True Crime Historian

YESTERDAY’S NEWS -- Tales of classic scandals, scoundrels and scourges told through vintage newspaper accounts from the golden age of yellow journalism...The Gillooly/Lannon AffrayEpisode 443 tells the story of the first officer to be killed in the line of duty in Kokomo, Indiana. But was the violent action against him provoked, or spurred on by a notorious local gang? The question divided the growing Indiana town.Culled from the historic pages of the Kokomo Saturday Tribune, the 1882 History of Howard County, and Jackson Morrow’s 1909 History of Howard County.We offer a special thanks to the staff at the Howard County Library’s genealogy room and listener Anthony R Jones, no relation, who saw the mobile production unit outside that library, where I was engaged in research on another matter. After I got his message telling me to look into the Mollihan gang, I dug around and came up with this episode.Residents of the Safe House can take a deeper dive into Kokomo’s criminal past in the case file posted at www.p

SERIAL KILLER CLIPSA reading of Yesterday’s News exploring one of History’s most prolific murderers. The Mysteries Of Belle Gunness Episode 308 examines the strange story of Belle Gunness, which came to light only after her house burned down with her body presumably inside and a dozen or so bodies buried in the yard. There’s a lot of conjecture and debate about this case still going on today. Culled from the historic pages of the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and other newspapers of the era. A creation Of Pulpular Media Can’t wait for the next episode to drop? Download the new podcast app Himalaya and get all new episodes a day early, and drop a buck in the tip jar for True Crime Historian. Support your favorite podcaster at www.patreon.com/truecrimehistorian. Just a dollar a month reserves your bunk at the safe house and access to exclusive content and whatever personal services you require. *** Opening theme by Nico Vitesse. Some music and sound effects licensed from podcastmusic.com. Closin

YESTERDAY’S NEWS --Tales of classic scandals, scoundrels and scourges told from historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism...The First Mrs. KinkeadEpisode 258 tells the sad story of a nurse who fell in love with her patient. If you can believe her story, she may have been led on a bit, maybe outright deceived by his promises of marriage. But then, he marries another and the nurse turns stalker.For your delight and indignationA creation Of Pulpular MediaZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire.Do your hair a favor with all natural Nutrafol and get your first bottle for $10 with subscription and promotional code TRUE at Nutrafol.com.***Opening theme by Nico Vitesse.Incidental music by Nico Vitesse.Closing theme by Dave Sams and Rachel Schott, engineered by David Hisch at Third Street Music.Media management by Sean R. JonesProduction assistance by Emily Simer BraunRichard O Jones, Executive Producer

AN EYE FOR AN EYE --A special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the Death Penalty...The Avondale HorrorEpisode 231 is a dark, dark tale of what happens when the population doesn’t die fast enough to keep the medical schools supplied with cadavers for dissecting: The resurrectionists start hitting people over the head to hasten the process and get their points. The reporting also includes some interesting stories about the craft of the grave robber.Culled from the historic pages of the Cincinnati Enquirer and other newspapers of the era.***Hosted by Wondery. @wonderymediaIt’s time to step up your watch game. Join the MVMT!ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire.You can eat like a gourmet and cook like a chef in your own kitchen with Blue Apron, a better way to cook. @BlueApronBe a part of the story. Get in the game at huntakiller.com/true***Theme music performed by Dave Sams and Rachel Schott, engineered by David Hisch at Third Street Music.Inciden

AN EYE FOR AN EYE --A special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the Death Penalty...A Foul Deed In Ft. ThomasIn celebration of our 200th episode, I’m going to share one of my favorite local stories. The murder itself took place a state over, but one of the convicted murderers lived for a time in my hometown, and the sad story of Pearl Bryan is well-known in the three states involved, with many dubious legends and rumors abounding, and it’s said that her spirit haunts a Northern Kentucky nightclub. But what I really like about this story is that it has one of the most remarkable descriptions of an execution that I’ve come across. Enjoy.***Hosted by Wondery. @wonderymediaMember of the BombPod Media Network. @bombpodSimple Contacts. They don’t call it simple for nothing.***Incidental music by Nico VetteseTheme music performed by Dave Sams and Rachel Schott, engineered by David Hisch at Third Street Music.Media management by Sean R. JonesProduction a

UNSOLVEDA special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring one of history’s most baffling murder mysteries.The Murder Of Elizabeth ShortBy listener request, Episode 196 follows the first month of the investigation of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated murder mysteries that begins when of a 22-year-old party girl turns up tortured, murdered, and mutilated by the side of a busy boulevard. She was such a runabout that when her body was identified by fingerprints, no one had realized she hadn’t been seen in five days. But the body was fresh.***Hosted by Wondery. @wonderymediaMember of the BombPod Media Network. @bombpod***Theme music performed by Dave Sams and Rachel Schott, engineered by David Hisch at Third Street Music.Some incidental music by Chuck WigginsMedia management by Sean R. JonesProduction assistance by Emily Simer Braun

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition TriggerThe Gangster ChroniclesBook Two, Chapter Six__Crane Neck gets arrested in a Florida speakeasy, then is quickly in the wind again. Meanwhile, the hunt for his former partner and archenemy Bob Zwick continues. When Zwick’s reign of terror finally ends, details of their worst exploits are revealed in court.__Music by Dave Samswww.truecrimehistorian.com/1925nugent

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition AssassinThe Gangster Chronicles 2.5Crane Neck returns to Cincinnati to do a favor for his old boss, Fat Wrassman: Even the score for the hit on George Murphy. But it means going after his partner, Bob “The Fox” Zwick. You don’t want to miss the showdown in the streets of Cincinnati between Fat Wrassman and Detective Dutch Schafer.- Music by Dave Sams-www.truecrimehistorian.com/1925nugent

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition TriggerThe Gangster Chronicles 2.4-Crane Neck Nugent’s career included work with the gang of Fred “Killer” Burke of St. Louis, whom he got to know when they served together as machine gunners in World War I. While no one was ever charged with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, it is generally agreed that Al Capone hired the Burke gang, whom he called his “American Boys,” to take down his rival Bugs Moran. In this episode, we’ll also hear about Burke’s murder of a policeman in Michigan a few months after the massacre, his capture two years later when some of this information came to light.

Crane Neck Nugent: Prohibition Trigger -The Gangster Chronicles 2.3 -With the heat turned up high in Ohio, Crane Neck retreats to Kansas City to join the gang of his Army mentor Fred “Killer” Burke, the leader of his own gang there. A Toledo job goes south on the Burke gang, and a patrolman ends up dead from machine gun fire. Meanwhile Jack Parker, Todd Messner, Breck Lutes, Rodney Ford, and Bob Zwick hold up a craps game at the Pelican Club in North College Hill, killing the town marshal who stopped in to chew the fat. Later, Jack Parker is found dead outside Lebanon, Ohio. When the state’s chief witness in the first trial for the marshal’s murder turns up charred in an abandoned barbecue shack, police enhance their search for Crane Neck and Bob the Fox, while the surviving Dumele killers face the music.- Chapter 4: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre -Music by Dave Sams

The Gangster Chronicles 2.2.2-George "Fat" Wrassman figures heavily (so to speak) in the saga of Crane Neck Nugent. While this case doesn't bear directly on Nugent's story, it tells you the kind of man that Fat was, and will help inform some of the action in a later episode, so I offer this as a bonus to The Gangster Chronicles Book Two at no extra charge.

Crane Neck Nugent: Prohibition Trigger-The Gangster Chronicles 2.2.1-YESTERDAY'S NEWS-The murders of Gus Fitch, Bob Sollick, Glenn Hiatt, Martin Dailey and Buddy Ryan. Crane Neck Nugent was involved in four of these, and will soon avenge a fifth.

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition Trigger -The Gangster Chronicles 2.1-YESTERDAY'S NEWS-A reading from historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalismThe second volume of The Gangster Chronicles explores one of the many side effects of the Great Experiment, America's Prohibition on alcohol.I’ve often contended that Prohibition made criminals out of a lot of ordinary people who just wanted to drink and serve drinks. But it also gave some truly bad men an opportunity to misbehave.Although he had one of the worst nicknames names ever, Raymond "Crane Neck" Nugent, was one of the most ruthless of the era's gangsters.At 25, he went to trial for the murder of a bootlegger, and when the witness who came forward right after the event changed his mind at the trial -- well, we’ll look at that here in Chapter One.Before his own demise, Nugent would be suspected in at least 15 high-profile murders, including the most famous gangland massacre of the Prohibition era. Yeah, he was probably one of the guns at the St.

 Murder Under the Crab Apple Tree By Damon RunyonWhen a friend of mine started pitching Hall-Mills murder to me as a potential episode, I was immediately enthralled by the tale of an Episcopalian rector and his tragic affair with the choir singer, but when he told me the case hinged on the eyewitness testimony of “the pig woman,” I knew this was a story for True Crime Historian. But it gets even better. I started looking into it and discovered that the famed sportswriter Damon Runyon covered the trial with the same breezy prose he used in the short stories he wrote that inspired the musical “Guys and Dolls,” with daily dispatches drawing vivid word pictures of the trial and its participants. I felt it worthy of in depth exploration, so we’ll be doing a six episode series released on consecutive Sundays to hear all about the case and its cast of characters as told by one of America’s premier storytellers, who turns out to also be a Pioneer of True Crime. 

 Panic at the Italian HallThis episode comes from the request of a listener in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who wanted to know more about the panic disaster that took place at the Calumet Italian Hall in 1913. We just took nice camping trip to the Keneewah Peninsula, Michigan's upper Upper Peninsula. You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful place in the world. The weather was sublime and Lake Superior is one of my favorite bodies of water--crystal clear, unsalted and shark-free. My girlfriend wants to move up there, at least for the summers, and I'm not opposed.While we were there, we took the time to stop at Calumet and visited the memorial to the the Italian Hall. I'm usually a pretty cynical person, but I was truly moved to tears thinking about how horrible a person it took to instigate this tragedy, especially when most of the victims were little children. I took some pictures of the memorial and that evening, dug Episode 67 out of the vault, made a few edits, enhanced some of the audio, and whil

AN EYE FOR AN EYE-A special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the Death Penalty.-This episode comes at the request of a faithful listener in Cincinnati who wanted to hear more about Anna Marie Hahn, the first woman to be executed in Ohio's electric chair.-Although ‘Arsenic Annie’ had stoically proclaimed her innocence right up until her dying day, Anna Marie Hahn left a handwritten 20-page confession in her death row cell on December 7, 1938, when they led her to Ohio’s electric chair, literally kicking and screaming.-In the letter, she not only takes responsibility for six murders, she denies other poisoning attempts and goes into details about her life and how she began her series what the governor called cold-blooded and horrifying crimes when he made the final decision to take her to the chair.-The letter is such a remarkable and revealing self-portrait, more entertaining than her pathetic execution, that I gave it to a professional actress,

THE GANGSTER CHRONICLES A special edition of Yesterday’s News focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression eras.The Final Chapter of the Dillinger Saga-The first volume of this this series has been devoted to the exploration of newspaper accounts of the trail of terror blazed by one of America’s most famous, dare I say most beloved, gangsters, John Dillinger.-From the time he was paroled from the Michigan City prison in May, 1933, to the time he was gunned down by police on a Chicago sidewalk 14 months later, John Herbert Dillinger was one of America’s most notorious scoundrels.-In previous chapters, we read the newspaper accounts of the escape of ten convicts from the Indiana penitentiary at Michigan City and the bloody delivery of Dillinger from the Lima, Ohio, jail; how Dillinger and his new gang blazed a trail of terror across the Midwest until he was captured in Tuscon, his second daring escape using a gun he made from broomstick, and his continuing reign of terror. Last month,

YESTERDAY'S NEWSA reading from America's historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism.Luke Brannon Thwarts a Lynching-The Classic Village of Oxford, Ohio, got so riled up over a shooting in a local saloon, that they bust open the jails and drag the culprits to the local hanging tree. The tree had been  used once before, and if you go to my archives, you can hear about that tale in the episode two, "An Outrageous Murder in Oxford," in which the town got so outraged over the apparent murder of one of the town matrons that they hung a dead man. A decade later, another Oxford mob attempts another lynching, but it doesn’t really go any better for them, not when brave Deputy Luke Brannon swoops in just in the nick of time.-Music by Chuck Wiggins

THE GANGSTER CHRONICLES 1.5A special edition of Yesterday's News focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression eras.-We're beginning this series with newspaper accounts of the trail of terror blazed by one of America's most famous, dare I say most beloved, gangsters, John Dillinger.-From the time he was paroled from the Michigan City prison in May, 1933, to the time he was gunned down by police on a Chicago sidewalk 14 months later, John Herbert Dillinger was one of America's most notorious scoundrels.-In previous chapters, we read the newspaper accounts of the escape of ten convicts from the Indiana penitentiary at Michigan City and the bloody delivery of Dillinger from the Lima, Ohio, jail; how Dillinger and his new gang blazed a trail of terror across the Midwest until he was captured in Tuscon, his second daring escape using a gun he made from broomstick, and his continuing reign of terror. In this chapter, we’ll hear about one more narrow escape from the clutches of the law and o

TRUE CRIME STORY TIMEThe Sad Tale of Anna May Gamble Knapp-Around the jails and the Indiana and Ohio neighborhoods where he lived, Alfred Knapp carried the nickname “Looney” Knapp for his bizarre, often childish behavior. He spent half of his adult life in prison for petty larcenies and attacks upon young women. When he was released from the Michigan City Penitentiary in the summer of 1902, he joined his third wife, Hannah, in her hometown of Hamilton, Ohio. Three days before Christmas that year, Knapp strangled his wife in the early morning hours and put her body in a box and put the box in the Great Miami River, then told everyone that Hannah had left him. Some in his family became suspicious, and when he remarried two months later, they had him arrested for bigamy. Alfred Knapp then not only confessed to killing his wife, but four other women in Cincinnati and Indianapolis, including his second wife. Consequently, “The Strangler Knapp” became a Midwest sensation and dozens of newspapers sent reporters to c