Crimes We Forgot

On November 16, 1930, school teacher Enid Marriott vanished after getting off a train in Wiggins, Colorado. Within days a search of the area started. But more than two months passed before her younger brother Roy, who was with a search party, spotted a white, stilled hand sticking up from the frozen water of an irrigation ditch, ending the mystery of where she went, but not the one of who murdered her.

For around 24 hours in October 1930, Alma Wilson McKinley was missing, kidnapped from the family home in Greenfield, Missouri. Her abductor, after his plans fell apart, let her go less than a day after taking her. Local authorities identified several suspects in the following months before landing on Aden Aven, who was already sitting in a jailcell in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

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Standing less than 5 feet and only 14 years old, orphan Claude Hankins would seem an unlikely candidate for California's notorious San Quentin prison. But in 1904, after Claude shot and killed a man who was physically, verbally and possibly sexually abusing him, Judge Eugene McDaniel turned down pleas from the defense council and the jury for the child to go to a reformatory and instead sentenced him to 16 years in the men's ward at the adult prison. Hear the full story of how Claude ended up there and what happened to him after he was paroled.

In February 1912, babies started dying at the Brooklyn Nursery & Infants Hospital. The nursing staff was quick to accuse Winifred Ankers, the hospital's cook and an unwed mother who's own child was a patient there, but as the woman's murder trial unfolded, the poor management of the facility came under scrutiny. By the time it was over, nine babies, all under a year in age and most orphans or abandoned by their parents, had died and the real cause remained more speculation than established fact.

On an August day in 1909, a woman and three men snatched a five-year-old girl from a home in Topeka, Kansas. It was at least the second time the child had been kidnapped, and would open the last chapter of a series of custody cases and actions going back to 1904, when the same little girl was a baby on display in the baby incubator exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

In this episode we explore this remarkable case that emanated from a landmark event from the beginning of the 20th century and hinged on questions of paternity and evokes fears of human trafficking.

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Cinematic Epic Emotional | EGLAIR by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

In the early 20th century, consensual sex between men was largely illegal, and for those serving in the U.S. Navy it meant prison, if they were caught. In this episode we follow the tragic lives of three former sailors after they leave San Quentin Prison, where they served multi-year sentences after being convicted of committing sodomy with a fellow sailor. These are the stories of Homer Baker, Sanford Kisner and Grover Roadarmel.

Theme music courtesy of:

Cinematic Epic Emotional | EGLAIR by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comCreative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Frank McDowell was considered brilliant by some of those who knew him, finishing high school at 16 before attending two renowned colleges, but his promised start soon turned dark. Before he reached the age of 20 he would be sent to the asylum, while his sisters and parents ended up in graves at Liberty Hill Cemetery, victims of either his greed or his delusions.

Theme music courtesy of:

Cinematic Epic Emotional | EGLAIR by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Premiering January 2, 2023, Crimes We Forgot is a new independent podcast that explores lesser known murders, kidnappings, robberies and other crimes from a century ago. Host Jeff Billington digs through public records and other archives to tell the story of the crime, and to find out what happened to those involved in the decades that followed.