True Crime Historian

The Trial Of Louise Vermilya Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 80. Although Louise Vermilya of Chicago was never convicted of a crime, history lays around 10 deaths at her door, mostly family members and suitors. She did go to trial once, and we’ll take a pretty close look at the drama, including a suicide attempt, that led up to her acquittal as we look at the wake of mysterious deat...

Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition For this remastered edition, I’ve dug deep into the vault and combined Episodes 7 and 77, both regarding post-Civil War vigilante action in the Ozark Mountains. The Giant Vigilante Captain Nat Kinney Episode 7. Captain Nat Kinney was a large man, both in stature and reputation, and both seemed to grow to mythic proportions among the citizens of Taney County,...

The Villisca Ax Murders Mystery  Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 69 starts with a brutal ax murder that scandalized the quiet town of Villisca, Iowa, about 2,000 souls in the summer of 1912, when a family of six and two young visitors were killed in their beds by an assailant wielding a long-handled ax, the family’s own tool, which was left at the scene. Clues were scant, and it too...

The End Begins At Coffeyville Jump To The AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITION Episode 458 concludes our three part exploration of the infamous Dalton Gang. With the law breathing down their necks and increasing the guards on trains, the gang needs to find a new way to raise money to finance an exile to South America. In desperation they attempt a double bank robbery in a town where they are well known. Wel...

The Awful Crimes of the Northcott Family A missing boy returns from a cross country walkabout, but the mother says it's not him. Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 episodes from the dusty vault, plus content not available anywhere else on the Internet, direct access to the Boss...

Seven Dead at Taliesin Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition In Episode 46, we relive a somewhat famous crime involving the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the night that his apparently crazed butler -- yes, the butler did it! -- slaughtered seven people at Wright’s Wisconsin rural home he named Taliesen after the ancient Welsh poet, and built as a hide-away for himself and the love of his...

Roadhouse Of No Return Jump To The AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 40 takes a look at the legend of a Kansas family that killed at least 11 visitors to their roadhouse in the early 1870s. They aroused suspicion by choosing as a victim a well-known physician, whose family soon pulled out all stops in a search until they uncovered his body, along with 10 missing travelers, on the Bender property....

Train Robberies Bring Troubles Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 457 continues a three-episode exploration of the infamous Dalton Gang, who terrorize the Plains states near the end of the nineteenth century. In this episode, the gang strikes it rich with a big haul, and some want to retire, but getting out of the country isn't the piece of cake they thought it would be. Hear more WILD WESTERNS! B...

The Early Days Of The Electric Chair This is a combination of two early episodes with a common theme. The Shocking Death Of William Kemmler: The First Electric Execution Jump to AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 19. Following the brutal murder of his common law wife Tillie Ziegler in Buffalo, New York, March, 1889, the rough character William Kemmler said he was glad he did it was was happy to ha...

The Fall from Grace and Tragic Murder of the Rev. Gaylord V. Saunders Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 38 tells the sordid tale of a Methodist minister suffering from a midlife crisis and in losing his faith falls into the path of sin and degradation. It gets so bad, that his beleaguered wife offers a young man a $10 bill to find someone to kill her husband before he kills her. This...

The Bothamley Murder Mystery Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 37 is the story of an 1883 murder that appeared in newspapers across the country in 1905 as "The Bothamley Murder Mystery" under the byline of Captain Patrick D. Tyrrell, who at that time had retired from a career as a detective in the United States Secret Service. His job was mainly to hunt down counterfeiters, but he ach...

From Law To Outlaw JUMP TO AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITION With Deep-Dive Research and Episode Transcripts For Rent-Paying Scoundrels Episode 456 begins a three-episode exploration of the infamous Dalton Gang, who terrorize the Plains states near the end of the nineteenth century. Part One, From Law To Outlaw, tells how Bob Dalton and his brother Gratton made the great fall from grace, from U.S. Marsha...

The Curious Murder of Mary Ekhart  Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 35 goes deep on a case mentioned in my book “The First Celebrity Serial Killer,” as one of the murders Alfred Knapp confessed to.  Mary Ekhart, a young woman from Dayton, Ohio, separated from her husband and went to live in Cincinnati, where she had a lead on a job in a candy factory. A few days later, her body was f...

The Awful Death Of Elsie Sigel Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 33 is the sad tale of Elsie Sigel, a pretty young girl from a prominent New York family, went to work as a missionary in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In the summer of 1909, police found Elsie’s body packed in a trunk in an apartment above a chop suey joint. Hear more stories about TRUNK MURDERS!!! Become a supporter of this po...

The Strange Death Of Edith May Thompson Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 23 revolves around a friendship between a socialite and an erudite, seemingly scholarly man who came to live in her hometown on the eastern shore of Maryland. The residents of Talbot County were shocked beyond belief when a pair of crab trappers pull the body of the newly-married young woman from the Chesapeake Bay and the...

Tea With Aunt Carrie Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 455 takes place down under when the friends and relatives of Caroline Grill of New South Wales begin falling dead from rat poisoning. I can’t quite figure out if Auntie Carrie is stupid or crazy like a fox. You tell me. Hear FIFTEEN More Tales of POISON Murderers Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast...

The True Crime of Irene Schroeder  Jump To AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 32 takes place during the early days of the Great Depression, when one patrolman is killed and another seriously wounded while trying to prevent a trio of bandits who had robbed a department store in Western Pennsylvania from making a getaway. The surviving officer said it was not one of the two men who killed his partne...

The Botched Execution of George H. Painter Jump To AD FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITION Episode 27 starts shortly after midnight, the night of  May 17, 1891, when George H. Painter awoke the people living in his Chicago house shortly after midnight, shouting that his common law wife Alice Martin had been murdered. Painter himself went to fetch the police, who promptly arrested him for the murder. The trial...

 On September 19, 1910, a prowler broke into the home of Clarence Hiller in the Chicago neighborhood Morgan Park. When he awoke Hiller’s 13-year-old daughter, pandemonium erupted and before it was over, Hiller lay dead at the bottom of the stairs. In breaking into the house, Thomas Jennings left his left palm print in a freshly-painted porch rail. Those prints would be the first ever admitted into...

The Scoundrel Tom Horn Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 454 takes us back to the end of the Old West era, where a cattleman’s agent is arrested for the murder of a sheep farmer’s son. Yes, that was a real conflict back then. Tom Horn, the hired gun, had a long history of adventure, deeds good and foul, but the murder of a fourteen-year-old boy was a bullet too far for the colorful To...

Pittsburgh’s Feely Murder Mystery Jump To AD-FREE Safe House Edition You’ll need your thinking cap for Episode 129, about as cold a case as you can get. It’s about eighty years old, but even police officials at the time could not agree on what happened in the back room of that tiny home, whether it was a murder or a murder/suicide. I’m not going to say we can solve it from a few newspaper clipping...

The Ordeal Of Hattie LeBlanc Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 413 is the sordid little tale of a French Canadian girl who gets wrapped up in an ugly situation involving her employers, a womanizing laundry owner and his suffering wife. It only gets uglier when the husband ends up dead, the maid arrested, but it seems to be the wife who stands trial. Hear More Episodes About FEMMES FAT...

The Mulholland Drive Sack Murder Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edtion Episode 411 details the events following the discovery alongside the famed Mulholland Drive of a body sewn up in a makeshift canvas bag fashioned from an old awning. All fingers point to her friend, a physician with a shady past, whose defense is simply the old standby: “What? Who? Me?” Become a supporter of this podcast: https...

The President’s Close Call Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 452 explores the aftermath of a presidential mishap when Teddy Roosevelt's carriage collides with an electric trolley racing to make up for lost time. A Secret Service guard dies immediately and the trolley driver is charged with his murder. Was this a simple accident? A case of incompetence? Or was the motorman made a scape...

The Interstate Strangulation Of Verna Russell Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 409 is the story of a spoiled young man who wouldn’t take no for an answer and let his rage get the better of him. The best evidence against him will come from the very source he turned to in order to hide his deed. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--...