
True Crime Historian
byRichard O Jones
ArtsPerformingSocietyCultureDocumentary
Tales of classic scandals, scoundrels and scourges told through vintage newspaper accounts from the golden age of yellow journalismBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.
Episodes(40 episodes)
Episode 10411
American Scoundrel Daniel Butterfield
In 1869, Medal of Honor recipient Daniel Butterfield took a ten-thousand-dollar bribe from Jay Gould to leak Treasury gold sales, helping trigger the Black Friday panic that bankrupted brokers and ruined farmers across the Midwest. The man who composed Taps sold out his country and never spent a day in prison.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes from the dusty...
Published: Apr 11, 2026Duration: 9m 30s
Episode 50
Magazine #1
Turned Into A Tigress By Her Borgia Blood.How A Criminal Acrobat Makes A Living Out Of His Genuine Broken Neck.How A Little Dog Avenged The Murder Of His Master.AD-FREE SAFE HOUSE EDITIONBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes from the dusty vault, Safe House Exclusives, direct access to the Boss, and whatever personal services you...
Published: Apr 10, 2026Duration: 37m 26s
Episode 10409
American Scoundrel Joseph R Burton
In 1902, Kansas Senator Joseph R. Burton walked a mail fraud operator into the Post Office inspector's office and made a federal investigation disappear. The price: twenty-five hundred dollars, paid in monthly installments. The first sitting senator convicted of a felony sold his office for the price of a used carriage.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes from...
Published: Apr 9, 2026Duration: 8m 52s
Episode 471
The Handyman's Morning
The Murder Of Captain Joseph WhiteJump to AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 472 takes us back to Salem, Massachusetts in 1830 when an old man dead in his bed from thirteen stab wounds. The clues: an unlocked window and a fortune that was never what anyone thought it was. The plot implicates four young men from two of Salem's best families and involves one famous and very expensive lawyer. This is the murder that taught Edgar Allan Poe everything he needed to know about guilt.More CAPERS & CONSPIRACIESBecome a supporter of this...
Published: Apr 6, 2026Duration: 54m 19s
Episode 48
The Third Passenger
What’s In The Package Mr. Wainwright?Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 49 is adapted from our favorite true crime pioneer, Edmund Pearson, who worked in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. He was a librarian by training and profession, but first made his mark on the true crime canon with his unique take on the Lizzie Borden crime. He wrote several books and many magazine articles, a regular contributor to the New Yorker for a time as well as a syndicated newspaper columnist. In this episode, he tells the story of an 1875 murder in...
Published: Apr 2, 2026Duration: 26m 28s
Episode 16
Violent Cremation
The Cincinnati Tanyard MurderJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 17 is a report from Lafcadio Hearn, on of my favorite Pioneers of True Crime. Although he became better known late in his career for his books on travel and on Japanese legends and ghost stories, Lafcadio Hearn began his professional writing career as a staff correspondent for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He was such a devotee of Edgar Allen Poe that he carried the nickname The Raven, given to him by an early mentor, throughout his life. The devotion shows in much of his writing...
Published: Mar 31, 2026Duration: 36m 41s
Episode 470
Face-To-Face With Pretty Boy Floyd
The Oklahoma Phantom TerrorJump to the Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 471 finds us in 1932, a hill country reporter named Vivian Brown did what no one else ever managed — she sat down with Pretty Boy Floyd and got him talking. Two years later, a teletype changed everything. The only interview the phantom bandit ever gave. Tonight, we hear the story from her point of view.Hear more stories about MANHUNTS!!!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to...
Published: Mar 30, 2026Duration: 49m 27s
Episode 44
A Deadly Family Feud
The Execution of J.G. Rawlings and His Accomplice Jump to AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 45 takes us back to the turn of the last century, rural Georgia circa 1905, when an argument over a field border incites a family feud that results in four deaths, including the murder of two innocents and a double hanging.Hear more stories about CAPITAL CRIMES!!!!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still j...
Published: Mar 29, 2026Duration: 44m 40s
Episode 10328
March 28, 1944
San Francisco, CaliforniaMarch 28, 1944A pyromaniac works the skid row district south of Market Street, lighting fires in flophouses all evening long. The sixth one catches. Twenty-two people die inside the New Amsterdam Hotel. The man they convict says God knows he's innocent. The dead say nothing.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free...
Published: Mar 28, 2026Duration: 9m 39s
Episode 42
Preacher’s Baby Girl/Gangster’s Wife
The Trial & Travails Of Norma Brighton MillenJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 43 is the story of a young girl, the daughter of a prominent minister and graduate of a fine finishing school, who fell into the wrong crowd and married a man who would be executed for the crime of the gang he was trying to build. The papers never said, but I can’t help but think the Millen-Faber Gang fancied themselves to be the Dillingers of the East Coast. The story grabbed my attention because of the way Norma Brighton Millen pr...
Published: Mar 27, 2026Duration: 42m 32s
Episode 10326
March 26, 1942
Poprad, SlovakiaMarch 25, 1942Nine hundred and ninety-nine young Jewish women boarded a train believing they were headed to factory work. They sang folk songs as the Tatra Mountains slid past the windows. The train crossed the Polish border before dawn. What waited on the other side would change the world.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access...
Published: Mar 26, 2026Duration: 9m 42s
Episode 22
The Disappearance Of Doctor Parkman
From True Crime Pioneer Edmund PearsonJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 25 takes place in 1849, a week before Thanksgiving, in a laboratory at the Harvard Medical College while the famed physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes was lecturing in the room directly above. The victim was one of Boston's wealthy elite on a mission to collect a bet from a geology professor. The Parker-Webster case, as it came to be known, was notable because it was one of the first murder cases where circumstantial forensic evidence was used in a trial. In this case...
Published: Mar 25, 2026Duration: 33m 58s
Episode 10323
March 24, 1882
Cincinnati, OhioMarch 24, 1862Abolition's golden trumpet, Wendell Phillips, takes the stage at Pike's Opera House to tell a river city what it doesn't want to hear. The eggs come first. Then the rocks. Then the mob outside, waiting with a rope. The mayor watches and does nothing.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free...
Published: Mar 24, 2026Duration: 9m 35s
Episode 468
The Dead Is Alive
The Wrongful Execution of William Jackson MarionJump To The Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 470 begins in 1887, when Nebraska hanged Jack Marion for murdering his friend John Cameron. Four years later, Cameron turned up alive on a Kansas farm. He'd never heard of the trial. He still had the receipt for the horses Marion supposedly killed him for. Nobody ever figured out whose body was in the creek.Hear more stories about BOTCHED EXECUTIONS.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You...
Published: Mar 23, 2026Duration: 57m 57s
Episode 41
Anarchist Kills Them All
The 1896 Klaettke Family Massacre Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 42 is the sad tale of a family of seven shot and killed by the crazed father, who then turned the gun on himself. It’s rare that we do an episode about a murder/suicide, because you rarely get to hear about the drama that led up to the tragedy, because there’s no one left to tell the story. There are still a lot of unanswered--and over-answered--questions in this one, but I like how the reporter included the details of the family history and t...
Published: Mar 22, 2026Duration: 36m 46s
March 21, 1556
Oxford, EnglandMarch 21, 1556The Archbishop of Canterbury signed five recantations to save his life. Queen Mary scheduled his burning anyway. On the morning of his execution, Cranmer was ordered to renounce his faith one final time before the crowd. He had other plans — and a right hand he intended to punish first.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can ge...
Published: Mar 21, 2026Duration: 9m 41s
Episode 13
The Long Island Torso Murder
Jump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 14. One summer day in 1896, three young boys discover a mysterious package floating near the docks of the East River. Hoping for some kind of treasure, what they found was the freshly dismembered body of a man. Police eventually discovered the identity of the man and found that he was involved in a deadly love triangle. His lover and her other man were charged with the grisly crime.Hear about more TORSO MURDERS!!!!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.<...
Published: Mar 20, 2026Duration: 38m 28s
Episode 10319
March 19, 1687
East Texas March 19, 1687The man who claimed half a continent for France walked into a stand of river cane looking for his missing nephew. Waiting in the grass were the men he'd led into the wilderness — men who had no intention of following him back out.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes fr...
Published: Mar 19, 2026Duration: 9m 50s
Episode 56
The White Slavery Suicide Pact
Murder in the Marberry ResortJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionIn Episode 57, we get an unusual glimpse into the world inside a bordello at the turn of the previous century, when a young prostitute reneges on a suicide pact with another, and allegedly kills a third girl to keep her secret safe. One of the things I like about this story is the outrage and indignation expressed by the newspaper editors that seems both quaint and relative to many of today’s social issues. Become a supporter of this podcast: htt...
Published: Mar 18, 2026Duration: 54m 56s
Episode 10318
March 17, 1794
Dorcester, EnglandMarch 17, 1794A fifteen-year-old girl who claimed she had never learned the difference between good and evil killed her grandfather in his sleep. The Murder Act demanded swift justice. Elizabeth Marsh became the first person hanged at a gaol that wasn't even finished yet. Her body went to the surgeons.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get...
Published: Mar 17, 2026Duration: 9m 24s