Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

My guest, Steve Hodel, author of Black Dahlia Avenger and Most Evil, and I continue our discussion about the Black Dahlia case. We discuss the evidence he's collected implicating his father George Hodel, including a set of police transcripts that links his father to other unsolved Los Angeles murders from the late 1940s.

No case in Los Angeles crime history has been more discussed and speculated about than the January 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, aka The Black Dahlia. My guest, Steve Hodel, is a private investigator, former LAPD homicide detective, and author of Black Dahlia Avenger. In his book he documents his investigation into the murder, implicating his own father, George Hodel, in the process.

My guest on this episode is Jeff Maysh, author of the Kindle single "Handsome Devil", a book that documents the life and death of one of the most talented and charming con artists of the 20th century, Victor Lustig. He was a master of disguise, an escape artist, and the creator of epic swindles in the 1920s and 30s, including "selling" the Eiffel Tower and managing one of the most prolific counterfeiting operations in American history. 

May 18th, 2016, marks the 89th commemoration of the Bath, Michigan School Massacre. In 1927 Andrew Kehoe rigged the school with over 600 pounds of dynamite. The explosion killed 38 school children, 6 teachers, and injured dozens more. Arnie Bernstein, author of "Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing", talks with me about the devastating tragedy.

For those of us who've watched and enjoyed HBO's Deadwood, the town and its characters are absolutely larger than life. But was the show historically accurate? What is fact and what is fiction? My guest, Barbara Fifer, author of Deadwood Saints and Sinners, helps set the record straight. Her writing partner and co-author, the late Jerry Bryant, was a consultant on the Deadwood TV show, and has passed to her a treasure trove of historical research on both the town, and its biggest villain, Al Swearengen. She chats with me about both on this week's episode.

Al Capone is the most infamous gangster in American history, forever associated with Chicago, and known around the world for his connection to  the bloody St. Valentine's Day Massacre. But did he really order those murders? Many don't think so. My guest, Deirdre Marie Capone is the granddaughter to Al's brother Ralph, and author of Uncle Al Capone. She offers an inside view into the Capone family, and helps dispel some of the long held beliefs about Al Capone, his actions, and his later life.

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was a 19th century contemporary of Jack the Ripper, and many claim that they were one in the same. The UK's A.J. Griffiths-Jones, author of Prisoner 4374, discusses the life of this serial killer, better known as "Lambeth Poisoner", and the bloody trail he left through Canada, the United States and England.

When authorities have difficulties linking physical evidence to Bruno Hauptmann in the Charles Lindbergh Jr. abduction and murder, Arthur Koehler, an expert on wood, helps them connect Hauptmann to the ladder left outside the Lindbergh family estate on March 1st, 1932.

On May 4th, 1886 in Chicago's Haymarket, a labor rally is interrupted first by a column of police officers, and then by a bomb from the crowd thrown into their ranks. This has major implications for the labor and social reform movement in the US. James Green, author of Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America, talks about the events leading up to the bombing and the aftermath.

In the winter of 1900, John Hossack is brutally attacked and mortally wounded with an axe while in bed next to his wife. Patricia Bryan, author of Midnight Assassin, talks about the murder and the number one suspect, John Hossack's wife Margaret, and the shock of the crime to rural turn-of-the-century Iowa.

in 1920 three African-American men were lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, accused of raping a white woman. Over 10,000 people gathered in the street to watch them hang. Michael Fedo, author of The Lynchings In Duluth, discusses this terrible moment in Minnesota history, and the questionable accusations that led to it. 

In the late 1920s, an estimated 20 boys or more are abducted, tortured and murdered at a chicken ranch in Wineville, California. My guest is Anthony Flacco, author of The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders. He tells the both tragic and inspiring story of Sanford Clark, the nephew of sadistic serial killer Gordon Stewart Northcott.

I'm joined by Tobin T. Buhk, the author of Poisoning The Pecks of Grand Rapids: The Scandalous 1916 Murder Plot. We talk about the charming, devious killer Arthur Warren Waite, who ingratiated himself into the wealthy Peck family through marriage, and then put a plot in motion to kill every member of the family so he could inherit a fortune.

Karen Abbott, author of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy, joins me to talk about a group of extraordinary women in 1860s America, both Union and Confederate, who become spies to help advance their sides in the Civil War. The song at the end of the episode, My Rebel Soldier, is available for purchase through Itunes.

Off of the coast of western Australia, the Dutch East India Company's state-of-the-art ship, the Batavia, wrecks on a reef in June of 1629. One of the officers on board, a failed apothecary named Jeronimus Corenlisz, is left in charge of the survivors and begins to slaughter them with terrible brutality. I'm joined by the author of Batavia's Graveyard, Mike Dash, who tells this story in gruesome detail.