Crimes We Forgot

In the dark, early morning of May 29th 1928, a man entered a room shared by three sisters, when he left he held 7-year-old Dorothy Selangowski tightly in his arms, his hand over her mouth. A search soon started, with police and neighbors looking, then a grisly discovery was made only doors away, on the porch of the child’s grandfather. Suspects would emerge, including one of the girl’s brothers, but the evidence pointed to someone ...

In January 1928, 18-year-old Wash Smith walked into a small country store in Banks County, Georgia. By the time he walked out, the store’s owner was dead, and Wash was being hunted down by a posse. It is a story of an interrupted love affair and the vicious retribution by both sides that followed, while bootlegging, hidden witnesses, and recanted testimony point to something almost sinister. 

Sound Engineering by Dave Harris

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On a summer day in 1908, a group of picnickers found an old steamer trunk covered in overgrowth in a ravine in New Jersey. Inside was the partially decomposed body of Solomon Rosenbloom, a merchant from Windber, Pennsylvania, some 240 miles west, who went missing in late 1907. This discovery answered the question of where Rosenbloom went, and also revealed a secret, with Rosenbloom's wife sharing that their youngest son Alex had ...

When Roman Luczkowski was married in January 1928, it was likely a surprise to most who knew him, especially considering the 21-year-old was marrying someone nearly 30 years older than him. But the real shock came a little over two months later, when his bride, the former Marie Slade, was found dead and her body crammed into a 3-foot long box.

Roman was quickly identified as the culprit, and an avalanche of secrets followed, such ...

On June 12, 1906, a note was delivered to the Philadelphia classroom of 7-year-old Freddie Muth, claiming the boy's mother was injured and she needed to see the child. None of that was true, and with the boy vanished, with a ransom note soon being sent to the father. Thankfully, the police quickly zoned in on an indebted banker as the kidnapper, which led to a dramatic rescue attempt six days after the boy's disappearance.

George Dietz was a popular Chicago women’s tailor and cutter, running a successful shop and investing in artwork and real estate, at least until the morning of April 14, 1913, when he was found beaten to death in his bed. Clues found in his pockets and around his body pointed to a revenge killing for his ill treatment of a teenage girl, but the police soon brushed those off as being little more than plants, and George's wife, A...

On a warm evening in August 1925, 17-year-old Warren Vandervoort climbed the stairs of the Parkersburg, Iowa Methodist parsonage where he lived with his parents. In his hands he held a .22 caliber rifle, and when his father appeared at the top of the stairs, Warren fired, ending his father's life. Then, as his mother emerged from her bedroom, Warren shot her in the head, then shot her again as she ran to her bed. In the weeks t...

In the early decades of the 20th century, New York City Policeman Charles Becker strutted the city's streets while building a small fortune from the kickbacks he received from local criminals. But when Herman Rosenthal, the operator of an illegal gambling hall, was gunned down in front of the Metropole Hotel late on July 15, 1912, fingers pointed to Becker, who despite his denials eventually found himself in the electric chair....

On an evening in March 1922, Utah homesteaders Charles and his nephew George Bradford were in a buggy heading back to their ranch, having gone to the town of Monticello earlier that day on business. But when the buggy finally arrived home, Charles and George weren't with it, and blood was splattered on the seat. A few miles away, the two men laid dead on the road, the victims of a feud dating back a decade.

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On November 16, 1930, school teacher Enid Marriott vanished after getting off a train in Wiggins, Colorado. Within days a search of the area started. But more than two months passed before her younger brother Roy, who was with a search party, spotted a white, stilled hand sticking up from the frozen water of an irrigation ditch, ending the mystery of where she went, but not the one of who murdered her.

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For around 24 hours in October 1930, Alma Wilson McKinley was missing, kidnapped from the family home in Greenfield, Missouri. Her abductor, after his plans fell apart, let her go less than a day after taking her. Local authorities identified several suspects in the following months before landing on Aden Aven, who was already sitting in a jailcell in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

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Standing less than 5 feet and only 14 years old, orphan Claude Hankins would seem an unlikely candidate for California's notorious San Quentin prison. But in 1904, after Claude shot and killed a man who was physically, verbally and possibly sexually abusing him, Judge Eugene McDaniel turned down pleas from the defense council and the jury for the child to go to a reformatory and instead sentenced him to 16 years in the men'...

In February 1912, babies started dying at the Brooklyn Nursery & Infants Hospital. The nursing staff was quick to accuse Winifred Ankers, the hospital's cook and an unwed mother who's own child was a patient there, but as the woman's murder trial unfolded, the poor management of the facility came under scrutiny. By the time it was over, nine babies, all under a year in age and most orphans or abandoned by their pare...

On an August day in 1909, a woman and three men snatched a five-year-old girl from a home in Topeka, Kansas. It was at least the second time the child had been kidnapped, and would open the last chapter of a series of custody cases and actions going back to 1904, when the same little girl was a baby on display in the baby incubator exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

In this episode we explore this remarkable case that ...

In the early 20th century, consensual sex between men was largely illegal, and for those serving in the U.S. Navy it meant prison, if they were caught. In this episode we follow the tragic lives of three former sailors after they leave San Quentin Prison, where they served multi-year sentences after being convicted of committing sodomy with a fellow sailor. These are the stories of Homer Baker, Sanford Kisner and Grover Roadarmel.

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Frank McDowell was considered brilliant by some of those who knew him, finishing high school at 16 before attending two renowned colleges, but his promised start soon turned dark. Before he reached the age of 20 he would be sent to the asylum, while his sisters and parents ended up in graves at Liberty Hill Cemetery, victims of either his greed or his delusions.

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