True Crime Historian

True Crime Historian

Tales of classic scandals, scoundrels and scourges told through vintage newspaper accounts from the golden age of yellow journalism Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

Episodes

August 8, 2025 65 mins
A Band-Aid Solution To The Mystery

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Episode 370 tells the story of a World War II era veteran whose mental issues earned him an honorable discharge from service, but he slips through the system, wreaking havoc among the women in the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. What does it take to get creeps like this off the street? Murder, apparently.

Explore More CAPITAL CRIMES

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Martha Beck’s Lonely Hearts Club

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Episode 368 tells the tragicomic tale of a romantic and business partnership that goes awry when a woman’s jealousy overpowers her professional detachment. It’s also a love story of a passion so profound that they take their love all the way to the electric chair.

Hear More BLUEBEARD Stories

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August 4, 2025 57 mins
Struck By An Axe And Killed

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Episode 367 is a holiday tale more bone-chilling than heart-warming. It takes place the weekend after Thanksgiving, when family and friends get together for games and good times. The cautionary part of the tale here is, be aware of what topics are best to be avoided. This tJumpime, the touchy subject is not politics, but eyewear.

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August 1, 2025 89 mins
The Lillian Scheib Mystery 

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Episode 366 tells the sad story of a woman found dead in a bathtub, so decomposed that police first assume it is her husband, as she is sick and convalescing somewhere. When the truth is revealed and the husband found alive, he soon becomes a suspect as officials assume murder. Is the chauffeur a murderer, or a victim of police harassment. 

Explore More BATHTUB MURDERS!!!

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July 30, 2025 85 mins
The Buffalo Thanksgiving Murder

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Episode 365
“I’ll get you a Thanksgiving dinner if I have to kill someone to get it!” the young thug promised his girlfriend. Dinner, however, was not forthcoming.

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July 28, 2025 64 mins
The Burning Love Of Elfrieda Knaak

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Episode 364 tells an unusual story of a broken-hearted young woman found naked and fatally burnt in the basement of a police station. Her family, the police, and the general public find it hard to believe that she could have torched herself in such a horrific manner, so the hunt is on for proof of a murder.

Hear About More TORCH MURDERS

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July 25, 2025 80 mins
The Cuba Triple Murder

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Episode 363 takes place in rural Ohio, when a woman, her daughter, and her daughter’s suitor are gunned down in front of three young children. The daughter’s ex-husband says he arrived at the scene just after the shots were fired, but in her dying breath his ex-mother-in-law claims he was the culprit. The kids can’t get their story straight, so it’s up to you to put it all...
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July 23, 2025 88 mins
The Greenlease Kidnapping Tragedy

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Episode 362 takes on one of the most evil crimes imaginable as told from the point of view of the perpetrator. By the time police caught up with Carl Austin Hall, he had made so many mistakes in the kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old boy that he knew the game was up, so he told the story in a coldly matter-of-fact 36-page confession, here adapted for the first ...
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July 21, 2025 83 mins
The Halfwit Gang Of Golden Gate Avenue

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Although there’s nothing funny about real-life murder, if Episode 361 were fictional, you could shelve it right next to Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen and the wacky characters they create who walk in the realm of dark comedy. The downfall of this gang that couldn’t shoot straight begins when one of its members decides to surrender and deliver state’s evidence w...
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July 18, 2025 88 mins
The Father Stood Trial

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Episode 359 details one of the most chaotic cases I’ve yet to come across. The investigation left a lot of unanswered questions and the prosecution seems motivated by political pressure and retaliation rather than evidence. Was the youngster murdered by his father or one of his playmates? Let me know what you think.

Explore More Cases of Murder By POISON

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July 16, 2025 62 mins
The Terror Of All Toughs Killed By Horse Thief

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Episode 358 is dedicated to the Safe House Scoundrel Marlene Resch who required a story from her home town of Eugene, Oregon, and we are happy to oblige. The victim in this story was the law enforcement officer in Episode 336, Murder On The McKenzie Trail, and together they sum up the history of capital punishment in Lane County Oregon, the only two exe...
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July 1, 2025 96 mins
The Real ‘Chicago’ Murders

Episode 352 explores the two murders that inspired the hit musical “Chicago,” which was based on a play by Maurine Watkins, who did some reporting on both cases as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. I’ll be joined by my colleague Susan Ferman, whose own podcast Catastrophic Calamities, will premiere next week on the Pulpular Media network. Susan will read about the case of Beulah Annan, who became Roxy Ha...
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December 11, 2024 27 mins
The Brutal Murder Of Mayme Sherman

A True Crime Short Story by Richard O Jones

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One of the factors behind my interest in historical true crime is that my hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, seems to have a particularly rich history of crime--murder in particular, but not just murder. I’ve done several local programs about the safecrackers, bandits, and other notorious characters. This short story, “Bacon On The Table...
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December 2, 2024 49 mins
The Saga of the Scoundrel Thomas McGehan
A true crime short story by Richard O Jones

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Episode 28 takes place on Christmas Eve 1870, when three men attack a local politician with boulders and slungshots, and at least a dozen men scramble for the door while five shots pepper the faro room at the American Saloon in Hamilton, Ohio, the hometown of True Crime Historian Richard O Jones. One of the bullets kills th...
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May 27, 2024 96 mins
The Atrocities Of Albert Fish

I'D TURN BACK IF I WERE YOU!!!

Episode 191 is without a doubt the vilest case you'll ever hear on this program because I don't think I could find a worse one if I tried. There's a lot of evil discussed here: torture, cannibalism, and more. Consider this your trigger warning: I'd turn back if I were you! Or at least put the kids to bed and plug in your ear buds. Keep this between us.

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April 17, 2024 126 mins
The Murder Of Mary Phagan

Episode 183 tells of one of the most infamous cases of an innocent man wrongly accused. When a teenage factory girl is found dead in the basement of an Atlanta pencil manufacturer, blame falls on the mild-mannered Jewish superintendent of the plant, and the jury takes the word of a drunken janitor. It’ll take 70 years for the truth to come out.

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January 5, 2024 119 mins
The Reily Mattock Murder

Episode 198 is centered on one of my favorite murder tropes, the so-called “eternal triangle,” between the cranky old farmer, his fading wife, and the handsome young farmhand. Yeah, that’s not going to end well, but they might have gotten away with it if they had just put the body across the tracks. It’s all in the details.

Culled from the historic pages of the Hamilton Journal-News and other newspapers of th...
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December 3, 2023 146 mins
The Trial Of Rattlesnake James, The Red-Headed Bluebeard

Episode 192 gets a bit epic, but it’s the story that keeps on giving, with two botched murders and moral charges to boot, and things go from crazy to crazier when they bring a pair of rattlers named Lethal and Lightning into the courtroom.

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November 12, 2023 42 mins
A Litany of Horror

Episode 12 is a reading of the chilling confession of Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, one of the most remarkable serial killers in American History. The whole nation was shocked and outraged in the waning years of the nineteenth century by the gruesome deeds of one Herman Mudgett, the arch fiend who took on the pseudonym H.H. Holmes as he prepared his famous "Castle of Death" in downtown Chica...
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January 15, 2023 85 mins
A Terrible Reign of Murder

About the murders that inspired Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon"

Episode 214 digs deep into the files of the FBI and one of its early successful investigations during the tenure of J.Edgar Hoover, when the Bureau of Investigations looked into the murder of as many as 60 to 70 Osage Indians. The file includes a report by Agent Frank Smith as well as statements by informants who helped break the...
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