In 1985, 160 people were sent letters saying they’d won free tickets to an NFL football game. They were told to pick up their tickets at the Washington Convention Center. When they arrived, they were greeted by cheerleaders, men in tuxedos, and team mascots. But then, they found out there were never any tickets at all.
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On September 18, 1998, an unusual ad ran in USA Today — a company called John’s Estate Sales was looking to buy a moon rock. The phone number on the ad belonged to Special Agent Joe Gutheinz at NASA.
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Moon Rocks Wanted

The bodies of a woman and her child were found inside a burned house on Christmas Day, 1843. An autopsy showed that they’d died before the fire even started.
Alex Hortis's book is The Witch of New York.
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The Christmas Fire

Stories of animals really going for it.
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Turtle vs. Toilet, a Monster in the Closet, and a Surprise Possum

Operation Flagship

In 1791, three men filed lawsuits in the General Court of Maryland. They were all suing the same person: the Jesuit priest who enslaved them.
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The Sale

“Children nowadays, they make maps. And say, this is the street where the store is that we're going to rob, and this is where we're going to hide, and this is how we get away.” In the 1950s, U.S. senators were worrying about “the fifth horseman of doom.” And they started an unusual investigation.
The recordings of the Senate hearings in this episode are courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives.
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For the Sake of American Youth

In 1993, Gary Settle was sentenced to 177 years in prison. Twenty-six years into his sentence, he started helping other inmates get out of prison through something called compassionate release - a policy that allows people in prison to petition to be let out for “extraordinary and compelling” reasons.
You can learn more about Gary Settle in Anna Altman’s piece, "The Quality of Mercy," in The Atavist Magazine.
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Extraordinary and Compelling Reasons

In 1977, a man named Robert Burns went to a funeral and shot someone, in the head, in front of 300 people. He didn’t deny it, and his lawyer didn’t deny it. Burns told a police officer: “I had to do it. And if I had to do it over, I’d do it again.”
Casey Cep’s book is The Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.
This episode was originally released in 2019.
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The Reverend

This week, part two of the Reels family story – how two brothers went to jail in an attempt to save their family land, and were held there for eight years without being charged with a crime. “I’m not going to give up. I don’t think I’m wrong, and I’m willing to fight for it.”
For more on the Reels family’s story, you can read Lizzie Presser’s article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.”
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The Family Land, Part 2

Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels refused to leave the land that had been in their family for generations – so they were sent to jail. They expected to be in jail for 90 days. They were there for 8 years. This week, part 1 of their story.
For more on the Reels family’s story, you can read Lizzie Presser’s article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.”
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The Family Land, Part 1

Today, a personal story from Phoebe about her mother, Valentine, who died this spring.
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Valentine

Soon after the Berlin Wall went up, a group of students knocked on Joachim Rudolph’s door. They told him they were trying to get people out of East Germany - and they wanted his help. 
Helena Merriman’s book and BBC podcast are called Tunnel 29. You can hear the episode of AirSpace with Günter Wetzel here.
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Under the Wall

Before Guantánamo Bay became the prison we know today, Marie Genard spent more than a year of her life there. She was 14.
Brandt Goldstein’s book is Storming the Court: How a Band of Law Students Fought the President—and Won.
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A Land Without Law

In 1977, a new bar opened on North Wells Street in Chicago. Things weren’t as they seemed at the aptly named “Mirage Tavern.”
This story is from our friends at Snap Judgment.
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The Mirage

One morning, two men got in a boat and sailed down a river in the Amazon rainforest. They were never heard from again.
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A Murder in the Forest

In the summer of 1975, two best friends attempted a robbery unlike any they’d ever pulled off before. Their target: the mob.
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Into the Vault

When Madison Smith went to her county attorney’s office to talk about her rape case, she knew she wanted to press charges. But the prosecutor told her he wouldn't bring a rape charge. Then she discovered a loophole in an old Kansas law.
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The Petition

In 2010, a $16.5 million Hot Lotto ticket was sold at a gas station in Des Moines, Iowa. At first, no one showed up to claim the prize. And then, a series of lawyers tried to claim the money on behalf of a client they would not name. Things got stranger, and eventually investigators uncovered what has been called the biggest lottery fraud in U.S. history.
This episode was first published in 2021. 
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Hot Lotto

Two men turned in the winning catch at a Lake Erie fishing tournament. But when the tournament director squeezed one of their fish - he felt something inside. 
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Big Fish

Phoebe: Are there a lot of spies in this country today?
Scott: Far more than people can probably even imagine. You can't rule anybody out. You never know what it is that motivates people to do this.
For 17 years, Ana Montes was quietly sharing information with the Cuban government while working as a U.S. defense intelligence analyst.
Scott Carmichael’s book is True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy. Jim Popkin’s book is Code Name Blue Wren – The True Story of America’s Most Dangerous Female Spy and the Sister She Betrayed.
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Hunters in the Everglades used to kill millions of birds every year for their feathers. In 1902, a man named Guy Bradley was hired to stop people from shooting the birds – but it wasn’t easy. “If you’re working alone in the wilderness, no witnesses, and the people that you’re going up to are armed, it’s really dangerous.”
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Trouble in Flamingo

“There was a saying I heard a few times: ‘under the influence, above the law.’ And I think that describes the mindset of a certain type of fraternity guy.” 
Max Marshall’s book is Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story. 
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Millions of Pills

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar smuggled four hippopotamuses into Colombia for a zoo on his ranch. Today, there are over 160 hippos in the country. “It’s like hippo paradise here. They have water and food all year long. They have no predators…They can do whatever they want."
Listen to Jorge Caraballo’s Radio Ambulante episode about narco tours here.
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Los Hipopótamos

In 1967, a 24-year-old named Leslie Arnold escaped from prison. The FBI looked for him for years. And then, in 2022, a U.S. Marshal got a message from his son.
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The Disappearance of Leslie Arnold

On the afternoon of June 23rd, 1972, Martin McNally walked into the St. Louis airport with a wig, a sawed-off rifle, and a plan.
Special thanks to Danny Wicentowski. Learn more at the Riverfront Times: “The Final Flight of Martin McNally.”
This episode was originally released in 2018. To hear the second part of this story, “The Fox,” click here. 
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Ten Thousand Feet in the Air

When Karen Bethea-Shields was in college, she heard a judge say, “No way in the world a Black woman can get raped.” A few years later, in 1975, she helped successfully defend Joan Little—a Black woman—who became the first woman in the U.S. to be found not guilty of murder using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault.
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State of North Carolina v. Joan Little

“The ingenuity of depraved human genius has culminated in the production of margarine.”
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The Demon Spread

The Lawrence H. Woodward funeral home in Brooklyn has been run by one family for generations, and has handled many funerals for victims of violent crime.
When we visited, one funeral director told us, “I don’t think people understand when you’re dealing with a victim who’s been shot – we see these things. It’s a mental toll on the person that has to now look at this gunshot victim and put them back together.”
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One Troy

When JonRe Taylor was called for jury duty in 2007, she voted ‘not guilty’ on every charge. But the defendant was convicted and sent to prison anyway.
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11 to 1

In 1989, three people confessed to participating in a murder. Eventually, a total of six people were arrested. But when DNA tests were run on crime scene evidence almost 20 years later - the results showed that none of them had been there at all.
This episode picks up where our last episode left off. If you haven't heard the first part yet - we recommend going back and listening to that first. It’s called Type B.
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The Six

Six people were arrested for a murder in Nebraska. Some said they couldn't remember details of the crime, or being there at all - but then they began to have dreams about it.
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Type B

When we last spoke with Trevell Coleman, he was waiting to hear back about his clemency application. And then, in December of last year, his lawyer got a phone call.
We shared Trevell’s story in two episodes we released last fall. They’re called The Confession Part 1 and 2.
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The Confession, Part 3

In 1991, two police officers stopped Tupac Shakur for jaywalking. He said he was knocked unconscious during his arrest, and sued the city of Oakland for 10 million dollars. His lawyer says many of the police brutality cases he's worked on started with jaywalking stops.
Peter Norton’s book is Fighting Traffic.
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Right of Way

In 1980, posters appeared in subway stations and on telephone poles in New York City with a phone number to call. When you called it, you would hear a message: “This is Apology. Apology is not associated with the police or any other organization but rather is a way for you to tell people what you have done wrong and how you feel about it.”
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Mr. Apology

When he was 14 years old, Ron Bishop testified in a murder trial. Decades later, he told an investigator everything he said on the stand was a lie – and that it was just what he was told to say.
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Under Oath

When people started saying that John D. Rockefeller Jr. was responsible for the deaths of two women and 11 children near a coal mine in Colorado, he decided to do something unusual. He hired “the father of public relations.”
Scott Martelle's book is Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West.
Amy Westervelt's podcast is called Drilled.
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The Strike

Sultan Alam was the first Pakistani officer to join the traffic department of the Cleveland Police in the UK. He was harassed at work and complained to his senior officers about it. Then his coworkers showed up at his house to arrest him.
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An Officer's Arrest

For almost thirty years, Adolfo Kaminsky lived quietly, forging documents for people all over the world. It started when he was 18.
Sarah Kaminsky’s book is Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life.
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Indelible Ink

As the famous English actor William Macready was preparing to go on stage in New York, over 300 police officers were placed in and around the theater. “But the head of the police said, ‘I don't know that that's going to be enough people.’”
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The Hiss

In the early 1920s, painters at a watch dial factory in New Jersey started to get sick. No one could tell them why.
Kate Moore's book is called The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women.
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The Dial Painters

In 1974, musician Connie Converse drove away from home and was never heard from again.
Howard Fishman’s book is To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse. Martha Wainwright’s cover of "One By One" is on Vanity of Vanities: A Tribute to Connie Converse. Julia Bullock’s album is Walking in the Dark. You can find Connie Converse’s music at http://connieconverse.com. 
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If I’m Long Unheard From 

“I never did anything wrong. I never had a speeding ticket. I think I just saved all my stuff up for just one thing.” We speak with Toby Dorr, who started a prison dog training program in 2004. That’s how she met John Manard. 
This episode was originally released in 2019.
Criminal is on tour this month! We're telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Off Leash

“The police had surrounded the house. They had been there for quite a while. They didn’t want to try to rush the house because they thought he might kill one of the innocent people. But after waiting for a long time, I asked the police: ‘Let me see if I can talk to the guy.’”
For decades, TV news reporter Russ Ewing stood beside more than 100 people — at their request — as they surrendered to the police.
Thanks to CBC Licensing.
This episode was originally released in 2020.
Criminal is on tour this month! We’re telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Call Russ Ewing

In May 1991, a bank robber walked into a bank in Irving, Texas, and without speaking handed the teller a note that read, “This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or dye packs.”
Check out Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article, “The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob.”
This episode was first released in 2020. 
Criminal is on tour this month! We’re telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Cowboy Bob

A conversation with a 911 operator about what happens on the other end of the line – and the day she heard her daughter's voice on the phone.
Criminal is going back on tour this month! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Martin Abramowitz knew that his father had worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, but he always thought he hadn’t been there the day the building caught fire and 146 workers died. Then he found out that a man with the same name as his father had testified at the factory owners' trial.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Ninth Floor

This episode picks up where 48 Hours, Part 1 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order.
When Aaron Quinn called the Vallejo police to report that his girlfriend Denise Huskins had been kidnapped, and went into the station for questioning, a detective told Aaron that he didn't believe him. When Denise was released after being held captive for about 48 hours, police didn't believe her either. It soon became clear that the police viewed Denise and Aaron as suspects, not victims.
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn’s book is Victim F.
This episode was originally released in 2021. 
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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48 Hours, Part 2

“I think it was around 3:00 a.m., and that’s when I heard a strange man’s voice waking me from sleep.”
This is part one of a two-part episode. Listen to part two in our next episode.
Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn’s book is Victim F.
This episode was originally released in 2021.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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48 Hours, Part 1

In 2016, the FBI attaché in Pretoria, South Africa, got a phone call from a woman asking the FBI to investigate the death of her friend, Bianca Rudolph. Bianca had died on a hunting trip in Zambia’s Kafue National Park, but her friend didn’t think it was an accident.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Hunt

Ken Eto worked for the Chicago Outfit for 30 years. He was known as the mob’s bolita expert, bringing in millions of dollars a year for them. But in 1983, they turned on him.
Dan O’Sullivan wrote about Ken Eto for Chicago Magazine and Epic Magazine - you can read his piece here.
﻿Criminal is going on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live.
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Tokyo Joe

Stories of animals really going for it.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Gargoyle Cat, the Taylor Swift Goat, and the Runaway Cow

Today we meet “Genius Grant” winner Andrea Armstrong. In 2019, she started the Incarceration Transparency Project to identify and make public how many people were dying behind bars in Louisiana. The project also documents conditions inside the state’s prisons and jails – what Andrea Armstrong calls “secretive spaces of confinement.” She’s said: “Too often, the how and why a person in prison dies is kept secret from everyone, including the person’s family."
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Questions I’m Asking

When a young woman showed up at a boarding house in Manhattan, she said her name was Nellie Brown – but that was all she seemed to remember about herself. Soon, people became scared of her. Someone went to the police: "I want you to take her quietly."
Stacy Horn's book is Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York.
Travis Russ' upcoming play is The Gorgeous Nothings. To hear our special bonus episode about the other end of the island—and get ad-free listening, members-only merch and more—sign up for Criminal Plus.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Send Her to the Island

In the early 1970s, Marty Goddard was worried about the high rates of sexual assault in Chicago. She learned from police that evidence from sexual assault cases often wasn’t collected properly — or at all. “They said, ‘We don’t get evidence.’ And this really kicked everything off.”
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Kit

In the 1950s poodles were all the rage — one tabloid even reported that when a girl “makes the big time she traditionally acquires 3 things — minks, gems, and a poodle.” But one poodle in particular put the breed on the map. His name was Masterpiece… and police in 13 states knew exactly what he looked like.
This episode originally aired in 2018. 
To listen to more family-friendly episodes of Criminal and This is Love, check out our playlist here.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Masterpiece

In 1913, museums and art galleries in London received a memo from the police. It told them to be careful when they let in visitors – women might try to attack the art.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Fine Art and Meat Cleavers

In the 1980s, Liverpool was having what journalists called a heroin epidemic. The chairman of a local organization where people would go for drug counseling told a reporter, “We are on the brink of complete catastrophe.” Then a small group of people decided to try something.
Maia Szalavitz’s book is Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction Is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction.
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Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Liverpool Exchange

After a 17-hour-long interrogation, a woman confesses to a murder. But then, evidence surfaces proving that she can’t have actually done it – and that it was a false confession.
Today, we’re looking at what goes on in an interrogation room – and hear a recording from inside.
Maurice Chammah and the Marshall Project released a 6-part podcast series about James Holland and Larry Driskill – it’s called “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”
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Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there.
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Interrogation Room

In 1989, Helen Ackley decided to sell her old Victorian house in Nyack, New York. It didn’t go as planned. The house became the center of a case that’s referred to as “The Ghostbusters ruling.”
This episode was originally released in 2020.
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Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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How to Sell a Haunted House

Jack Barsky was a college student in 1970 when the KGB knocked on the door of his dorm room to inquire about his plans after college. “I was told to broaden my knowledge of culture, of literature, of music, to become a well-educated person who could operate in higher strata of society.” 
Jack Barsky wrote a book about his life. It’s called Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Spy

Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were once members of the radical activist group the Weather Underground. In 1981, they helped members of the Black Liberation Army rob a Brink’s armored car at the Nanuet National Bank. Their son, Chesa Boudin, was 14 months old at the time. He spent his childhood visiting his parents in prison.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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Chesa, Kathy, and David

This episode continues where Episode 237 leaves off.
17 years after he shot a man, Trevell Coleman walked into a police station and tried to turn himself in. He’d never been a suspect in the case, and had kept the secret for years. He also never knew if the man had lived or died — but after turning himself in, he finally found out.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Confession, Part 2

Trevell Coleman signed with Bad Boy Records in 1998. He made it onto the Billboard charts, and was called “the latest protege of rap’s royal family.” But there was something from his past he hadn’t told anyone about – and he couldn’t let it go.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there!
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The Confession, Part 1

On September 16, 1922, a reverend and a choir singer were found dead under a tree. Between their bodies was a stack of love letters. When police began investigating the murders, tabloid reporters did too, and rumors about the case began to spread quickly.
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Under the Crabapple Tree

Jeff German was a reporter for over 40 years in Las Vegas. He spent his life covering the mafia, corruption, and murder. In 2022, he was found killed outside his home. His colleagues at the Las Vegas Review-Journal tried to figure out why he had died—and if his death had anything to do with his work.
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The Newsroom

In 1916, two British soldiers were held captive in a remote prisoner-of-war camp. People said the camp was escape-proof. One day, one of the soldiers received a postcard from his aunt in England, suggesting they try experimenting with a Ouija board. When reports of ghosts started circulating around the camp, the two soldiers had an idea.
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The Séances

Iceland is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, but people there love to read about crime. Even the Prime Minister of Iceland has written a crime novel. We stopped by her office to ask why.
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson's book is Reykjavík.
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Iceland Noir

In April of 1995, wildlife biologists flew small airplanes over Yellowstone National Park, looking for two missing wolves. “They’re just gone. And that’s implausible because wolves don’t just disappear.”
Thomas McNamee’s book is The Killing of Wolf Number Ten.
This episode was originally released in 2020.
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Wolf 10

When Amy Loughren started working as a nurse at Somerset Medical Center, she did everything she could to hide the fact that she had a heart condition. And then, another nurse named Charles Cullen discovered Amy’s secret. He told her that he would keep it, but she didn’t know that he was keeping his own secret too.
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The Nurse

A story about religion, sex, an assassination, and silverware. 
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The Perfectionists

In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken — and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the 20th century.
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A Glamour and a Mystery

The UNABOM investigation was one of the longest manhunts in American history - it lasted for 18 years starting in 1978. Before the FBI started investigating Ted Kaczynski, they looked into a number of suspects, including a group of friends who loved playing Dungeons &amp; Dragons.
This episode is part of the podcast Project Unabom. Listen to the entire series on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/Project_Unabom.
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Roll of the Dice

In the summer of 1984, a local newspaper reporter outside of Manchester, England, got a tip from the police. A foot had been found in a nearby bog.
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The Bodies in the Bog

A little over sixty years ago, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. Today, there are 26. We visit Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina to meet Phillip Vance Smith, II, the editor of The Nash News.
Learn more about the American Prison Newspapers digitization project here. Listen to more of Fresh Air’s interview with Angolite editor Wilbert Rideau here. Special thanks to Terry Gross and Fresh Air, which is produced at NPR member station WHYY and distributed by NPR. 
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The Prison Newspaper

Mary Jones could sing just like Aretha Franklin. One night, a James Brown impersonator saw her perform at a Motown tribute show - and thought he could take her on tour and trick audiences into believing she was the real Queen of Soul. Jeff Maysh tells the story.
Learn more in Jeff Maysh’s piece for Smithsonian Magazine, “The Counterfeit Queen of Soul.” 
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The Impersonator

In 1934, a man collecting driftwood along the Lake Erie shore found a human torso on the beach. No one could figure out what had happened. Over the next several years, more bodies were discovered. Eventually, a coroner assembled something he called the “Torso Clinic” to work on the case. It was made up of about 30 people – doctors, professors, police officers, and a young Prohibition agent named Eliot Ness.
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Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and Cleveland’s Torso Murderer

When a toymaker and a doctor teamed up to make the world’s first CPR doll, they decided to make the doll’s face look like one specific woman – a woman who they thought had drowned. People call her l’Inconnue de la Seine, or the Unknown Woman of the Seine.
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The Unknown Woman

As recently as 1965, if you had a medical emergency, the people who showed up at your door would be volunteer firefighters, police officers, or undertakers with a hearse. Today, the story of how a group of Black men from Pittsburgh changed that. 
Kevin Hazzard’s book is American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics.
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The Paramedics

Helen James grew up in a military family — her great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, her father in WWI, and her uncles in WWII. So when she enlisted in 1952, she felt like she belonged. Shortly after, she realized she was being watched.
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Lavender Scare

There’s an old sailors’ saying about the ocean at the southernmost part of the world — “below 40 degrees latitude, there is no law; below 50 degrees, there is no God.”
David Grann brings us the story of what happened when five British warships set off on a secret mission to steal a ship filled with treasure. They’d have to sail around the very bottom of South America — at 56 degrees south.
David Grann’s book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
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Shipwrecked

In the late 1870s, a woman named Sarah Howe started a bank just for single women called the Ladies’ Deposit Company. She asked new customers to tell their friends about the bank rather than advertising in newspapers, and she promised she could almost double their money. 
Today, the story of the woman running a Ponzi scheme before Charles Ponzi was even born.
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A Mysterious Bank

“What we ask jurors to do is to just absorb all this trauma and just to keep on absorbing it and not process it with anyone. Just hold it in and hold it in and hold it in.” A look at what happens during and after a trial – and how some courts are trying to help jurors.
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"Did we get it right?"

In 2008, Sven Berger was chosen to serve on the jury for a murder trial. He says the sentence that he and his fellow jurors handed down “felt like a mistake right away.”
Sven talked about what happened next on the podcast Heavyweight, and today, we’re sharing that episode with you. Maurice Chammah originally reported on Sven’s story for The Marshall Project.
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The Juror

When she was 14 years old, Elizabeth Coppin was sent to a place called Peacock Lane in Cork, Ireland. It was a laundry business run by a Catholic order of nuns. Elizabeth noticed bars on its windows.
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The Magdalene Laundries

In 1948, two horse jockeys were riding on a beach in Australia when they came across a man lying in the sand. There was a partially smoked cigarette resting on his jacket. He was well dressed, with a striped tie and polished shoes. And he was dead.
No one could figure out who he was.
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The Somerton Man

When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. It's been called the largest murder trial in history, with more than one million victims. There were 22 defendants, each of them high-ranking members of Nazi Germany’s death squad.
Benjamin Ferencz died last Friday, April 7, at the age of 103. He was the last surviving prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials. Today, we're sharing our conversation from 2018.
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Palace of Justice – A Conversation with Benjamin Ferencz

When Debra Miller woke up on October 8th, 1964, she was expecting to see a black Volkswagen in her family’s driveway. Instead, she saw a police car. “And I knew my father was dead.”
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The Most Wonderful Terrible Person

In 1911, two sisters traveled to Seattle to meet a "doctor" named Linda Hazzard. The sisters didn’t seem very sick, but when they arrived, Dr. Hazzard told them they didn’t have a moment to lose – they needed to begin her treatment right away. 
A few months later, one of the sisters wrote a letter to her old governess. “I am wonderfully better in fact,” she said, “getting stronger by leaps.” But her handwriting was messier than usual, and her sentences ran together and overlapped.
You can find Gregg Olsen’s book, Starvation Heights, here.
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The Fasting Cure

In the 1980s, the discount electronics chain store Crazy Eddie was so famous, its commercials were parodied on "Saturday Night Live." So when the family business began selling its company shares on Wall Street — making millions — nobody questioned its success.
Gary Weiss’ book is Retail Gangster: The Insane, Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie. 
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Crazy Eddie

In 1964, one of the best javelin throwers in Australia traveled to England to see if he could qualify for the Olympics. But, because of an injury, he didn’t make the team - and he couldn’t afford a plane ticket home. So he came up with an idea while working a cargo job at Heathrow Airport: “I saw them shipping animals. And I thought, well, if the dogs can survive it, I could.”
Marcus and Julie McSorley’s book about Reg Spiers is Out of the Box: The Highs and Lows of a Champion Smuggler.
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Out of the Box

This episode continues where Episode 208 leaves off.
In 2001, Daniel Taylor wrote a letter from prison to a reporter at the Chicago Tribune named Steve Mills. Steve Mills spent months investigating before publishing a detailed examination of Daniel’s case as part of a series called “Cops and Confessions.” Daniel told us, “To have someone finally say that they believed me changed my whole life.”
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An Impossible Crime, Part 2

Daniel Taylor was 17 years old when he was arrested for a 1992 double homicide in Chicago. But Daniel had an alibi. He was in jail at the time of the murders.
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An Impossible Crime

In 2016, a man named Anthony Novak created a parody Facebook page of his local police department. "I just thought, 'That would be funny.'" About a month later, he was arrested. Novak is now petitioning the Supreme Court, and The Onion submitted an amicus brief in support of his case. Their brief is written as a parody of an amicus brief.
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Novak v. City of Parma

On October 4, 1960, Eastern Airlines Flight 375 took off from Boston’s Logan airport, and then, two minutes later, it crashed. 62 people died. Investigators couldn't figure out what had happened, and they decided to ask a scientist working at the Smithsonian for help. Roxie Laybourne's investigation helped launch a whole new field of science that changed aviation and forensics.
Special thanks to the Smithsonian Institution Archives for letting us share audio of Roxie Laybourne.
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The Feather Lady

Debbie Schum waited a long time to receive the cremated ashes of her friend, LoraLee Johnson. When she did, she felt relieved to finally take them home with her. But then, she got a call from the FBI.
We first aired this episode in 2020. Earlier this month, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch were sentenced for their crimes. We've included updates about the case in this version of the episode.
To learn more, check out Elena Saavedra Buckley’s article, “‘None of this happened the way you think it did.’”
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Sunset Mesa

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August of 2021, they unlocked the prisons and freed prisoners, some of whom sought revenge on the women judges who convicted them. We speak with some of the judges in today’s episode.
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They Came for the Judges 

Stories of animals really going for it.
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Dog in the Bed, Cat in the Bag, Camel on the Golf Course

In February of 1910, members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London received a strange letter from their treasurer – a singer who went by the name Belle Elmore. It said that she suddenly had to travel to the United States, and that she was resigning from her position.
Several weeks later, at the Music Hall Ladies Guild fundraising ball, Belle's husband arrived with a date. And she was wearing Belle's brooch.
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Across the Atlantic

On September 29, 1982, Adam Janus suddenly collapsed in his home outside of Chicago. He died within hours. Later that same day, in the same house, his brother also collapsed — then his sister-in-law. All three of them had been healthy. Nobody could figure out what was going on.
Stacy St. Clair and Christy Gutowski reported an investigative series looking back on the Tylenol murders for the Chicago Tribune. You can listen to their podcast here, and read their series in the Chicago Tribune here.
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Episode transcripts are posted on our website.
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The Tylenol Murders

On a Saturday night, in February 1949, the music programming on one of the most popular radio stations in Quito, Ecuador, was interrupted with an urgent news bulletin: strange objects in the sky that looked like large disks with bright lights were using a powerful ray to destroy a nearby city. And they were heading right for Quito.
Thanks to Lisette Arévalo for sharing her tape and her reporting. In 2020, she reported this story for the Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante – it’s called “The Extraterrestrials.” You can listen at https://radioambulante.org/en/audio-en/the-extraterrestrials.
Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow.
We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.
Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. 
Episode transcripts are posted on our website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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