Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Serial killers. Gangsters. Gunslingers. Victorian-era murderers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Each week, the Most Notorious podcast features true-life tales of crime, criminals, tragedies and disasters throughout history. Host Erik Rivenes interviews authors and historians who have studied their subjects for years. Their stories are offered with unique insight, detail, and historical accuracy.

Episodes

408: The Murder of Cecelia Gullivan w/ Jeffrey L. Amestoy

September 29, 2025 • 65 mins
In November 1926, Cecelia Gullivan, treasurer of the Cone Automatic Machine company of Windsor, Vermont, was brutally killed in her home. Local police quickly arrested Cone Automatic machinist John Winters on suspicion of the crime, and the trial that followed was sensational and swift. Convicted of murder, Winters’ appeal brought in an unexpected ally: America’s most famous defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, who took the case a...
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407: The Thames Torso Murders w/ Sarah Bax Horton

September 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Victorian London is often remembered for the Ripper murders, yet at the same time another equally chilling series of slayings unfolded. Between 1887 and 1889, the dismembered bodies of four women appeared along the Thames. The river itself became the killer’s cover, its tides and hidden corners serving as a macabre dumping ground. Overshadowed by the Ripper’s reign of terror, the Thames Torso Murders remain one of England's darkest...
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406: The Murder of Jujube Heiress Ruth Quinn w/ Taylor Kiland

September 17, 2025 • 57 mins
The small Southern California island of Coronado rarely makes news for violent crime. But in the spring of 1975, World War II widow and retired librarian Ruth Quinn was murdered, execution-style, in her cottage. Her death sent a shock wave through the community. The granddaughter of Jujubes and Jujyfruits creator Henry Heide, Ruth was found fully clothed with her shoes on, in her bed, dead from two gunshot wounds. To this day, her ...
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MoNo Encore: The Murder of Dr. W.D. Broadhurst w/ Patrick Gallagher

September 13, 2025 • 75 mins
(Orig pub date: 2/15/22) In October of 1946, a chiropractor and rancher named Willis "W.D." Broadhurst was beaten with a wrench and finished off with a shotgun on a lonely eastern Oregon road. Investigators would soon accuse his wife Gladys of plotting the doctor's murder with the help of his young cowhand and her lover, Alvin Williams. Stunning details of her deception would be revealed during the trial, including accusations tha...
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405: A History of Eugenics in America w/ Mark A. Torres

September 10, 2025 • 67 mins
In the early twentieth century, eugenics captivated scientists and the public alike, giving researchers license to exploit the infirm, the mentally ill, prisoners, Native communities and many others considered "defective" or "feebleminded" under the guise of genetics. At its center stood the Eugenics Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, directed by Charles Davenport from 1910 to 1939. From this Long Island building emerged policies...
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404: Gunfighter Clay Allison w/ Donna Blake Birchell

September 3, 2025 • 64 mins
Clay Allison was both liked and loathed in his lifetime, embodying the contradictions of the American frontier. He could show moments of kindness for the downtrodden, but also carried deep hatred for Northerners and Black people. Dangerously unpredictable, he was capable of generosity one moment and chilling violence the next, a quality that made him as frightening as he was fascinating. His legacy is forever stained by his acts of...
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403: The Madman of Crystal Beach w/ M.F. Gross

August 27, 2025 • 83 mins
In the sultry summer of 1949, a sleepy Florida beach town was rocked to its core. A brutal home invasion, a shocking murder, and a desperate, month-long manhunt captivated and terrified an entire region. At the center of the storm was John Calvin “Rastus” Russell, a cunning ex-con and former asylum patient who unleashed a wave of fear unlike anything the Gulf Coast had ever seen. My guest is M.F. Gross, author of the recently pu...
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402: The Reno Redfield Heist w/ Gavin Schmitt

August 20, 2025 • 63 mins
The 1952 burglary of eccentric multi-millionaire LaVere Redfield’s mansion in Reno, Nevada was the largest of its time, but also a comedy of errors. "Masterminded" by a French-Canadian woman with a questionable relationship to Redfield, it also included a failed safecracker and a crew of Italian-American hoodlums from the Milwaukee underworld. My guest is historian, author and podcaster Gavin Schmitt, and he shares details f...
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401: The First Forensic Hanging w/ Summer Strevens

August 13, 2025 • 55 mins
The First Forensic Hanging: The Toxic Truth That Killed Mary Blandy by Summer Strevens tells the story of Mary Blandy, executed in 1752 for poisoning her father Frances Blandy with arsenic. Her trial was the first in Britain to use toxicology as evidence in an arsenic poisoning case, marking a turning point in forensic history. Drawing on period newspapers and court records, Strevens unpacks the trial, the intense public fascinati...
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MoNo Encore: The Bermondsey Horror w/ Gavin Whitehead

August 6, 2025 • 77 mins
(Orig pub date: 2/3/24) On August 17th, 1849, London police officers made a grisly discovery at the home of George and Maria (born Marie de Roux) Manning. Her former beau, Patrick O'Connor, had been buried under the floor. A nationwide hunt for the couple would follow, and after that a trial and executions. The murder case would grip London so fervently that Madame Tussaud would later add wax versions of the couple to her infamo...
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400: The Legend of Belle Starr w/ Michael Wallis

July 30, 2025 • 68 mins
Myra Maibelle Shirley, better known as Belle Starr, was one of the most notorious female outlaws of the Old West (if you believe period newspapers, anyway). My guest, bestselling and award-winning author Michael Wallis, made it his mission to tell the true story of Belle Starr, and in the process dispels many of the myths that surround her. He shares details of her colorful life and violent death, which many believe was committed b...
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399: The Life & Crimes of Robert Spears w/ Jerry Jamison

July 23, 2025 • 106 mins
"Doctor" Robert Spears was arguably one of the greatest con artists of the twentieth century, and very likely a mass murderer. In thirty nine years of grift, he had 25 aliases, 28 arrests in 20 cities, and was imprisoned close to a dozen times. He performed, without any medical degree, abortions on countless women, and in 1959 tricked his best friend into taking his place on an airplane. That plane exploded in mid-air, killing 42 p...
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398: John Wilkes Booth & the Last Year of the Civil War w/ Scott Ellsworth

July 15, 2025 • 59 mins
My guest this week is Scott Ellsworth, author of Midnight on the Potomac: The Last Year of the Civil War, the Lincoln Assassination, and the Rebirth of America. He talks about President Lincoln's turbulent last year in office, the Confederate secret service's attempts to create chaos in the north, and John Wilkes Booth's ties to the Confederacy's spy network. The author's website: https://www.scottellsworthauthor.com/ The aut...
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397: The Hazel Drew Murder Revisited w/ Jerry C. Drake

July 9, 2025 • 86 mins
In July of 1908 the body of twenty-year-old Hazel Drew was found floating in a mill pond in Upstate New York. Her death captured headlines across the nation and around the world, but after a whirlwind investigation lasting less than thirty days (despite a myriad of suspects), the District Attorney abruptly closed the case. Joining me is Jerry Drake, author of "Hazel Was a Good Girl: Solving the Murder that Inspired Twin Peaks"....
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MoNo Encore: The 1912 Murder of Ella Barham w/ Nita Gould

July 3, 2025 • 83 mins
(Original pub date: 6/16/21) In November of 1912, a young woman named Ella Barham journeyed home, on her horse, to her family farm in Boone County, Arkansas, but never arrived. After her body was discovered, murdered and dismembered, suspicions quickly centered on a neighbor, Odus Davidson, who was rumored to have been in love with Ella, a love never returned. My guest, Nita Gould, has a very personal connection to Ella, one ...
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396: The 1951 Murder of Clarence Pellett w/ Clem Pellett

June 30, 2025 • 78 mins
Clem Pellett grew up knowing very little about his grandfather, Clarence Pellett, who was murdered along Montana's iconic Hi-Line in April of 1951. Pellett's father had cut ties with the family, and Pellett didn't even know his grandfather's first name until he started investigating the case as an adult. Through extensive research over many years, Pellett uncovered the details of his grandfather's cold-blooded murder by a hitchh...
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395: The 1917 Murder of Beatrice Epler w/ Allie Seibert

June 23, 2025 • 89 mins
On the morning of September 5th, 1917, sixteen-year-old Beatrice Epler was found dead just steps from her home in Alma, Michigan. The investigation into her murder would soon entangle a brothel madam, a traveling theater owner, a local farmer, and a French-Canadian amateur detective. My guest is Allie Seibert, author of Bloodstained: Exploring Michigan's Darkest Murders Forgotten By Time. She walks us through this unsolved my...
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394: The Castleton Massacre with Margaret Carson & Sharon Anne Cook

June 16, 2025 • 82 mins
On May 2, 1963, Robert Killins, a former United Church minister, slaughtered every woman in his family but one. She (and her brother) lived to tell the story of what motivated a talented man who had been widely admired, a scholar and graduate from Queen’s University, to stalk and terrorize the women in his family for almost twenty years and then murder them. Through extensive oral histories, Sharon Anne Cook and Margaret Carson pa...
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393: The Man Who Shot J.P. Morgan w/ Mary Noé

June 9, 2025 • 73 mins
On the morning of July 3, 1915, John Pierpont Morgan Jr., one of the most famous names in finance, was entertaining guests at his sprawling Long Island estate when the doorbell unexpectedly rang. An armed man forced his way inside. At the same time, authorities in Washington, DC, were investigating a shocking bombing at the US Capitol. While no one had been killed, the blast had destroyed the reception room, and DC citizens were on...
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392: Golden Age Pirate George Lowther w/ Craig Chapman

June 2, 2025 • 67 mins
George Lowther was a mutineer and a pirate, one of the most prolific during the golden age of piracy. His first mate, Edward "Ned" Low, went on to establish himself as perhaps the most sadistic and depraved of all pirate captains. Virtually all popular sources specify Lowther's death being by suicide in 1723, while marooned on the small island of Blanquilla, off the coast of Venezuela. While researching the War of Jenkins' Ear, hi...
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