Crimes of the Centuries

S6 Ep26: Johnny Gosch: The Paperboy Who Never Came Home

On September 5, 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch left his West Des Moines home to deliver newspapers. He never made it back. What followed was a police chief with his own v

S6 Ep25: Abscam: The Sting that Swept Washington

A con man with a gift for talking fast and a knack for never getting caught made himself invaluable to the FBI in the late 1970s — and the FBI made him the centerpiece of

S6 Ep24: Charles Harrelson and the Assassination of "Maximum John"

In 1979, a federal judge in San Antonio was known for one thing above all else: He did not show mercy. John H. Wood Jr. had earned his nickname the hard way, one maximum

S6: ENCORE: Fatty Arbuckle: Scandal in Hollywood

The roaring '20s of last century were fueled in part by a new industry: filmmaking in Hollywood. Directors were rolling in dough, as were the silver screen's first stars.

S6: Norman Thorne: Cold-Blooded Killer or 'Martyr to Spilsburyism'?

A young woman named Elsie Cameron vanished after delivering an ultimatum to her fiancé, chicken farmer Norman Thorne. Weeks later, investigators dug up his property and f

S6 Ep23: Dr. Crippen and the Coal Cellar

Weeks after a woman's mysterious disappearance, a ship's captain noticed something off about two of his passengers — a quiet, bespectacled man and his teenage "son." He c

S6 Ep22: Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin's Three-Year Race War

For three years in the late 1970s and into 1980 — before shared databases and DNA evidence — one man moved freely across 11 states trying to start a race war. He changed

S6: The Botched Execution of Tony Carruthers: Future COTC?

Three people vanished from a Memphis home in February 1994. A week later, they turned up in a local cemetery, buried in a grave dug for someone else's funeral — held the

S6 Ep21: The Murder of Leslie Preer

Investigators were certain they knew who killed Leslie Preer. Their main suspect had motive, a suspicious alibi, and a failed polygraph. Investigators had everything they

S6 Ep20: The Wrong Kind of American

Twenty-two-year-old Fred Korematsu was parked on a San Francisco hillside with his girlfriend, listening to music on the car radio, when the broadcast stopped on Dec. 7,

S6 Ep19: "Goodnight, Sweet Wife:" Murder in Mission Hill

On the night of Oct. 23, 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 from a car phone in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, his voice strained with panic. He said he and his wife Caro

S6 Ep18: The Girl Scout Murders on Cookie Trail Road

Dozens of Girl Scouts arrived at Camp Scott in the Oklahoma woods in June of 1977 expecting songs, crafts and campfires. By morning, three of the girls were dead, their b

S6: ENCORE: The Forgotten Serial Killer of the Victorian Era

In Victorian England, a serial killer preyed on sex workers and other vulnerable women, targeting the people society was least likely to mourn or protect. But unlike the

S6: TRUTH DEFERRED S1E1: Love Lost & Justice Unraveling

In 1884 Cincinnati, a string of brutal murders and a verdict that outraged the public set off a chain of events that would end in one of the darkest moments in American h

S6: ENCORE: The Manhattan Well Murder

When a 22-year-old woman living with relatives in a boarding house disappeared on Dec. 22, 1799, her loved ones didn't immediately worry. But when she still hadn't return

S6: THE CATALYST: The Traveler

Amber's on vacation, so she's yanking an episode of The Catalyst from behind the paywall over at Grab Bag Collab. Dive deep into the upbringing and backstories of individ

S6: The Murder of Faith Hedgepeth: Future COTC?

In September 2012, a 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student was found beaten to death in her off-campus apartment. She was a biology major, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tri

S6 Ep17: Meaher's Illegal Gamble: The Last Slave Ship

In 1859, a wealthy Alabama landowner made a bet that he could do the unthinkable. The next spring, he did just that — trafficking human beings from West Africa to the Uni

S6 Ep16: Murder in Coweta County

One April morning in 1948, a tenant farmer named Wilson Turner walked out of a rural Georgia jail and into an ambush. The man waiting for him owned 2,000 acres known as T

S6 Ep15: Twilight Zone Part 2: 'We Decided to Break the Law'

After three people died on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, it took four years to get five defendants into a courtroom and another 10 months before anyone knew how it