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

428: The Shipwreck of the San José & the Quest to Find Its Treasure w/ Julian Sancton

March 5, 2026 • 61 mins
In 1708, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish galleon San José sailed from South America carrying a vast cargo of gold and silver bound for Spain. Off the coast of present-day Colombia, British ships of war intercepted the galleon in a fierce naval clash. During the battle, the San José exploded and sank, taking its enormous treasure to the bottom of the Caribbean. My guest this week is Julian Sancton, author of N...
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MoNo Encore: The Mysterious Death of Fritzie Mann w/ James Stewart

February 28, 2026 • 76 mins
(Orig. Pub Date: 11/10/21) In January of 1923, a 20-year-old dancer named Fritzie Mann left home to meet a mysterious man for what she told her mother was a house party. When she was discovered dead on a remote beach a few miles north of San Diego, police were puzzled by the clues. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? The fact that she was pregnant deepened the mystery even further. Soon two men – a Hollywood actor and a doc...
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427: The 1949 Exorcism That Inspired "The Exorcist" w/ Troy Taylor

February 24, 2026 • 76 mins
In 1949, a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis became the center of one of the most controversial religious cases in American history. A 13-year-old boy began exhibiting disturbing symptoms including violent outbursts, strange markings on his body, and other troubling episodes, leading Catholic priests to perform a series of secret exorcism rites. The case would later inspire The Exorcist, but the real story was far more complex than t...
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American Criminal: Machine Gun Kelly

February 21, 2026 • 40 mins
Growing up in Memphis, George Kelly Barnes starts dabbling in crime from a young age. First he blackmails his father, then he grows a successful bootlegging business for himself. But how did this small-time crook earn one of the most famous names in criminal history? And why don't we talk about his most famous crime? To listen to all four episodes of 'Machine Gun Kelly' right now and ad-free, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, ...
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426: Elizabeth Báthory: The World's Worst Female Serial Killer? w/ Shelley Puhak

February 18, 2026 • 67 mins
Told and retold in many languages, the legend of the Blood Countess has consumed cultural imaginations around the world. But despite claims that Elizabeth Báthory tortured and killed as many as 650 girls, some have wondered if the Countess was herself a victim- of one of the most successful disinformation campaigns known to history. So, was Elizabeth Báthory a monster, a victim, or a bit of both? My guest is Shelley Puhak, author ...
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425: Henry Scott Mausell: Michigan's First Serial Killer? w/ Allie Seibert

February 10, 2026 • 67 mins
On a beautiful fall day in September 1916, 68-year-old Hannah Spielman went on a picnic with her new husband, 71-year-old James Allen, in the woods outside Grand Rapids, Michigan. She had met him through a newspaper advertisement, and the two were married just two days earlier - only hours after stepping off a train and meeting him face-to-face for the first time. But James Allen was not the man he claimed to be. His real name wa...
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424: The Black Dahlia: Another Suspect w/ William J Mann

February 3, 2026 • 67 mins
My guest, William J. Mann, has spent years writing about Hollywood, and in his new book "Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood", he takes a fresh look at Los Angeles's most notorious crime - the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short. Mann shares his impressions of Elizabeth herself, unpacks the sprawling investigation, revisits some of the most infamous suspects, and explains who he believes most likely kille...
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423: The Nazi & the Psychiatrist w/ Jack El-Hai

January 28, 2026 • 62 mins
On this episode of Most Notorious, I speak with author Jack El-Hai about his book "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII". He talks about the fascinating relationship between Dr. Douglas Kelly, who was assigned to evaluate senior Nazi leaders awaiting trial at Nuremberg, and Herman Göring, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. His book wa...
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MoNo Encore: The East River Ripper Murder of Old Shakespeare w/ George R. Dekle Sr.

January 24, 2026 • 84 mins
(Orig. Pub. Date 9/6/2021) On April 24th, 1891, a Bowery prostitute named Carrie Brown (known locally as "Old Shakespeare") was found murdered and mutilated in the seedy East River Hotel. With the Jack the Ripper murders unsolved and still news, many believed that the notorious killer had traveled across the Atlantic to continue his bloody work in the United States - and this was his first victim. My guest is George R. Dekle Sr., ...
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422: The Wreck of the Circus Ship Royal Tar w/ Jane Parks Gardner

January 22, 2026 • 48 mins
On October 21, 1836, crowds lined the docks of Saint John, New Brunswick, to watch the steamship Royal Tar depart for Portland, Maine - this time carrying an entire circus. Cages filled with exotic birds, snakes, lions and a tiger rolled on board, along with horses, camels and the star attraction: Mogul, a massive Asian elephant, who took his place on the upper deck. Four days later, after battling fierce storms, the ship caught fi...
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421: The Killer of Little Shepherds w/ Douglas Starr

January 16, 2026 • 63 mins
At the close of the nineteenth century, serial killer Joseph Vacher terrorized the French countryside for years, eluding capture while murdering more victims than Jack the Ripper. His sprawling crime wave ultimately drew in prosecutor Emile Fourquet and pioneering criminologist Alexandre Lacassagne, whose pursuit of Vacher helped push criminal investigations toward the modern era. My guest is Douglas Starr, author of "The Killer ...
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420: The 1788 Doctors' Riot w/ Andy McPhee

January 7, 2026 • 69 mins
On April 13, 1788, outrage erupted in New York City when word spread that students from the local medical school were stealing corpses from nearby graveyards, at the direction of their instructors, for classroom dissection and study. A large mob attacked an anatomy lab and then set out in search of the students and doctors believed to be responsible for defiling the bodies of their loved ones. City leaders John Jay and Alexander Ha...
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419: Serial Killer Pee Wee Gaskins w/ Dick Harpootlian

December 29, 2025 • 68 mins
Among the many murder cases handled by South Carolina attorney Dick Harpootlian, one continues to stand apart: the prosecution of Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. A serial killer and sexual predator, Gaskins claimed to have taken more than 100 lives and is known to have murdered over a dozen people, including a young child and his own teenage niece. He killed for both revenge and gratification, using whatever methods were available - from...
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418: The Black Dahlia & the Prairie Heiress Murders: One Killer? w/ Eli Frankel

December 17, 2025 • 90 mins
In January 1947, the bisected body of Elizabeth Short, completely drained of blood, was discovered in an undeveloped lot in Los Angeles. Its gruesome mutilations led to a firestorm of publicity, city-wide panic, and an unprecedented number of investigative paths led by the LAPD—all dead ends. The Black Dahlia murder remained an unsolved mystery for over seventy years.Six years earlier and sixteen hundred miles away, another woman’s...
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MoNo Encore: The Murder of Frank Richardson w/ Kimberly Tilley

December 14, 2025 • 74 mins
Original Publication Date: 4/3/22 On Christmas Eve, 1900, 44-year-old dry goods store owner Frank Richardson was shot to death in his Savannah, Missouri home. Suspects included his wife Addie, his teenage lover Goldie Whitehead, and the man whom he suspected his wife of having an affair with, Stewart Fife. Kimberly Tilley makes her third visit to the podcast. Her book "Has it Come to This? The Mysterious Unsolved Murder of F...
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417: The Shipwreck of the Mignonette w/ Adam Cohen

December 11, 2025 • 58 mins
On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism.Their decision to sacrifice the youngest —17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker—ignited a firestorm of controv...
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416: Nazi Germany’s Bungled Operation Condor w/ Gavin Whitehead

December 3, 2025 • 57 mins
In 1942, two Abwehr German agents, including Johannes Eppler, slipped into Cairo to gather intelligence for Rommel’s desert campaign, getting help from local allies like the famous dancer Hekmet Fahmy and Anwar Sadat. Despite their efforts to infiltrate British circles, the whole operation eventually fell apart once Allied intelligence caught on. My guest, once again, is Gavin Whitehead, creator of The Art of Crime Podcast. His si...
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415: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald w/ John U. Bacon

November 26, 2025 • 55 mins
November 10, 2025, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald during a vicious Lake Superior storm. All 29 crew members were lost, a tragedy later memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot’s iconic song. My guest is bestselling author John U. Bacon, who shares details from his new book, "The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The author's website: https://johnubacon.c...
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414: The Martha Wise Murders w/ Rod Kackley

November 20, 2025 • 54 mins
In the winter of 1924-1925, quiet Medina County, Ohio, was shaken to its core. Martha Wise, an ordinary farm widow with an extraordinary obsession, slipped arsenic into her family’s food and water. Three of her relatives were dead, dozens more gravely ill, and a rural community was gripped by fear. What followed was a murder investigation and trial unlike anything the Midwest had ever seen. Was Martha a cold-blooded killer, or (...
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MoNo Encore: The Murder of President James Garfield w/ Candice Millard

November 15, 2025 • 59 mins
Original Pub Date: 1/14/19 On July 2nd, 1881, a disappointed and mentally unstable office-seeker named Charles Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield in a Washington D.C. train station. Over the next weeks, Garfield would linger, bedridden, as infection set in, caused by poor medical treatment, and America would wait with bated breath over whether their beloved president would survive. Meanwhile, Guiteau, the most hated man in A...
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