Crimes of the Centuries
Crime is so commonplace that it takes something particularly shocking to be labelled the “crime of the century.” Even so, there are a lot of cases that have earned the distinction. In each episode of Crimes of the Centuries, award-winning journalist Amber Hunt will examine a case that’s lesser known today but was huge when it happened. The cases explored span the centuries and each left a mark. Some made history by changing laws. Others were so shocking they changed society.
Episodes
April 28, 2025 • 42 mins
In 1953, a horrific discovery was made behind some hastily hung wallpaper in a flat at 10 Rillington Place in London's Notting Hill neighborhood: The decomposing bodies of three women. Another body was found beneath floor boards, and two more skeletons were recovered from the backyard garden. Soon, a nationwide manhunt was under way for John Reginald Christie, a man author Kate Summerscale describes as "terrifyingly ordinary."...
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April 21, 2025 • 50 mins
As American journalists worked to cover the Vietnam War, one of their colleagues proved a valuable asset: Pham Xuan An had been born in Vietnam, and was therefore able to help his coworkers navigate the ins and outs of an unfamiliar culture. His work was praised as detailed, empathetic and unbiased. It would be years later that the truth finally came out, revealing that the journalist was in fact a South Vietnamese spy whose a...
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April 14, 2025 • 52 mins
In the 1990s, Dr. Jack Kevorkian ignited a firestorm when he began helping to end the lives of people who said they were terminally ill. Over the years, he claimed to have assisted in the deaths of more than 130 people, all while challenging police and prosecutors who vowed to stop him. His first four trials ended in three acquittals and a mistrial, but as his antics grew more daring, so, too, did the legal system's fervor to ...
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April 7, 2025 • 48 mins
For much of their outlaw careers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid weren't the inseparable duo that Hollywood made us believe with its 1969 depiction of the pair. But the movie isn't the only reason the two are inextricably linked: The two members of the Wild West crew known as The Wild Bunch were wanted men when they opted in 1901 to disappear together. The official story is that the pair died in a shoot-out with the Bolivi...
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Crimes Of The Centuries is dark this week, but we hope you'll enjoy this episode of Strange And Unexplained with Daisy Eagan.
In the 1930s, some shadowy figures approached a decorated and beloved Marine with a plot to overthrow the government and replace FDR with someone much more friendly to the wealthy. If only they hadn't chosen Smedley Butler to do their bidding, we might be living in a very different world today...
In the 1930s, some shadowy figures approached a decorated and beloved Marine with a plot to overthrow the government and replace FDR with someone much more friendly to the wealthy. If only they hadn't chosen Smedley Butler to do their bidding, we might be living in a very different world today...
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March 24, 2025 • 44 mins
As the audience was settling in for an evening of entertainment in one of the swankiest nightclubs in the Midwest, a busboy approached the mic and asked everyone to exit the sprawling building. Soon, the place was engulfed. The May 28, 1977, fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club was a deadly disaster that subsequent investigations found was not only preventable, but had been predicted, too. The lawsuits that followed changed t...
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March 17, 2025 • 44 mins
To outsiders, John List was a mild-mannered, church-going father of three whose oddest trait was mowing the lawn in a suit and tie. But then the bodies of his wife, mother and three children were uncovered rotting in the family's Westfield, New Jersey, home in late 1971. This was no whodunit: List left notes explaining not only what he'd done, but why he claimed he had to do it. Then he disappeared, becoming one of America's m...
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March 10, 2025 • 43 mins
William Mulholland was summoned to the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon early March 12, 1928, to inspect some leaks that workers found worrisome. Mulholland shrugged off the concerns and declared the dam -- the 19th he'd designed alone to feed water to the parched desert of Los Angeles -- perfectly safe. Hours later, the dam gave way, releasing billions of gallons of water downstream, killing more than 400 people.
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March 3, 2025 • 44 mins
Sex workers began disappearing in the Rochester, New York, area at an alarming rate in the late 1980s. When their strangled and mutilated bodies were later discovered, it was clear they were being targeted by a sick killer with a distinct MO. It turned out that the man behind the killings, Arthur Shawcross, had already killed before.
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crim...
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crim...
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February 28, 2025 • 43 mins
On this Friday Follow-Up, we update with information brought to us by two descendants of an important latter-day figure in the case. After 4-year-old Charley Ross vanished in a carriage with two men who'd offered him candy and fireworks, police at first told his father to wait it out. Surely the men had no bad intentions. Then came the first ransom letter. And another. And another. In 1874, the Charley Ross case marked the f...
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February 24, 2025 • 46 mins
When a well-dressed man approached a Los Angeles junior high school in 1927 asking for his coworker Perry Parker's daughter, the woman at the front desk should have immediately sensed something was off. Parker didn't have one daughter at the school; he had two. When the man clarified he wanted the "younger" Parker girl, that should have struck the office marm as odder still because the girls were twins. Still, Mary Holt summon...
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February 20, 2025 • 15 mins
Crime House True Crime Stories is the ultimate destination for true crime fans. Every episode features two notorious cases from that week in crime history, tied by a common theme like infamous serial killers, mysterious disappearances, tragic murders, and more. Every Monday, uncover the full stories behind the headlines as host Vanessa Richardson takes you through high-profile investigations like the murder of Gabby Petito, t...
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February 17, 2025 • 40 mins
Most people know the story of Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who hid in a secret attic for two years with six other people to avoid the Nazis, but a question still festers 80 years later: Who turned them in and sealed their fates?
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes o...
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes o...
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February 10, 2025 • 45 mins
Mark Whitacre, a high-ranking exec at the agribusiness company Archer Daniels Midland, approached the FBI with some scandalous news: His employer was part of an international cartel illegally inflating the cost of lysine, an additive used in animal feed. What Whitacre ultimately helped uncover landed more than just his bosses in prison.
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten c...
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten c...
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February 3, 2025 • 45 mins
After recovering from Stage 4 testicular cancer, cyclist Lance Armstrong not only got his health back, but he became one of the sport's highest profile figures, winning seven Tour de France races in a row. While he insisted -- repeatedly and under oath -- that he'd earned those wins without the help of performance-enhancing drugs, one of his past teammates stepped forward to tell a different story.
"Crimes of the Cent...
"Crimes of the Cent...
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January 27, 2025 • 43 mins
In 1944, the brutal slayings of two young girls made plenty of headlines in Alcolu, South Carolina. The trial of their suspected killer garnered far less attention -- even when he was convicted and violently executed in the electric chair. That's because few people had much sympathy for the boy who supposedly confessed to the crime. Nearly a century later, however, and 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. is not only recognized as t...
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January 20, 2025 • 47 mins
Students at Pantglas Junior School had just settled in at their desks the morning of Oct. 21, 1966, when an avalanche of slurry swept through the building, trapping hundreds of children and teachers and wiping out nearby homes and businesses. Known as the Aberfan Disaster, the collapse of a colliery spoil tip ultimately killed 116 children and 28 adults. While the official cause was weeks of heavy rain, what happened was no me...
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January 13, 2025 • 41 mins
As the world descended on Norway for the 1994 Winter Olympics, a determined thief set his sights on a Norweigian painting he'd coveted most of his life: Edvard Munch's The Scream. The daring theft of the world-renowned painting took less than a minute and prompted an undercover sting in hopes of retrieving the masterpiece.
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from time...
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from time...
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January 6, 2025 • 40 mins
On Thanksgiving week in 1849, Boston doctor and Harvard graduate George Parkman went for a walk and never returned home. The last place he'd been spotted was near the college's medical school, where he'd stopped for a meeting with Harvard chemistry professor John White Webster. The case that unfolded not only made international headlines but it threatened the reputation of America's oldest university.
"Crimes of the C...
"Crimes of the C...
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December 30, 2024 • 27 mins
Host Mel Barrett investigates a famous murder case that has split the community in her home state of New Hampshire right down the middle for thirty-four years. It’s a closed case, but based on what Mel uncovers this season in old police files (including surreptitiously recorded wiretaps), never before heard interviews, and a bombshell post trial interview with a juror that’s been hidden away, Mel is about to blow the case wide...
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