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

MoNo Encore: The Mysterious Disappearance of Bobby Dunbar w/ Tal McThenia

July 10, 2026 • 93 mins
(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 ...
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445: The Murder of Frances Cochran w/ Robert Fitzgibbon

July 7, 2026 • 63 mins
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, decad...
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444: A Memoir of Murder in the Golden State w/ Debra Miller

June 29, 2026 • 75 mins
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 "Slouchi...
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443: Iowa's Notorious Carter Gang w/ David & Rose Donovan

June 25, 2026 • 65 mins
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 cr...
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442: The Maplehurst Murder w/ Mark Sebastian Jordan

June 20, 2026 • 62 mins
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 d...
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MoNo Encore: (Part 2) The 1876 Northfield Bank Raid by the James-Younger Gang w/ Mark Lee Gardner

June 13, 2026 • 78 mins
(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 ...
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MoNo Encore: (Part 1) The 1876 Northfield Bank Raid by the James-Younger Gang w/ Mark Lee Gardner

June 13, 2026 • 71 mins
(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. T...
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441: Arizona's Murdered Madams w/ Merry Gordon

June 6, 2026 • 75 mins
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.a...
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440: The Wreck of the Mentor w/ Eric Jay Dolin

May 31, 2026 • 66 mins
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-selli...
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439: The Curse of the Blumenthals w/ Phyllis Karas

May 26, 2026 • 49 mins
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 B...
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MoNo Encore: The Murder of Cecil Wells w/ James T. Bartlett

May 22, 2026 • 101 mins
(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 wo...
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438: The Capone's Vault Fiasco w/ William Hazelgrove

May 15, 2026 • 53 mins
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 million...
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437: The Journalist & the Serial Killer w/ Mark Braude

May 6, 2026 • 61 mins
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 conversati...
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436: Jack the Ripper: Edward Buckley w/ Jonathan Tye

May 2, 2026 • 74 mins
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...
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MoNo Encore: Anastasia: Mystery & Myth w/ Greg King and Penny Wilson

April 28, 2026 • 90 mins
(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 P...
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435: Conversations With Serial Killers w/ Jeffrey Smalldon

April 23, 2026 • 81 mins
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 mo...
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434: The Murders That Inspired Lincoln's Lyceum Address w/ Saladin Ambar

April 17, 2026 • 65 mins
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 websi...
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433: Julia Bulette: Murdered by a Serial Killer? w/ Robin Flinchum

April 9, 2026 • 91 mins
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 ...
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432: Chicago's Apartment 131 Murders w/ Gregg Owen

April 3, 2026 • 86 mins
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 ...
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MoNo Encore: The Revenge of Hannah Duston w/ Jay Atkinson

March 31, 2026 • 75 mins
(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, Mass...
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