True Crime Historian

Munich, Germany February 24, 1920 A failed painter and Army intelligence operative named Adolf Hitler stood before a packed house at Munich's Hofbräuhaus to announce a new political program. The event, which nearly erupted in a riot, marked the public christening of what would soon be called the Nazi Party. The episode reports from the oldest and most famous beer hall in the city on the chaotic ni...

The Redpath Mansion Myster Jump to the Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 465, a classic locked-room mystery, takes place in the summer of 1901, when two bodies are discovered inside a mansion in Montreal’s exclusive Golden Square Mile. Ada Maria Mills Redpath and her son, Clifford, are dead. Authorities quickly ruled it a tragic murder-suicide, blaming a seizure. But the evidence was immediately...

What Happened In The Guttenberg Woods  Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 97 is another story of a honeymoon trip gone awry, but it was a marriage likely doomed from the start. For one thing, Mina Muller and Martin Kettler -- if that’s his real name -- were both already married. With children. But they still visit the minister and, well, you know it’s not gonna end well. Hear More Epis...

Rouen, France February 21, 1431 At eight o'clock on a frozen Wednesday morning, a nineteen-year-old peasant girl in leg irons shuffled into the Chapel Royal of Rouen Castle to face forty-two robed clerics who had already decided her fate. Two years earlier, Joan of Arc had heard the voice of the Archangel Michael in her father's garden. She went on to break the siege of Orléans, rout the English a...

There were ghosts at the San Quentin gallows. That's what the hangman saw. San Quentin Executioner Amos Lunt  Jump to Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 95 explores a different point of view of capital punishment, a behind the scenes look at the gallows of San Quentin Prison from the hangman’s point of view. One of the minor characters in Episode 84 “ The Belle in the Belfry ” was the hangman, Amo...

True Tales From The Old West Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 63 tells the story of the scoundrel Charley Bowles who took the moniker Black Bart from a villain in a dime novel, but I think he used it ironically because it didn’t really fit his gentlemanly style. He only robbed coaches carrying treasure belonging to the Wells Fargo Company, apparently in revenge for a mining dispute i...

Sing Sing Prison February 18, 1916 On September 5th, 1913, two boys fishing off a dock in Weehawken, New Jersey, hauled up a bundle wrapped in oilcloth and weighted with stone. Inside was the upper torso of a young woman. No head. No identification. What followed was one of the most sensational murder investigations in New York City history — a trail of pillowcase tags, bloodstained walls, and for...

Rome, Italy February 17, 1600 Rome, the day after Ash Wednesday. A naked man rides a mule through the streets toward the Campo de' Fiori, a leather bridle strapped across his mouth to keep him from shouting heresies to the crowd. Giordano Bruno — philosopher, former Dominican friar, and the man who told the Roman Inquisition that the universe was infinite — is about to be burned alive at the stake...

Nazis Invade America Episode 464 Jump to Ad-Free Safe House Edition In the summer of 1942, the war was supposed to be a distant conflict. But that illusion shattered when German U-boats, the predators of Operation Drumbeat, brought the fight to the American home front, sinking ships within sight of Long Island. This episode dives into the extraordinary story of Operation Pastorius, Hitler’s audaci...

Miami, FloridaFebruary 15, 1933 A warm Wednesday evening in Bayfront Park. President-elect Franklin Roosevelt has just finished a short speech from the back of an open touring car when a five-foot-one Italian bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara climbs onto a wobbly folding chair, pulls a thirty-two caliber revolver, and fires five shots into the crowd. Roosevelt is untouched. But Chicago Mayor Anton...

Strasbourg, Alsace February 14, 1349 Six hundred years before Al Capone made Valentine's Day synonymous with bloodshed in Chicago, the citizens of Strasbourg, in the German Empire, committed a massacre that dwarfed it in scale and savagery. On February 14, 1349, as many as two thousand Jewish men, women, and children were marched to the Jewish cemetery and burned alive on a wooden platform — accus...

The Crimes of Winona Green Freeman Jump to the Ad-Free Safe Huse Edition Episode 52 is a feature report from the St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter Frederick H. Brennan on a visit to the Little Rock, Arkansas, jail to visit with accused double murderess Winona Green. I am particularly taken by Brennan’s description of Mrs. Green’s hold on the local law enforcement and press. In 1928, Brennan would b...

Dark History Today The Murder of Clayton Dale Elkins Lawton, Oklahoma February 12, 1950 Two old friends from Seminole — Clayton Dale Elkins and James Albert Collier Jr. — reconnect over bootleg whiskey at the Big 6 bar on a Saturday afternoon. That night, with their wives in tow, the drinking continues through two half-pints of illegal liquor, a stop at Ruth's Drive-In, and a long evening that spl...

King Ben and the Curse of the House of David Jump to the Ad-Free Safe House Edition In Episode 53 we explore portions of a five-part investigative expose the Detroit Free Press published on the cult House of David, which operated a commune near Benton Harbor Michigan in the 1920s. The leader of the cult was Benjamin Franklin Purnell, in these articles confronted with allegations of sexual abuse an...

Prescott, Arizona Territory February 10, 1886 In 1881, the Arizona Territory was rocked by the chilling crimes of Dennis Dilda , a man whose outward appearance as a hardworking settler masked a predatory nature. Settling near Prescott with his wife and children, Dilda’s descent into infamy began with the disappearance of several travelers. Suspicion peaked when Deputy Sheriff James Bozarth went mi...

The Chicago Wynekoop Scandal Jump to Ad-Free Safe House Edition In November 1933, Chicago undertaker Thomas Ahern was summoned to the basement surgery of Dr. Alice Lindsay Wynekoop, a respected 62-year-old physician. There he discovered her daughter-in-law Rheta, 22, face-down on the operating table with a bullet in her back—and immediately called police instead. Dr. Wynekoop initially blamed an i...

Fotheringhay Castle. Northamptonshire, England. February 8, 1587. The Great Hall has been transformed into a theater of death. A scaffold, two feet high and covered in black cloth, stands in the center. A fire crackles in the hearth, fighting the winter chill, but it does little to warm the blood of the three hundred spectators crowded into the room. They are waiting for a woman who has been a pri...

The Murder Of Joseph Smith Jump To The Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 466 is the story of John C. Elliott, the Ohio woodcutter turned political assassin who rode 500 miles to execute a prophet. Hiding as a schoolmaster, Elliott was arrested and set free by Joseph Smith himself. Discover the man history forgot. Hear More Stories About CAPERS AND CONSPIRACIES Become a supporter of this podcast:...

Madge Oberholtzer Kills The Klan Jump to the Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 461 takes us to 1925, when Indiana Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon D.C. Stevenson kidnapped and assaulted Madge Oberholtzer, who died from poison she took to escape him. Her "dying declaration" was the key evidence. His murder conviction, based on "proximate cause," shattered the Klan’s immense political power in Indiana and...

The Condemnation Of Mary Ann Cotton Jump to the Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 462 is the tale of the wicked Mary Ann Cotton, one of Victorian Britain's most prolific serial killers, exploiting the era's poverty and the new industrial life insurance market for financial gain. Using arsenic, her crimes were camouflaged by high mortality rates, as symptoms mimicked "gastric fever." Become a supp...

The Barrow Gang’s Bloody Rampage Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 460 tells the brutal story of two young lovers and their gang as they escalate from small-time robbery to a bloody, two-year crime spree across the Southwest. With an arsenal of machine guns and other deadly weapons, they left a trail of dead lawmen and merchants in a desperate flight that ended in a deadly ambush. Hea...

Kahahawai Shot In The Heart  Jump to the Ad-Free Safe House Edition Episode 93 takes you to the island paradise of Hawaii, not yet a state in 1932 when the wife of a naval officer stationed there is allegedly raped and beaten by four natives. A few months later, her mother, her husband and two of his enlisted men face a jury under the counsel of the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow in a case...

The Escapes and Escapades of Winnie Ruth Judd Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 90 begins in the fall of 1931 when a Phoenix resident shows up in a Los Angeles train depot trying to claim three trunks that she had shipped there. The clerks wouldn’t let her take the trunks because of the foul odor emanating from them.  Winnie Ruth Judd said she’d go get the key so they could see there...

Or, Death of a Composer Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 86 involves the body of a songwriter and real estate speculator found tied to a chair with an expression of surprise frozen on his dead face and suspicions of suicide. - Wait. What? - Suicide tied to a chair? - The evidence is so jumbled, police are at a loss to explain, but the backstory to the incident and a foray into the wo...

From Thrill Slayer To War Hero Jump To The AD-FREE Safe House Edition Episode 459 unlocks the bizarre, true tale of George Harsh, the Oglethorpe "Thrill Slayer," and his partner Richard Gallogly. Bored rich kids trade philosophy for a Colt .45 and a rash of robberies that turn fatal. Harsh's journey spirals from university to death row, then from chain-gang surgeon to hero of the Great Escape. Yea...