True Crime Historian

Episode 252 tells two stories of when the wheels of justice had a blow-out and people were convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Ad -Free Safe House Edition "Uncle Amos Dreams a Dream," by Edmund Pearson, the story of two brothers accused of murder after the discovery of two clipped toenails. "Twenty-Three Years Skidoo: What Was Justice In This Case," by Peter Levins, about how a deathbed confes...

The Kidnapping Of Brooke L. Hart  Ad Free Safe House Edition Mob rule threatens the city of San Jose, California in Episode 279 when the scion of a beloved wealthy family, the owners of the town’s biggest department store, is kidnapped by a pair of opportunistic thugs. When the young man’s body is recovered from the waters of the San Francisco Bay, the crowd gathers around the Santa Clara County j...

The Tri-State Head and Hands Murder Plot The cast of characters in Episode 147 includes a previously convicted murderer who works as a driver and a “sort of secretary” for an eccentric former opera singer, three thugs that he met in prison, and a fire captain who often bragged of his success in the stock market after his retirement, amassing a fortune of more than $2 million (in today’s money). Th...

Episode 233. "The Case Of The Smoking Corpse" By Peter Levins. When a young man stumbles upon a pair of corpses in a park, police not only solve a murder, but break up a caper to rid all of the banks in Indianapolis of their cash. And it all starts with a clue from a horseshoe. "A Clue At The Kitchen Window: A Strangulation in Apartment 16" By Quincy Carlton. A young man discovers a young girl he...

The Approximately 55 Wives of Johann Hoch Episode 148 tells the unlikely story of a German immigrant who managed to wed dozens of women, mostly widows that he met through personal ads in German newspapers in several American cities. Soon as he could get his hands on their money, he’d run. Sometimes, his cons wouldn’t work, and he’d resort to murder. Theme Music by Dave Sams “In the Hall of the Mou...

Episode 278 Celibate Farmer Ruins The Romance So what happens when a bachelor farmer is determined that his 52-year-old sister stay a spinster and she falls in love with the farm hand? Nothing good, you can bet on that, especially when the bachelor farmer discovers the suitor slinking around his house. I found this story interesting not only for the unusual disposal of the body, but also for the c...

Episode 163: Magazine #13 "The Man Who Owned Manhattan" is the story of a determined private detective who sets out to solve one of the classic con game and match wits with "the man with an educated laugh." "Love And Money: Two Motives," a tale from the 1870s about a blackmail scheme that goes way over the top. "Mister Bravo's Burgandy" by Edmund Pearson is the scandalous tale of a widow, her doct...

Episode 162 concerns a large blond man claiming to be a good Samaritan who brings a badly-beaten man into a hospital. It sparks an intricate game of cat-and-mouse that crosses several states and one international border. Bonus Stories For Patreon Subscribers: " No Judge Or Jury, " by Peter Levins, considers the case of a missing family. When the Haven family moves West for the mother's health, the...

From The Archives Of The Pinkertons Episode 61 begins with a daring train robbery and tells the story of how one of America's famed detectives, the esteemed William Pinkerton, solves a series of seemingly unrelated robberies while tracking the lone bandit down. The exciting tale is told by Cleveland Moffat, a New York journalist who wrote mystery stories on the side, and in 1905 syndicated a serie...

Captain Tyrell's Stories Of The Secret Service Episode 59 turns again to the writing of Captain Patrick D. Tyrell, a former investigator for the Secret Service, who set down many of his adventures for a syndicated newspaper feature that ran in 1905. This is an exciting story about two related investigations. After Tyrell and his men track down some of the Midwest's most notorious counterfeiters, t...

How Mary Rogers Murdered Her Husband Episode 179 tells the story of a sordid little plot to commit murder in 1902, set in motion by a young married woman of questionable reputation. One boyfriend helps her in her plot, another testifies against her, and when she receives her sentence, she cries for a girlfriend. Ad-Free Edition More Femmes Fatale  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.sp...

The Many True Crimes of Tillie Klimek and Nellie Koulik  Episode 100, a man goes to a doctor because he’s not feeling well and the doctor says, “Sounds like arsenic poisoning,” and suddenly there are four women in jail who discovered that arsenic is more effective in getting rid of a husband than divorce. The ringleader of them all, however, not only poisoned her husband, but just about anybody wh...

The Peoria Hallmark Sex Murder Episode 182 tells the story of a young sex fiend, whose aggressive pursuit of his nefarious goals ends up with a body in a ditch. Police find a diary he kept of his exploits, used in court as evidence... FOR THE DEFENSE! Ad-Free Edition  Purchase for $3 or Listen Ad-Free With Subscription Included in the collection Capital Crimes Included in the collection Courtroom...

The Murder Of Percy Thompson By His Wife’s Young Lover For Episode 149 we make a journey to England in the 1920s and hear about the torrid affair between a successful milliner, but unhappy wife, and a young sailor eight years her junior. She writes saucy letters to his ports of call while he’s away that seem to indicate a plan for murdering her husband. She says she was role-playing, just showing...

The End Of Gordon Fawcett Hamby  Episode 277 is a fascinating portrait of a cold-blooded psychopath and sociopath, an erudite Canadian seaman who allegedly traveled the world committing the most dastardly robberies. But when he goes too far and murders a friend, his conscience finally gets to him and his eight year career comes to a crashing halt and the light of day. Culled from the historic page...

The Travels of Clara Elizabeth Skarin Episode 204 tells the interesting tale of a young woman who shoots her aged benefactor and loots his trunk for a poke full of gold, then goes on a spending spree to update her wardrobe. Was it self-defense (as she would claim eight months later when police finally catch up with her)? Or premeditated? That's the question. Become a supporter of this podcast: htt...

Pulp Nonfiction A celebration of the pioneers of true crime In a remote part of Florida in the 1920s, a brother and sister in business together running a curio shop and gas station are found brutally murdered. Was it a robbery gone awry? Or were there more sinister forces at work? Detectives on the case soon dig up some telling secrets. Adapted from True Detective, v. 43, no. 2, May 1945. Ad-Free...

A Crossing Guard Confesses Episode 150 is the brutal tale of one of the most fiendish murders on record in California (or anywhere else for that matter) that a dogged prosecutor pins on the town’s simple-crossing guard. The man confesses four times, then retracts it at the trial. I think maybe they got the wrong maniac. What do you think? Ad-Free Edition More episodes about kidnappings Become a su...

Baby Irene & Her Two Mothers Episode 208 seems to start out like a murder case: An elderly man marries a woman 40 years younger and suddenly dies three months later under suspicious circumstances. But it turns out to be something much more complicated-even an international incident!-the macguffin being a tiny baby girl. The final decision on this case is dramatically made by the famous Judge K...

Pregnant Church Worker Found Dead In Harvey’s Lake Ad Free Safe House Late Edition If the tropes in Episode 275 sound a bit like Episode 96, “The Body In Big Moose Lake,” the familiarity was not lost on the people of the day, either. The 1906 murder of Grace Brown in Big Moose Lake inspired novelist Theodore Dreiser to write “An American Tragedy,” which became an instant classic when it was publis...

'Billy' Brown's Tragic Affair  Episode 96 is a tragic story of young love gone bad. Real bad. So bad, in fact, that it ended with the body of a young girl floating in an up-state New York lake one summer day in 1906. The man she came there went missing, but not for long. Was it a simple accident as Chester Gillette would claim, or a brutal, cold-blooded murder on a honeymoon trip? The answer may b...

The Kidnapping And Murder of Betty Schnaidt Episode 203 is dedicated to listener Charlene Hall, who not only requested a story about a certain brutal kidnappng and murder in her hometown, but also sent me her personal collection of clippings to form the basis for this story. Turns out Charlotte's hometown murder was the culmination of a summer of terror and a cross-country kidnapping spree. Ad Fre...

Nagging Mother Killed In Her Own Kitchen  Episode 151 is the twisted little tale of a family quarrel gone extreme. There are a couple of different explanations as to how things got so heated on that July afternoon in 1936, but my take is that four beers in a 110-pound girl coming home to a chronically nagging mother with a hatchet nearby... Yeah, whether it started over dinner or a kiss or somethi...

 A Bad Year For The Crabbs Episode 274 tells the tragic story of the Crabb family of Delavan, Illinois. One minute, they were well-respected bankers, pillars of the community. But the aftermath of a tragic death in the family mansion led to charges of manslaughter, perjury, and embezzlement, and another untimely death. Culled from the historic pages of the Bloomington, Illinois, Pantagraph and oth...

The Kansas City Typhoid Murders Episode 205 tells the story of a dark shadow that fell over Kansas City when the death of philanthropist Thomas H. Swope resulted in a murder trial, the defendant a member of his own family. Did Dr. Hyde kill the Colonel? And infect the whole family with typhoid, too? Or is he just the victim of a lingering family grudge? Includes an interesting sidebar about a runa...