True Crime Historian

Or, Death of a Composer - UNSOLVED - A special edition of Yesterday’s News examining some of history’s most perplexing mysteries. - This episode 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 worlds of traveling musicians and actors, hints at motives deeply hidden, and possibly scandalous. - This is one that will keep you guessing. - Theme Music by Dave Sams - Incidental music, "The Old Bachelor" by Henry Purcell, Creative Commons via musopen.org - Sound effects via freesound.org

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition Assassin The Gangster Chronicles 2.5 Crane 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

AN EYE FOR AN EYE - A reading of Yesterday's News exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the death penalty. - - Although this episode begins with the disappearance of young Blanche Lamont, it is the body of her friend and confidante Minnie Williams that is first found in a storage room in a San Francisco Baptist Church. - But in searching for clues, police find Blanche’s brutalized corpse far up in the church’s bell tower. - The Sunday School Superintendent, a dapper but depraved medical student is charged with both murders, tried for the death of Blanche Lamont. --I don’t want to give out any spoilers, but you’ll want to stick around for the bizarre execution feast at the end. - Music by Dave Sams - www.truecrimehistorian.com/1895lamont

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition Trigger The 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.

PULP NONFICTION -- A reading from the pioneers of true crime. The sensational trial of Jessie Costello captured the public’s attention in the spring and summer of 1933, after her husband, a fire department captain, died of an apparent heart attack after attending the wake of a friend’s father. But when officials get wind of his wife’s indiscretions, they snatch the body from the funeral to run a complete autopsy and find enough cyanide in his body to kill 20 men and his wife, Jessie, stands accused of his murder. The case garnered a lot of attention, and this episode will explore four varied reports of the trial and its aftermath. The first report comes from a popular novelist of the day, Katharine Brush, whose “Red Headed Woman” was made into a major motion picture starring Jean Harlowe in 1931. I’ve again enlisted the aid of my colleague Emily Simer Braun to read Ms. Brush’s take on Jessie’s testimony in her own defense. The second section and fourth sections are Sunday Magazine style reports, one written just before she went to trail and the finale written a year after. Between those, we’ll hear from Pulp Nonfiction favorite, the cheeky Edmund Pearson, who was truly a pioneer of true crime. - Music by Dave Sams - www.truecrimehistorian.com/1933costello

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

SERIAL KILLER CLIPS - A reading of Yesterday’s News exploring some of History’s most prolific murderers. - Although Louise Vermilya of Chicago was never convicted of a crime, history lays around 10 deaths at her door, mostly family members and suitors. She did go to trial once, and we’ll take a pretty close look at the drama, including a suicide attempt, that led up to her acquittal as we look at the wake of mysterious deaths throughout her life. This story allows me to bring back Emily Simer Braun, who did such a remarkable job giving us the confession of Anna Hahn a couple of months ago, to read the quotes attributed to Louise Vermilya in the Chicago newspapers. - Music by Dave Sams - www.truecrimehistorian.com/1911vermilya

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.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE - A reading of Yesterday's News exploring the judicial system at its most extreme: Inflicting the death penalty - This episode is a sequel to the tale of The Giant Vigilante Captain Nat Kinney, about one of the Bald Knobber masked vigilante groups that sprang up in the Ozark region after the civil war. This story concerns the Bald Knobbers in the adjacent county to Nat Kinney, where once again, and another instance where vigilante justice backfires. It’s a good story and has a lot of action, including a jail break. But my favorite part is the heart-breaking report of the artist who ventures into the hills to get sketches of the families of the condemned men just days before their scheduled execution. I’ll post the sketches on my website, but his word pictures are some of the most powerful I’ve come across in the historic newspaper archives. - Musical direction by Dave Sams http://www.truecrimehistorian.com/1887baldknobber2

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition Trigger - The Gangster Chronicles 2.1 - YESTERDAY'S NEWS - A reading from historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism The 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. Valentine’s Day Massacre. - Musical direction by Dave Sams

YESTERDAY'S NEWS - A reading from historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism. - This episode, our 75th, comes from another request by an overseas listener, this time from the great down under. My Aussie friend said I should look into Ned Kelly, whom he described as "the Australian Billy the Kid." One of the better known Ned Kelly stories is his last stand at the Glenrowan Inn wearing a homemade suit of armor, but I’m going to put that story in my pocket for later and this time, focus on an earlier caper, shoot-out that grew out of the brawl described in the prologue. First, we’ll hear the newspaper account that includes the testimony of the only lawman to survive, and in the second act, we’ll hear from the scoundrel Ned Kelly himself with excerpts from one of the letters he wrote for the Australian Press giving his side of the story. - Musical direction by Dave Sams

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. - Crimes of the Scoundrel Clarence V.T. Richeson - This episode explores the tawdry case of Clarence Virgil Thompson Richeson, who was apparently an eloquent preacher and a rising star in the Baptist community as well as a notorious scoundrel. The tangled web of deceit he wove between three women finally ended in the mysterious death of the unmarried mother of his expected child. Richeson would later confess that he gave her poison, telling her that it was medicine to induce an abortion. This case is historically significant in that it marks the first time in America that a man was sentenced to death without a trial, but solely on a confession. - Musical direction by Dave Sams

SOLEMNLY SWORN AN EYE FOR AN EYE OVERSEAS EDITION - The Trial and Execution of Amelia Dyer - This episode comes at the request of a listener across the great pond in the United Kingdom. - We will be exploring the testimony from the trial of Amelia Dyer, who would take in infants and toddlers for adoption for a fee, and then murder the poor children for the profit. - She is said to have once referred to herself as an angel maker. I’ve seen estimates of her carnage at as many as 400 young souls, but she was formally convicted on only one count. - But that was enough for her to pay the ultimate price. - By the way, 10 pounds in 1896 would be 1,190 pounds in 2016, adjusting for inflation, and in current conversion rates, 1,190 pounds is a bit more than $1,500 at the time of this broadcast. - Vocabulary Word: pelisse It comes from the Latin for a garment of fur, but in this case referred to a long, loose outer coat made for infants. - Musical direction by Dave Sams

PULP NONFICTION - A reading from the pioneers of true crime - This is the final episode exploring the sensational Hall-Mills murder trial of 1926. - In this episode, we’ll hear the end of the testimony of the defendant Mrs. Frances Hall, and the closing arguments from the "million-dollar defense" and the firecracker special prosecutor, , against the backdrop drama of allegations of juror misconduct and local county politics. - Theme music by Dave Sams