Episode #24
2015-08-06 21:56:59
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In February of 1896, a little boy discovered a woman's headless body in a farmer's field in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. No one knew who she was, or what had happened. Newspapers carried headlines like "Hunt for the Head" and "Headless Horror." Quickly, the crime scene became a tourist attraction and...
Episode #23
2015-07-16 20:23:20
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The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona has the largest collection of petrified wood in the world. The beautiful wood is more than 200 million years old, and visitors to the park often take a little piece home with them as a souvenir. But stealing the wood has serious consequences,...
Episode #22
2015-06-26 01:32:28
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books have been disappearing across America since the late 90s, and haven't resurfaced in the marketplace. They've just vanished, never to be seen again. But unlike most thieves, this thief is motivated by something more abstract and romantic than money, which makes...
Episode #21
2015-06-05 02:54:17
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Julius Robinson had killed for revenge before, and so when his sister was brutally murdered in her sleep last year, he says he planned to "get" the killer. He felt like his family expected him to get revenge, because that's what he'd always done, both in and out of prison. But when his 17-year-old...
Episode #20
2015-05-15 02:16:40
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Karen Miller met a man named Gil Harper on Facebook. They started flirting. The flirtation grew more serious. Eventually, they planned to meet in real life. Gil would travel from London to meet Karen for her birthday. With his arrival just a few days away, Karen's son scrambled to learn...
Episode #19
2015-04-24 03:46:31
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Sandie Alger is a 71-year-old woman with a very long rap sheet. She was in and out of prison throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, and upped her game each time she got out. Prison, she says, is where you move "up the criminal ladder, just like the corporate ladder."...
Episode #18
2015-04-03 01:49:21
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Police officer John Edwards was patrolling a quiet neighborhood in Bellaire, Texas when he saw an SUV driven by two young African-American men, including Robbie Tolan. It was just before 2am on December 31, 2008. Edwards followed the SUV and ran the license plate number. When his computer indicated that...
Episode #17
2015-03-13 12:44:53
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No one disputes that it's against the law to take another person's life, but is it against the law to sit with someone and watch while they die by suicide. We meet an elderly woman named Fran Schindler who sneaks around the country as an "exit guide." This is a...
Episode #16
2015-02-20 04:00:35
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On July 17th, 1889, the residents of Clayton County, Iowa woke up to news of the worst crime in their history. A Civil War veteran John Elkins and his young wife Hattie had been murdered in their bed in a grisly attack. Their two children escaped to raise the alarm....
Episode #15
2015-01-30 02:16:59
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Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an issue for as long as he can remember, but he isn't one to call the police on drug dealers or sex workers. He's a pretty "live and let live" kind of guy. Or he was....
Episode #14
2015-01-09 13:03:33
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In June 2014, authorities released information about a massive child pornography ring being conducted in North Carolina. Four suspects had already been arrested, and the police were asking the public for help finding a fifth suspect. But they didn't need to look very hard — the suspect, a man named...
Episode #13
2014-12-19 04:23:26
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Raymond Chandler is often called the greatest American crime novelist, famous for murder mysteries like The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely. He's the subject of several biographies, and his correspondence and manuscripts are archived at Oxford. But something very, very important to Chandler had gotten lost. No one noticed...
Episode #12
2014-11-26 02:42:34
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In 1999, most of America's tech hysteria centered around Y2K. But at that same time, a teenager in Canada named Mike Calce was messing around in chat rooms, meeting hackers, and learning tricks. At 15, he decided to put his knowledge to the test. To push up against the Internet's...
Episode #11
2014-10-30 03:26:13
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In 1977, a mild-mannered aeronautical engineer sideswiped a parked car in Compton, CA. When he stopped his car to survey the damage, a man named Leon Moore opened the driver-side door, shoved him over, and started driving. He said, "I'm about to save your life." We talk to lawyer Stephanie...
Episode #10
2014-09-26 05:00:31
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Working as a reporter for a TV station in New Hampshire, Kevin Flynn was covering the capture and arrest of a female serial killer named Sheila LaBarre. As he grew more and more obsessed with LaBarre's story, Flynn decided to write her a letter. She wrote back. Their correspondence became...
What does it mean when a woman commits a crime and attributes her actions to PMS? We revisit the first use of the "PMS defense," in this country, back in 1981. What have we learned about the science of PMS since then? Last year, the American Psychiatric Association classified a...
