A pregnant mill girl. A married Methodist minister. A note that pointed straight at him. On a freezing December morning in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found hanging from a haystack pole in Tiverton, Rhode Island. The first verdict was suicide. The second accused Reverend Ephraim K. Avery of murder.

What followed was one of the most sensational trials of the 19th century—sex, scandal, class warfare, and a verdict that still divides people nearly 200 years later.

Host Alexander Lawson digs into the full story of the Cornell-Avery case: the camp-meeting encounter, the oil of tansy, the unsigned letters, the brutal character assassination of a working-class woman, and the question that never went away… did a man of God get away with murder?

At 2 a.m. a knock came at the door of Kentucky’s most powerful politician. Seconds later he was dying on the floor with a dagger in his chest—and the killer claimed he did it for love.

This is the true story of the Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy: a young lawyer, a woman seventeen years older, a shattered reputation, and a midnight assassination that became one of early America’s most sensational crimes. A murder so dramatic it inspired Edgar Allan Poe… and ended with a suicide pact in a jail cell.

Host Alexander Lawson unravels the obsession, the politics, the race rumors, and the confession that turned cold-blooded killing into a romantic legend.

Press play. The truth is darker than the myth.

In the quiet kitchens of 19th-century America, Lydia Sherman smiled, stirred, and watched the people who trusted her most die in agony. Husbands. Her own children. Stepchildren. Arsenic in the oatmeal, the chowder, the hot chocolate. By the time anyone looked twice, at least eleven people were dead.

Host Alexander Lawson tells the chilling true story of the woman newspapers called the Poison Fiend, the Modern Lucretia Borgia, and the Derby Poisoner—how she got away with it for nearly a decade, the sensational trial that finally stopped her, and the brief prison escape that almost let her kill again.

In May 1897, Louisa Luetgert walked into her husband’s shuttered sausage factory on Chicago’s North Side and was never seen again. Her husband, Adolph Luetgert—the self-proclaimed Sausage King—told their children she had gone to visit her sister. He never reported her missing.

Days later, police drained a basement vat filled with a thick, putrid, reddish slime. At the bottom they found two gold rings. One was engraved L.L.

What followed became one of the most sensational murder cases of the 19th century: a missing body, a boiling cauldron of caustic potash, bone fragments, a national media frenzy, and a man who claimed he was only making soap.

Join host Alexander Lawson as he reconstructs the night Louisa disappeared, the gruesome evidence recovered from the factory, the two dramatic trials, and the lasting legend of the man who tried to erase his wife completely.

This is the true story of Adolph Luetgert and the vat that couldn’t keep its secret.

In the early hours of April 10, 1836, smoke filled a second-floor room at 41 Thomas Street in lower Manhattan. Inside, a 22-year-old woman named Helen Jewett lay dead in her bed—three deep hatchet wounds to the head, her body partially burned by a fire that had been deliberately set.

Helen was one of New York’s most exclusive courtesans. The last man known to be with her that night was a 19-year-old dry-goods clerk using the alias Frank Rivers. Within hours he was arrested. Within weeks his trial became a national sensation.

This is the story of a brutal murder, a sensational trial, a shocking acquittal, and the case that helped invent American true-crime journalism. Host Alexander Lawson reconstructs the night of the crime, the turbulent relationship at its center, the evidence that pointed one way, and the justice system that went another.

September 11, 1857. A wagon train of Arkansas emigrants rests in a quiet Utah valley, believing they have finally found safety. Under a white flag of truce they lay down their weapons… and walk straight into one of the darkest massacres in American history.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson recounts the Mountain Meadows Massacre—the calculated slaughter of roughly 120 men, women, and children by local Mormon militia and their allies. Only seventeen of the youngest children were spared.

What began as a five-day siege ended in a carefully planned betrayal. Discover how fear, isolation, and wartime hysteria turned settlers against settlers, and why only one man ever paid the ultimate price for the crime.

A story of false promises, covered-up bloodshed, and a meadow that still carries the weight of what happened there.

October 26, 1881. Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Four lawmen walk into a narrow vacant lot behind the O.K. Corral. Thirty seconds and nearly thirty shots later, three men are dying in the dirt.

I’m Alexander Lawson, and this is a true crime podcast. Today we strip away the Hollywood myth of the most famous shootout in the American West. No high-noon duel. No clean heroes in white hats. Just black-powder smoke, conflicting witnesses, political rivalries, and a bloody thirty seconds that still divides historians more than 140 years later.

Who really fired first? Was Tom McLaury even armed? And after the gunsmoke cleared, why did the real violence only begin?

Join me as we dig into the messy truth behind the legend—and ask whether the real crime was the shooting itself, or the story we’ve been told ever since.

On a rainy night in Chicago, May 4, 1886, a homemade dynamite bomb exploded in a crowd of police at a workers’ rally. Seven officers died. At least four civilians were killed. The bomber vanished into the dark—and was never identified.

What followed was a nationwide panic, a rushed trial of eight anarchists, four hangings, one suicide in a jail cell, and a legacy that still divides historians.

Host Alexander Lawson digs into the true crime at the heart of the Haymarket Affair: the unsolved bombing, the controversial convictions, and the question that refuses to die—who really threw the bomb?

Listen if you love unsolved historical crimes, courtroom injustice, and stories that changed America forever.

On April 28, 1881, a 21-year-old outlaw sentenced to hang slipped his handcuffs, killed two deputies, and rode out of Lincoln, New Mexico still wearing leg irons. His name was Henry McCarty—better known as Billy the Kid.

In this episode, Alexander Lawson traces the real crimes behind the myth: the first killing in an Arizona saloon, the bloody Lincoln County War, the ambush of Sheriff Brady, the famous escape, and the final shot fired by Pat Garrett in the dark. Separating legend from ledger, we examine how many men Billy the Kid actually killed—and how a teenage orphan became the most enduring outlaw of the American West.

Guests walked into a charming hotel during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair… and never walked out.

H.H. Holmes designed every room, every hallway, and every gas line for one purpose: murder. Secret passages. Acid vats. A crematory in the basement. Dozens of victims. And he almost got away with it.

In this episode of A True Crime Podcast, Alexander Lawson takes you inside America’s first documented serial killer’s deadly masterpiece—the Murder Castle.

Press play… if you dare.