Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

(Orig pub date: 3/28/23) In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recogniz­able. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping— a crime then punishable by death. But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South. My guest, Tal McThenia, first introduced listeners of NPR's This American Life to this c...

On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane. Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case. My guest is Robert Fitzgibbon, author of the...

On October 7, 1964, Debra Miller’s life turns upside down when her mother is arrested for the murder of her father. At only fourteen years old, Debra becomes a ward of the court, grappling with the unfathomable trauma of watching her mother’s trial and conviction—a devastation that is only amplified when her family’s tragedy is splashed across headlines nationwide and featured in Joan Didion’s "Slouching Towards Bethlehem". Debra is the author of the new book "The Most Wonderful, Terrible Person: A Memoir of Murder in the Golden State". She joins me to share intimate details about her family and...

In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloon proprietor Erastus Wallace Scott of Des Moines―with his cousins in the infamous Carter Gang―operated a campaign of murder, fraud, corruption, and prostitution from his bar on East Court Avenue. In 1908, the local paper denounced the neighborhood as “given up almost entirely to houses of prostitution. At one end stands a notorious saloon, the scene of many crimes, even murders, and for years a harbor for criminals and a plotting place for the evil minded." That reviled enterprise was none other than Scott’s seedy shack of sin. Initially, Scott gained the...

The night before Easter 1905, Miranda Bricker left her sister’s house and made her way through the darkness. Her destination was her living quarters and place of employment, the Maplehurst mansion, the home of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s leading industrialist. Within sight of her destination, an attacker emerged from the darkness, rushing her from behind. Their battle cut across the Maplehurst lawn, ending in Bricker’s death before witnesses could be sure what was happening. The killer melted away into the night. My guest is Mark Sebastian Jordan, author of "The Maplehurst Murder: Mount Vernon’s Most Infamous Unsolved Crime". He walks...

(Orig Pub Date 8/10/2016) My conversation with author Mark Lee Gardner continues, about his book "Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape". In the second part of the story, we talk about the James-Younger Gang's flight into the Big Woods of southern Minnesota, and the difficulties that they faced navigating through unknown territory, and also the troubles the local posses had finding them. The author's website: https://songofthewest.com/ This is the 150th Anniversary of the Raid! Visit the official The Defeat of Jesse James Days website for more about the festivities: https...

(Orig pub date: 8/3/2016) Much has been written about Jesse James, including his gang's ill-fated trip to Northfield, Minnesota, a botched bank raid met with death and tragedy, but never told like this. Mark Lee Gardner, author of "Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid and the Wild West's Greatest Escape", joins me to tell the story of the James-Younger gang's foray north from Missouri and the chaos that followed. The author's website: https://songofthewest.com/ This is the 150th Anniversary of the Raid! Visit the official The Defeat of Jesse James Days website for more about the festivities...

My guest this week is Merry Gordon, author of Arizona's Murdered Madams: Death in the Red-Light Districts. She shares the stories of two of Territorial Arizona's most infamous madams, former Mormon Minnie Powers and "Belgian Jennie" Bauters, including the cold-blooded murders that ended their lives. She also talks about the colorful and often dangerous world of sex workers in the Old West. The author's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Merry-Gordon/author/B07F99X97T The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/arizonas-murdered-madams-9781467171069 The author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merrygordonwrites/ Free shipping and 365-day...

In May of 1832, an American whaleship called the Mentor went down on a remote reef in the western Pacific. Of the crew, eleven men made it out alive, but surviving the wreck was only the beginning. They found themselves stranded on unfamiliar shores, running low on supplies, and before long they were face to face with the Indigenous people of Palau, who approached them cautiously and heavily armed. My returning guest is best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin, and his new book is called The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of...

My guest is New York Times bestselling author Phyllis Karas. She shares the deeply personal story of two shocking tragedies in her family history: a 1935 car accident that killed six relatives, and the brutal 1954 murder of a Massachusetts seamstress named Ora Schonarth that sent her cousin Ronnie to prison. She also explores how the trauma of both events reverberated through her family for generations. Her new book, Curse of the Blumenthals, is out now. The author's website: https://www.phylliskaras.com/ The author's publisher page: https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Phyllis-Karas/260784571 30% off sitewide at Batch! Go here and support the...

(Orig pub date: 6/21/22) In the early morning hours of October 17, 1953, a frightened, battered woman named Diane Wells told a horrific tale to police. She said intruders had broken into the top-floor penthouse apartment she shared with her husband Cecil, murdered him, beat her, and then made their escape. It was an especially sensational story because 31-year-old "blonde bombshell" Diane Wells was nicknamed "the most beautiful woman in Alaska", and Cecil (twenty years her senior) was a wealthy and well-known Fairbanks businessman. There were suspicions, however, that Diane was lying. It was soon learned that she was having an affair with...

In 1986, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults drew a larger audience than the Super Bowl or David Frost’s interview with Richard Nixon. The special was intended as a comeback for journalist Geraldo Rivera, built around the dramatic opening of a "vault" beneath Chicago’s Lexington Hotel, rumored to contain Al Capone’s riches. But when the vault was finally opened live the moment didn’t deliver what millions of viewers were expecting. My guest is William Hazelgrove, author of Capone’s Vault: The Real Story of the Biggest Disaster in Television History. His book traces how the idea came togethe...

In 1939, the crimes of German serial murderer Eugen Weidmann captivated France, culminating in a sensational trial and a public execution by guillotine, the last of its kind in the country, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II. My guest today is Mark Braude, author of The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Murderer, and the Meeting of Two Cultures on the Eve of World War II. In our conversation he shares how Janet Flanner’s reporting brought this case to American readers and why she saw Weidmann’s story as a chilling reflection of a cont...

Edward Buckley was a violent East End tough whose life unfolded in the same streets and shadows as the Whitechapel murders. Born into a rough, crime-entangled family, he grew up in a world of poverty, street gangs, and routine violence -where assaults, intimidation, and desperation were part of daily life in 1880s London. My guest is Jonathan Tye, author of "Jack the Ripper? Edward Buckley: East End Thug and Gang Member". His book revisits the Whitechapel murders of 1888 and the years around them, bringing the focus back to the neighborhoods where they happened and the kinds of men who lived...

(Orig. Release Date: 4/23/23) For decades following the horrific 1918 execution of the Romanov family, many hoped against hope that one or more of the children had escaped the bullets and bayonets of the Bolsheviks.  And when a young woman came forward with an incredible story - that she was the real Grand Duchess Anastasia and had in fact survived the massacre - it sent shock waves around the world. My returning guests are Penny Wilson and Greg King, co-authors of "The Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson, and the World's Greatest Royal Mystery". They present to us the evidence that p...

My guest this week is forensic psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Smalldon. He shares stories from decades of correspondence, prison visits and interviews with some of America’s most notorious killers, including Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. His memoir is called "That Beast Was Not Me: One Forensic Psychologist, Five Decades of Conversations with Killers". The author's website: ⁠https://jeffreysmalldon.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is award-winning author Saladin Ambar, who examines a wave of racially motivated killings along the Mississippi River in the 1830s - events that left a deep impression on a young Abraham Lincoln and helped inspire his Lyceum Address. His book, Murder on the Mississippi: The Shocking Crimes That Shaped Abraham Lincoln, explores how these crimes shaped Lincoln’s early views on justice and mob rule. The author's website: https://www.diversionbooks.com/books/murder-on-the-mississippi The author on Twitter/X: https://x.com/dinambar The author on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/saladin.ambar Free shipping and 365-day returns wi...

One chilly January night in 1867, a Virginia City prostitute was strangled to death in her bed. The murderer was caught and hanged in front of a crowd of thousands, and the citizens of the Comstock considered the matter closed. More than 150 years later, the murder of Julia Bulette has become a local legend. The man accused, John Millain, was suspected of killing before, but there would be no justice for those victims. Reduced to vague mentions in newspaper articles, little was left to tie their unsolved murders to that of Julia’s. Did John Millain leave a trail of tragedy th...

On a chilly night in March of 1976, a father searching for his missing son made a horrifying discovery inside a Chicago apartment - in at what first appeared to be a drug deal gone bad. Inside were the bodies of Gio Messina and Delphine “Tinker” Moore, brutally stabbed to death. With no clear motive and a case that seemed ready to fall apart, it might have stayed buried if not for a series of unlikely breaks. My guest is author Gregg Owen, who, years later, found himself prosecuting that very case and was determined to see it through. His book "Conv...

(Orig pub date: 10/8/2017). My guest, Jay Atkinson, author of "Massacre on the Merrimack", tells the notorious and controversial story of Hannah Duston. After members of the Abenaki tribe captured her and her newborn infant in March of 1697, they killed her baby on a forced march north. Duston got her revenge by killing and scalping ten of her captors, including six children, and fleeing by canoe back to her home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The author's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001JORXLK On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writerjayatkinson/ On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jay_atkinson/ Learn...