Criminal

By Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture

What's Criminal about?

Criminal is the first of its kind. A show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

4.7

28,806 ratings

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LAST EPISODE

Episode 246: The Kit

12.01.2023

In the early 1970s, Marty Goddard was worried about the high rates of sexual assault in Chicago. She learned from police that evidence from sexual assault cases often wasn’t collected properly — or at all. “They said, ‘We don’t get ...

Criminal episodes:

12.01.2023 Episode 246: The Kit In the early 1970s, Marty Goddard was worried about the high rates of sexual assault in Chicago. She learned from police that evidence from sexual assault cases often wasn’t collected properly — or at all. “They said, ‘We don’t get ...
11.24.2023 Episode 245: Masterpiece In the 1950s poodles were all the rage — one tabloid even reported that when a girl “makes the big time she traditionally acquires 3 things — minks, gems, and a poodle.” But one poodle in particular put the breed ...
11.17.2023 Episode 244: Fine Art and Meat Cleavers In 1913, museums and art galleries in London received a memo from the police. It told them to be careful when they let in visitors – women might try to attack the art. Criminal is going back on tour in ...
11.10.2023 Episode 243: The Liverpool Exchange In the 1980s, Liverpool was having what journalists called a heroin epidemic. The chairman of a local organization where people would go for drug counseling told a reporter, “We are on the brink of complete catastrophe.” Then a small group ...
11.03.2023 Episode 242: Interrogation Room After a 17-hour-long interrogation, a woman confesses to a murder. But then, evidence surfaces proving that she can’t have actually done it – and that it was a false confession. Today, we’re looking at what goes on in an interrogation ...
10.27.2023 Episode 241: How to Sell a Haunted House In 1989, Helen Ackley decided to sell her old Victorian house in Nyack, New York. It didn’t go as planned. The house became the center of a case that’s referred to as “The Ghostbusters ruling.” This episode was originally released ...
10.20.2023 Episode 240: The Spy Jack Barsky was a college student in 1970 when the KGB knocked on the door of his dorm room to inquire about his plans after college. “I was told to broaden my knowledge of culture, of literature, of music, to ...
10.13.2023 Episode 239: Chesa, Kathy, and David Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were once members of the radical activist group the Weather Underground. In 1981, they helped members of the Black Liberation Army rob a Brink’s armored car at the Nanuet National Bank. Their son, Chesa Boudin, ...
10.11.2023 Jiminy Crickets Here's a little preview of what we’re making over on Criminal Plus! We’re having a lot of fun making these bonus episodes. In each one, Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohrer and I take your questions and talk about what’s happening behind ...
10.06.2023 Episode 238: The Confession, Part 2 This episode continues where Episode 237 leaves off. 17 years after he shot a man, Trevell Coleman walked into a police station and tried to turn himself in. He’d never been a suspect in the case, and had kept the ...
09.29.2023 Episode 237: The Confession, Part 1 Trevell Coleman signed with Bad Boy Records in 1998. He made it onto the Billboard charts, and was called “the latest protege of rap’s royal family.” But there was something from his past he hadn’t told anyone about – and ...
09.28.2023 Phoebe vs. Oyster We’re coming up on 10 years of Criminal. In the past decade, we've loved taking the show all over the country - including the time I ate a bad oyster in San Francisco and almost didn't make it on stage. ...
09.22.2023 Episode 236: Under the Crabapple Tree On September 16, 1922, a reverend and a choir singer were found dead under a tree. Between their bodies was a stack of love letters. When police began investigating the murders, tabloid reporters did too, and rumors about the case ...
09.15.2023 Episode 235: The Newsroom Jeff German was a reporter for over 40 years in Las Vegas. He spent his life covering the mafia, corruption, and murder. In 2022, he was found killed outside his home. His colleagues at the Las Vegas Review-Journal tried to ...
09.08.2023 Episode 234: The Séances In 1916, two British soldiers were held captive in a remote prisoner-of-war camp. People said the camp was escape-proof. One day, one of the soldiers received a postcard from his aunt in England, suggesting they try experimenting with a Ouija ...
08.25.2023 Episode 233: Iceland Noir Iceland is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, but people there love to read about crime. Even the Prime Minister of Iceland has written a crime novel. We stopped by her office to ask why. Prime Minister ...
08.21.2023 The Other Phoebe Judge A preview of what we’re making over on Criminal Plus! Hear me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohrer taking your questions, telling stories, and talking with other producers and special guests. We’re having a lot of fun making these bonus episodes. ...
08.18.2023 Episode 232: Wolf 10 In April of 1995, wildlife biologists flew small airplanes over Yellowstone National Park, looking for two missing wolves. “They’re just gone. And that’s implausible because wolves don’t just disappear.” Thomas McNamee’s book is The Killing of Wolf Number Ten. This ...
08.11.2023 Episode 231: The Nurse When Amy Loughren started working as a nurse at Somerset Medical Center, she did everything she could to hide the fact that she had a heart condition. And then, another nurse named Charles Cullen discovered Amy’s secret. He told her ...
08.04.2023 Episode 230: The Perfectionists A story about religion, sex, an assassination, and silverware. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to ...
07.28.2023 Episode 229: A Glamour and a Mystery In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances Griffiths. It was the first photograph she’d ever taken — and it became the source of a mystery that lasted for most of the ...
07.21.2023 Episode 228: Roll of the Dice The UNABOM investigation was one of the longest manhunts in American history - it lasted for 18 years starting in 1978. Before the FBI started investigating Ted Kaczynski, they looked into a number of suspects, including a group of friends ...
07.14.2023 Episode 227: The Bodies in the Bog In the summer of 1984, a local newspaper reporter outside of Manchester, England, got a tip from the police. A foot had been found in a nearby bog. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional ...
07.07.2023 Episode 226: The Prison Newspaper A little over sixty years ago, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. Today, there are 26. We visit Nash Correctional Institution in North Carolina to meet Phillip Vance Smith, II, the editor of The Nash ...
06.30.2023 Episode 225: The Impersonator Mary Jones could sing just like Aretha Franklin. One night, a James Brown impersonator saw her perform at a Motown tribute show - and thought he could take her on tour and trick audiences into believing she was the real ...
06.23.2023 Episode 224: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and Cleveland’s Torso Murderer In 1934, a man collecting driftwood along the Lake Erie shore found a human torso on the beach. No one could figure out what had happened. Over the next several years, more bodies were discovered. Eventually, a coroner assembled something ...
06.16.2023 Episode 223: The Unknown Woman When a toymaker and a doctor teamed up to make the world’s first CPR doll, they decided to make the doll’s face look like one specific woman – a woman who they thought had drowned. People call her l’Inconnue de ...
06.09.2023 Episode 222: The Paramedics As recently as 1965, if you had a medical emergency, the people who showed up at your door would be volunteer firefighters, police officers, or undertakers with a hearse. Today, the story of how a group of Black men from ...
06.02.2023 Episode 221: Lavender Scare Helen James grew up in a military family — her great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, her father in WWI, and her uncles in WWII. So when she enlisted in 1952, she felt like she belonged. Shortly after, she realized ...
05.26.2023 Episode 220: Shipwrecked There’s an old sailors’ saying about the ocean at the southernmost part of the world — “below 40 degrees latitude, there is no law; below 50 degrees, there is no God.” David Grann brings us the story of what happened ...
05.19.2023 Episode 219: A Mysterious Bank In the late 1870s, a woman named Sarah Howe started a bank just for single women called the Ladies’ Deposit Company. She asked new customers to tell their friends about the bank rather than advertising in newspapers, and she promised ...
05.12.2023 Episode 218: "Did we get it right?" “What we ask jurors to do is to just absorb all this trauma and just to keep on absorbing it and not process it with anyone. Just hold it in and hold it in and hold it in.” A look ...
05.05.2023 Episode 217: The Juror In 2008, Sven Berger was chosen to serve on the jury for a murder trial. He says the sentence that he and his fellow jurors handed down “felt like a mistake right away.” Sven talked about what happened next on ...
04.28.2023 Episode 216: The Magdalene Laundries When she was 14 years old, Elizabeth Coppin was sent to a place called Peacock Lane in Cork, Ireland. It was a laundry business run by a Catholic order of nuns. Elizabeth noticed bars on its windows. Say hello on ...
04.21.2023 Episode 215: The Somerton Man In 1948, two horse jockeys were riding on a beach in Australia when they came across a man lying in the sand. There was a partially smoked cigarette resting on his jacket. He was well dressed, with a striped tie ...
04.14.2023 Episode 214: Palace of Justice – A Conversation with Benjamin Ferencz When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. It's been called the largest murder trial in history, with more than one million victims. There were 22 defendants, each of them high-ranking members of Nazi Germany’s ...
04.07.2023 Episode 213: The Most Wonderful Terrible Person When Debra Miller woke up on October 8th, 1964, she was expecting to see a black Volkswagen in her family’s driveway. Instead, she saw a police car. “And I knew my father was dead.” Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and ...
03.24.2023 Episode 212: The Fasting Cure In 1911, two sisters traveled to Seattle to meet a "doctor" named Linda Hazzard. The sisters didn’t seem very sick, but when they arrived, Dr. Hazzard told them they didn’t have a moment to lose – they needed to begin ...
03.17.2023 Episode 211: Crazy Eddie In the 1980s, the discount electronics chain store Crazy Eddie was so famous, its commercials were parodied on "Saturday Night Live." So when the family business began selling its company shares on Wall Street — making millions — nobody questioned ...
03.10.2023 Episode 210: Out of the Box In 1964, one of the best javelin throwers in Australia traveled to England to see if he could qualify for the Olympics. But, because of an injury, he didn’t make the team - and he couldn’t afford a plane ticket ...
03.03.2023 Episode 209: An Impossible Crime, Part 2 This episode continues where Episode 208 leaves off. In 2001, Daniel Taylor wrote a letter from prison to a reporter at the Chicago Tribune named Steve Mills. Steve Mills spent months investigating before publishing a detailed examination of Daniel’s case ...
02.24.2023 Episode 208: An Impossible Crime Daniel Taylor was 17 years old when he was arrested for a 1992 double homicide in Chicago. But Daniel had an alibi. He was in jail at the time of the murders. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign ...
02.17.2023 Episode 207: Novak v. City of Parma In 2016, a man named Anthony Novak created a parody Facebook page of his local police department. "I just thought, 'That would be funny.'" About a month later, he was arrested. Novak is now petitioning the Supreme Court, and The ...
02.03.2023 Episode 206: The Feather Lady On October 4, 1960, Eastern Airlines Flight 375 took off from Boston’s Logan airport, and then, two minutes later, it crashed. 62 people died. Investigators couldn't figure out what had happened, and they decided to ask a scientist working at ...
01.20.2023 Episode 205: Sunset Mesa Debbie Schum waited a long time to receive the cremated ashes of her friend, LoraLee Johnson. When she did, she felt relieved to finally take them home with her. But then, she got a call from the FBI. We first ...
01.06.2023 Episode 204: They Came for the Judges When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August of 2021, they unlocked the prisons and freed prisoners, some of whom sought revenge on the women judges who convicted them. We speak with some of the judges in today’s episode. ...
12.16.2022 Episode 203: Dog in the Bed, Cat in the Bag, Camel on the Golf Course Stories of animals really going for it. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: Apple.co/CriminalShow. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We ...
12.02.2022 Episode 202: Across the Atlantic In February of 1910, members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London received a strange letter from their treasurer – a singer who went by the name Belle Elmore. It said that she suddenly had to travel to the ...
11.18.2022 Episode 201: The Tylenol Murders On September 29, 1982, Adam Janus suddenly collapsed in his home outside of Chicago. He died within hours. Later that same day, in the same house, his brother also collapsed — then his sister-in-law. All three of them had been ...
11.04.2022 Episode 200: We Interrupt This Program On a Saturday night, in February 1949, the music programming on one of the most popular radio stations in Quito, Ecuador, was interrupted with an urgent news bulletin: strange objects in the sky that looked like large disks with bright ...

Older episodes

Criminal

What's Criminal about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Criminal episodes:

Episode 246: The Kit

Episode 245: Masterpiece

Episode 244: Fine Art and Meat Cleavers

Episode 243: The Liverpool Exchange

Episode 242: Interrogation Room

Episode 241: How to Sell a Haunted House

Episode 240: The Spy

Episode 239: Chesa, Kathy, and David

Jiminy Crickets

Episode 238: The Confession, Part 2

Episode 237: The Confession, Part 1

Phoebe vs. Oyster

Episode 236: Under the Crabapple Tree

Episode 235: The Newsroom

Episode 234: The Séances

Episode 233: Iceland Noir

The Other Phoebe Judge

Episode 232: Wolf 10

Episode 231: The Nurse

Episode 230: The Perfectionists

Episode 229: A Glamour and a Mystery

Episode 228: Roll of the Dice

Episode 227: The Bodies in the Bog

Episode 226: The Prison Newspaper

Episode 225: The Impersonator

Episode 224: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and Cleveland’s Torso Murderer

Episode 223: The Unknown Woman

Episode 222: The Paramedics

Episode 221: Lavender Scare

Episode 220: Shipwrecked

Episode 219: A Mysterious Bank

Episode 218: "Did we get it right?"

Episode 217: The Juror

Episode 216: The Magdalene Laundries

Episode 215: The Somerton Man

Episode 214: Palace of Justice – A Conversation with Benjamin Ferencz

Episode 213: The Most Wonderful Terrible Person

Episode 212: The Fasting Cure

Episode 211: Crazy Eddie

Episode 210: Out of the Box

Episode 209: An Impossible Crime, Part 2

Episode 208: An Impossible Crime

Episode 207: Novak v. City of Parma

Episode 206: The Feather Lady

Episode 205: Sunset Mesa

Episode 204: They Came for the Judges

Episode 203: Dog in the Bed, Cat in the Bag, Camel on the Golf Course

Episode 202: Across the Atlantic

Episode 201: The Tylenol Murders

Episode 200: We Interrupt This Program

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