That however was h...

In the late 1970's a pair of cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono together raped and murdered 10 women in Los Angeles. While Bianchi would kill two more himself in Bellingham, Washington the spree he went on with his cousin would usher in a new and terrifying trend: the serial killer team

We cover Ted Bundy joined by Washington native and comedian Yogi Paliwal. Ted Bundy, the boy next door who would bring serial killing to the home of every unsuspecting American family and shatter an age of innocence which had resigned serial murder to mad men and loners. Bundy was born out of wedlock Theodore Robert Cowell and raised by his grandparents under mysterious circumstances. He would dev...

On this episode of Golden Age of Murder we are joined by Nic Edwards from the incredibly popular True Crime Garage. We discuss the BTK, Dennis Rader a sadist who named himself after his process Bind, Torture, Kill. Born in 1945, he experienced what to most seemed a pleasant childhood with a loving family but underneath he developed dark sexual urges. These feelings  would lead him to model hi...

In this episode we look at the life and times of the Son of Sam. David Berkowitz, born Richard David Falco, engaged in a killing spree between July 29, 1976 and July 31 1977 taking the lives of many innocent couples in New York City. In his furious writings to the cops Berkowitz would describe himself as the Son of Sam, a name that would forever become synonymous with that time in the city's...

On this episode we take a panoramic look at the 1970s a decade which would see recorded serial killing numbers higher than the previous decade combine. Joined with special guest Jennifer Murray, Indiana state university criminologist and expert on mass and serial murder. Her work engages with contemporary mass and serial killers and their psychological development and fantasies. This decade would...

Dean Corll born 1939 was an American serial killer who abducted raped and tortured several young men. His victims total 46 known. He terrorized the community of The Heights, Houston in a crime that would end the culture of suburban openness that characterized the 1950s and much of the 1960s. No longer would the kindly clean cut neighbour who had an affinity for children be seen without perhaps som...

In this episode we explore the life of Edmund Kemper, the co-ed killer who murdered six college students; his mother and her best friend. Detailing how a harrowing childhood of neglect helped create this serial killer from the material of what may have been an ordinary intelligent man. We use the famous meeting between Kemper and FBI criminal profiler John Douglas (The Mindhunter) to develop a his...