Criminalia

Herman Webster Mudgett of New Hampshire, better known by the alias H.H. Holmes, was responsible for anywhere from 20 to 200 killings before he was apprehended in 1894, and is known as one of America’s first serial killers. But ... not THE first. That title -– at least on record -- belongs to the Harpes: "Big" and "Little" Harpe, who killed at least 40 men, women, and children – and likely more. Be warned, this may be the most violent episode we have yet told.

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When the priest asked, "Are you penitent, my son?", Samuel Green, with the rope around his neck and standing at the gallows, said with a smirk, "If you wish it." On their best days, Samuel Green and William Ash were burglars, highway robbers, and counterfeiters. On their worst; violent murderers. This is the story of their criminal career.

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In the Ambush Museum in Gibson, Louisiana, hangs a copy of a poem written by a woman named Blanche Barrow, and it reads: "Across the fields of yesterday / She sometimes calls to me / A little girl just back from play / the girl I used to be / And yet she smiles so wistfully / once she has crept within I wonder if she hopes to see / the woman I might have been." For four months, Blanche found herself a member of the outlaw Barrow gang – along with the famously known, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The story of Bonnie and Clyde is woven into American lore; but there was more than one criminal in the Barrow family: Clyde's long-time outlaw older brother Marvin 'Buck' Barrow AND his reluctant-criminal ride-or-die wife, Blanche.

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'Pretty Boy' Flloyd. John Dillinger. The Barkers. A lot of well-known gangsters emerged in the 1920s and 1930s; all of them criminals known as 'public enemies' to the government, and highly sought after by authorities, as you can imagine. But lesser known are the hideouts these criminals used -- and the people who ran those illegal safe houses. This is the story of husband and wife, Herb and Esther Farmer, who ran such an establishment. 

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When Catherine Flannagan and her younger sister Margaret moved to Liverpool from Ireland in the late 1800s, they were among the tens of thousands of poverty-stricken Irish laborers and their families who left Ireland during the potato famine to find work in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. To make their money, Catherine and Margaret established and ran a boarding house. In short time, the house was filled to capacity with lodgers. But there was one problem: guests were dying in suspiciously similar circumstances.

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Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were – controversially – convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a security guard and a payroll clerk, during an armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Massachusetts. About a century has passed and experts -- and armchair experts, too! – continue to debate this case, but not whether they did or didn't do it. They continue to debate one very big thing: whether or not Sacco and Vanzetti received a fair trial. 

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Mary Blandy was desperate to marry, but none of her suitors met the stringent standards set by her father -- until she met William Cranstoun, son of a Scottish peer. But her engagement to him turned out to be her downfall; William was already married. When it was divulged, her father did not approve the engagement, but William "had a method of conciliating [her father's] esteem" -- and it involved feeding her father a 'love powder' to soften him up a bit. The love powder turned out to be arsenic, and Mary killed her father by administering it. Though she claimed she didn't know, there were clues she maybe did. The question remains: Was she a partner to this crime, or wasn't she?

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When Verne Sankey told his wife he and his gang were planning a kidnapping, he said, if “I don’t come back, don't identify my body.” Verne and his accomplice, Gordon Alcorn, were a pair of Depression-era outlaws whose successful high-profile kidnappings of Haskell Bohn, heir to Bohn Refrigeration, and millionaire Charles Boettcher II turned them into two of the most wanted criminals in the United States – in fact, their success inspired other gangsters to try kidnapping as a lucrative gig, and prompted FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to name Verne America's very first 'Public Enemy'.

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On January 9, 1990, a bank robber nicknamed the Bearded Bandit entered the First Nationwide Bank in Wilmette, Illinois, disguised with a false beard, a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and driving gloves. He carried a gun and police radio scanner, and threatened bank employees that he'd, ”blow their brains out.” While he collected from the vault, his wife prepared their getaway. The Ericksons, a husband-and-wife bank robbing duo, committed a series of armed robberies in the Chicago area in 1990 andd 1991. And when it ended, it was in a dramatic and desperate way. 

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A man walked into the Corn Exchange Bank at Elkton, South Dakota, on the afternoon of August 25, 1938, and announced, quote, “This is a holdup.” Bennie and Stella Dickson were Depression-era bank robbers and outlaws who successfully stole what authorities then estimated to be more than $50,000 over an eight-month period. They were tagged by the FBI as Public Enemies No. 1 and 2., and J. Edgar Hoover, who led the bureau at that time, compared them to other notorious criminals of the era including John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, “Babyface” Nelson, and “Pretty Boy” Floyd. That's quite a cast of crooks. But were they?

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