True Crime Historian

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...

Peggy Nash Tells How She Killed Her Husband  Episode 153 involves a domestic dispute, shots fired. What drew me to this story, actually, was the patience of the woman charged. Wait til you hear all of the altercations she had with this man before she finally put an end to it. I’m not justifying homicide, but… well, I’ll tell the story, you supply your own horror, outrage, and indignation.   Ad-Fre...

Why I Decapitated My Wife  Episode 272 When I first encountered the headlines that led me to episode 272, they had me at wife decapitation, but it turns out to be so much more: a trunk murder, a sordid love triangle, a broken-hearted aged father and two poor waifs left without a mother. Plus some of the most spirited and detailed reporting you’ll find. Culled from the historic pages of the Milwauk...

The Islip Murder Of Cynthiana Clock Hawkins Episde 207 tells the tragic story of a young man so beguiled by love and consumed by greed that he commits a most heinous crime when his mother refuses to give her blessing. His careless circumstantial trail quickly trumps his vain effort to pin the crime on the proverbial drifter. Ad-Free Edition More Capital Crimes Become a supporter of this podcast: h...

Dorothy Ellingson Shoots Her Mother  Episode 155 sends us back into the jazz age with another tale of a bad girl gone worse. It seems like a cut and dry case, and it is, but there’s a great deal of drama between her arrest and the somewhat anti-climactic trial. By the way, the sheiks referred to in the story are not from the Middle East, but because of the popularity of popularity of the Rudolph V...

Episode 271 It seemed pretty obvious that the murder of Beate Marie Voss was the unfortunate result of a botched burglary, similar to a string of others of late in Reno, but tracking down the itinerant killer would take some clever and dogged police work. Told from the perspective of Reno Chief of Police Harry Fletcher by Bob Arentz, Episode 271 is adapted from True Detective, V. 43; No. 2, June 1...

The Botched Fake Suicide Of A Millionaire Contractor Episode 206 is not just your typical love triangle gone awry, but the story of a woman about to be scorned retaliating in advance. There's also some intriguing family drama, a conspiracy among sisters, and a retrial that proves to be more sensational than the first. Ad Free Edition More Love Triangles Gone Awry More Femmes Fatale Become a suppor...

The Scarsdale Apple Orchard Torch Murder Scandal Episode 156 is the scandalous tale that begins with the charred body of a young woman, identified only by a mole on an unburned leg. Turns out she was married. And had a boyfriend. Police solve the case quickly, but the decision of the jury is to be whether it was a crime of passion, manslaughter, or premeditated first degree murder. Here are the fa...

It Happened In A Fargo Hotel Episode 270 examines a case that baffled police then, and still today, there is some doubt cast on the verdict. But at the time, when the body of an innocent young farm girl turns up brutally raped and murdered in a Fargo, North Dakota, hotel room, fingers turn toward the night clerk, admittedly the town Lothario. AD-FREE EDITION Become a supporter of this podcast: htt...

Episode 209 is a deadly double-header: Two stories about women murdering their philandering men and getting away with it. The Broadway Playboy Picks A Fight: A housewife complains to her husband that he should spend more time with his children and less time drinking with his friends Then he cracks her over the head with a pool cue. Yeah Big mistake. To Save Others From A Heartache: A nurse leaves...