On a suffocating August morning in 1892, two people were killed inside a locked house in Fall River, Massachusetts.

No forced entry.
No robbery.
No confession.

The only suspect was their daughter, Lizzie Borden — a churchgoing, unmarried woman who stood to inherit her father’s fortune. She was arrested, tried, and acquitted.

But acquittal is not the same as certainty.

In this episode of Dead State: Massachusetts, we examine the pressure inside the Borden household — inheritance tension, Victorian gender roles, economic dependence, and the psychology of rupture versus calculation.

Did Lizzie plan it?
Did she snap?
Or did history decide her guilt long before the jury did?

The house is still standing.

The question never left.

If this episode unsettled you, follow the show, leave a rating, and share it with someone who still thinks history is clean and resolved.

Your listens, shares, and reviews help keep independent historical storytelling alive.

Subscribe so you don’t miss the next case.

This episode discusses historical violence and may contain descriptions that some listeners find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

All individuals are discussed in historical context. Lizzie Borden was acquitted in a court of law, and no definitive perpetrator was legally established.

This program explores historical evidence, cultural context, and competing interpretations without asserting a legal verdict.

Primary & Historical Records:

• Trial transcript of The Commonwealth v. Lizzie Borden (1893)

• Fall River Police reports (1892)

• Medical testimony from Dr. Seabury Bowen and others

Books & Scholarly Works:

• Pearson, Edmund Lester. The Trial of Lizzie Borden

• Kent, David. Forty Whacks: New Evidence in the Life and Legend of Lizzie Borden

• Spiering, Frank. Lizzie

• Miller, Sarah. The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century

Archival Materials:

• Fall River Historical Society archives

• Contemporary newspaper coverage (Boston Globe, New York Times, 1892–1893)

In 1836, the brutal murder of Helen Jewett shocked New York City—and changed how crime was covered in America forever.

Jewett was found killed inside a boarding house, struck with a hatchet and left in a deliberately set fire. Suspicion quickly centered on Richard Robinson, a young, educated man known to her. The evidence appeared strong. The outcome did not.

As newspapers competed for readers, the case unfolded in real time, transforming private violence into public spectacle. The trial exposed how reputation, perception, and doubt could outweigh facts—leaving a murder unresolved and a city unsettled.

This episode explores the crime, the trial, and why Helen Jewett’s death became the prototype for modern true crime—quiet, intimate violence that never fully closes.

If this episode stayed with you, follow Deadly Truths on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Rating and sharing the show helps keep these forgotten stories from disappearing again.

New episodes of Dead City drop weekly.

This episode contains descriptions of real violence and discusses historical events that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

This episode examines historical records and contemporary reporting. Some details remain disputed, and conclusions are based on available evidence rather than definitive proof.

• Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett

• Contemporary coverage from The New York Herald and The Sun (1836)

• Court transcripts and trial summaries, New York Supreme Court

• New York City boarding house and Five Points historical records

• Secondary analysis on early American crime reporting and the penny press

Before the Mafia learned how to hide violence inside systems, American cities practiced it in public.

This episode examines the life and death of William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, a figure often mythologized by film but rarely understood for what he truly was: a political enforcer whose brutality was tolerated — even celebrated — because it aligned with power.

Poole’s murder was not a random gang killing. It was a public political act. His influence shaped street warfare between the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, fueled nativist ideology, and revealed how violence gains legitimacy when institutions find it useful.

This is not a romantic gang story.
It’s a case study in how cities normalize brutality — and what happens when they do.

This is Dead City: New York.

If you value history without mythology — follow Deadly Truths, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who still believes violence only lives on the margins.

Your support keeps independent, research-driven storytelling alive.

Disclaimer

This episode is based on historical records, contemporary reporting, and established scholarship.
Psychological analysis is interpretive and non-diagnostic, offered to understand behavior — not excuse it.

Some historical accounts vary by source; where interpretations differ, context is provided rather than speculation.

Sources & References

• Asbury, H. The Gangs of New York
• Anbinder, T. Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood
• New York Times archives (1850s–1860s)
• New York municipal court and inquest records
• Contemporary political reporting on nativist movements and Tammany Hall
• Scholarly analysis of pre-Mafia urban violence and political enforcement

In the mid-1800s, New York called it a riot.
The newspapers called it disorder.
But what happened in Five Points was something far more deliberate.

This episode of Deadly Truths with Becca reexamines the Dead Rabbits—not as the violent gang popular culture remembers, but as a group of young Irish immigrants who became targets in a city that had already decided their lives were expendable.

Through a cinematic retelling of murder, the 1857 Dead Rabbits Riot, and the political forces that shaped Five Points, we trace how violence was normalized through nativist street gangs, police indifference, and political machines like Tammany Hall. We separate myth from history, dismantle Gangs of New York, and place the Dead Rabbits within a longer pattern of how American cities turn poverty and immigration into permission for bloodshed.

This is not a story about chaos.
It’s a story about pressure.
And who is allowed to die when that pressure breaks.

If this episode changed how you think about what a “riot” really is, share it.

Follow Deadly Truths with Becca on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube for more episodes of Dead City, where we examine how violence is created, justified, and remembered.

Ratings, reviews, and shares help keep these stories visible—especially the ones history worked very hard to bury.

DISCLAIMER

This episode discusses historical violence, death, and systemic abuse.
Descriptions are based on documented accounts from newspapers, court records, and historical scholarship. Where sources conflict or records are incomplete, that uncertainty is noted.

This episode is intended for educational and historical analysis, not glorification of violence or gangs.

RESOURCES / SOURCES

Primary and secondary sources for this episode include:

• Contemporary New York newspaper archives (1840s–1850s), including The New York Times, New York Tribune, and The Herald

• Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum

• Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (used critically and cross-checked)

• New York Municipal Archives (police, court, and inquest records)

• Library of Congress historical collections

• Academic research on nativism, political machines, and 19th-century urban policing

Understanding the past doesn’t require defending it.
Context explains behavior—but it doesn’t absolve power.

And remember—
the past isn’t dead.
It’s just waiting for permission to repeat itself.

🔥 Black desire was never the problem — visibility was.

Hollywood likes to sell itself as progressive, but for decades it enforced an unspoken rule: Black women could be admired, but they could not be openly desired without consequence.
This episode examines how that line was drawn — and defended — through the lives of Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Eartha Kitt.

From the Production Code and Southern box office pressure to white male sexual panic and containment-by-design, this isn’t a story about scandal. It’s a story about power, money, and who paid the price when desire became impossible to ignore.

🎬 No nostalgia.
📜 No myths.
🔥 Just the system — exposed.

🎧 If this episode made you rethink Old Hollywood, follow the show, rate it, and share it with someone who still believes the industry led social change.
📌 New episodes drop regularly — subscribe so you don’t miss what history tried to soften.

⚠️ This episode discusses racism, censorship, historical discrimination, and industry exploitation.
Some themes may be difficult or uncomfortable. Listener discretion is advised.

📚 Further Reading & Viewing

• Hollywood Black — Donald Bogle

• Black Women in Hollywood — Dr. Mia Mask

• The Hays Code (Motion Picture Production Code, 1930–1968)

• Loving v. Virginia (1967) — U.S. Supreme Court

• Interviews and archival material from Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Eartha Kitt

🧠 Mental Health & Support

• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): nami.org

• Mental Health America: mhanational.org

After Marilyn Monroe became too powerful to control, Hollywood didn’t adapt — it duplicated.
This episode examines the studio system’s quiet panic and the women it put on the assembly line in Marilyn’s shadow: Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, Sheree North, and Diana Dors.

This isn’t a nostalgia piece or a tribute.
It’s a structural autopsy of how mid-century Hollywood treated women as templates — rewarding sex appeal, punishing ambition, and discarding complexity the moment it became inconvenient.

We trace how each woman was shaped, marketed, pushed past her limits, and ultimately blamed for surviving — or not surviving — the role she was never allowed to outgrow.

Different women. Same machine.
And a pattern that still hasn’t disappeared.

This episode discusses historical exploitation, mental health struggles, substance use, and fatal accidents.
It is intended for educational and historical analysis, not sensationalism.

No clinical diagnoses are made.
All psychological discussion is contextual, based on documented behavior, contemporaneous reporting, and scholarly interpretation.

Listener discretion advised.

If you value historically grounded storytelling without myth-making, follow Deadly Truths on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Like, subscribe, and share — it directly supports independent research and long-form historical analysis.

New episodes weekly.

• Spoto, D. Marilyn Monroe: The Biography

• Banner, L. Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox

• Van Doren, M. Playing the Field: My Story

• Churchwell, S. The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe

• Photoplay, Life, and Variety archives (1950s–1960s)

• British Film Institute archives on Diana Dors

• TCM and AFI historical profiles

• Contemporary newspaper reporting via Newspapers.com and ProQuest

She was called one of the most beautiful women in film history — elegant, controlled, untouchable.

But behind the image, Gene Tierney was quietly unraveling.

This episode of Hollywood Is Dead examines Gene Tierney’s rise at the height of Old Hollywood, the catastrophic rubella exposure during pregnancy, the loss of her daughter, and the psychiatric treatments that followed — including insulin shock therapy and electroconvulsive therapy.

This is not gossip.
This is not myth.

It’s a documented look at how trauma, untreated mental illness, and an unforgiving studio system collided — and how Hollywood moved on while she was left to survive the aftermath.

🎧 Available on YouTube & Spotify
📚 Sources listed below

▶️ Call to Action

If you value fact-based history without glamour or excuses, subscribe to the channel and follow Hollywood Is Dead for more stories about the stars the system discarded.

👍 Like the video
📌 Subscribe for weekly episodes
💬 Comment below — did you know this part of her story?

⚠️ Disclaimer

This video discusses mental illness, psychiatric treatment, and historical medical practices that may be disturbing to some viewers.

This content is presented for educational and historical purposes only.
It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment recommendations.

Viewer discretion is advised.

🧠 Mental Health Resources

If this episode brings up personal concerns or distress, help is available:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.) — Call or text 988

• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) — nami.org

• Mental Health America — mhanational.org

If you are outside the U.S., please consult local mental health services in your country.

📚 References & Sources

• Tierney, G. (1979). Self-Portrait. New York: Wyden Books

• Spoto, D. (1995). Hollywood’s Women: The Great Stars. HarperCollins

• National Institute of Mental Health — Historical psychiatric treatments

• American Journal of Psychiatry — Insulin coma therapy and early somatic treatments

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

• Contemporary press coverage (1940s–1950s), The New York Times, Photoplay, Variety

In postwar Los Angeles, three women became entangled in one of the darkest chapters of American crime. Jean Spangler vanished without a body. Jeanne French was murdered and publicly shamed by the press. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, became a legend that swallowed every unsolved case around her.

In this episode of Dead City, we examine how and why Spangler and French were linked to the Black Dahlia case—not by evidence, but by fear, media sensationalism, and a justice system that failed women repeatedly. We strip away myth, trace the real timelines, and expose how Hollywood, the LAPD, and the press helped bury the truth.

This isn’t a conspiracy story.
It’s a story about patterns of violence—and why they were ignored.

Call to Action

If you care about forgotten victims, not just famous killers:

• Follow Deadly Truths with Becca

• Subscribe on YouTube and your podcast platform

• Share this episode to keep these names from disappearing again

New episodes explore the crimes history mythologized—and the people it erased.

Disclaimer

This episode discusses real crimes involving violence and death. Some details may be disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. All information is presented for historical and educational purposes. Where facts are disputed or unproven, that uncertainty is clearly stated.

Resources

• Los Angeles Times archives (1947–1949)

• FBI Black Dahlia case files (public summaries)

• LAPD historical homicide records

• John Gilmore, Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder

• Piu Eatwell, Black Dahlia, Red Rose

• California Department of Justice cold case documentation

Al Capone didn’t take Chicago alone.

He survived it.

Before the myth hardened, before the headlines and machine guns turned him into a symbol, three men stood in his way—each dangerous in a different way.

Dean O’Banion destabilized the entire system by breaking every agreement and weaponizing chaos.
Hymie Weiss came within seconds of killing Capone himself, using precision and strategy instead of spectacle.
Bugs Moran survived long enough to watch everyone else die—and lost everything anyway.

This episode isn’t about how Capone won.
It’s about how close he came to losing—and what it cost everyone involved.

In this episode of The Mob Is Dead, we break down:

• How O’Banion used manipulation, betrayal, and misdirection as power

• Why Hymie Weiss was the most capable threat Capone ever faced

• How Bugs Moran survived the war—and still ended up irrelevant

• Why violence-based systems eliminate intelligence, not reward it

• And how the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre became inevitable

This is organized crime without the mythology.
No heroes. No winners. Only different ways of losing.

If you want to go deeper into Al Capone’s ultimate downfall—his federal conviction, Alcatraz years, untreated syphilis, and psychological collapse—listen to my full Capone episodes on Deadly Truths with Becca, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Follow the show, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who wants history without the Hollywood filter. It’s the fastest way to support independent, research-driven storytelling.

RESOURCES & SOURCES

Chicago Tribune archives (1919–1931)

FBI historical files on Prohibition-era organized crime

U.S. Treasury Department records on organized crime enforcement

Court documents related to the Torrio shooting and Capone tax case

The Outfit by Gus Russo

Capone by Laurence Bergreen

American Mafia by Thomas Reppetto

Contemporary reporting from The New York Times and Associated Press

DISCLAIMER

This episode is based on historical records, court documents, contemporary journalism, and established scholarship.

Psychological analysis is interpretive, not diagnostic, and is presented to understand behavior and decision-making—not to excuse criminal actions or assign clinical labels.

This show does not glorify violence, organized crime, or its perpetrators. It examines how power operates when institutions fail—and why these systems ultimately consume themselves.

Al Capone didn’t rise because he was brilliant.
He rose because violence worked—and the system let it.

This episode dismantles the mythology surrounding Al Capone and traces how unchecked brutality, political corruption, and institutional silence allowed one man to dominate Chicago during Prohibition. From his early violence in New York to the gang war that consumed the city, this is not a legend of organized crime—it’s a case study in how fear becomes policy.

We examine Capone’s ascent, the murders that reshaped Chicago’s underworld, the collapse of restraint after Johnny Torrio’s exit, and the psychological profile of a man whose power depended entirely on intimidation. The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre didn’t make Capone untouchable—it made him impossible to ignore.

This is the story of how violence creates empires—and why those empires always implode.

If you want the rest of Capone’s story—the Alcatraz years, untreated syphilis, mental collapse, and how the most feared man in Chicago ended his life powerless and forgotten—you can hear that full breakdown on my podcast.

Search Deadly Truths with Becca on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

Follow, rate, and share if you value history without mythology.

This episode is intended for educational and historical analysis.
Descriptions of violence are discussed in context and not for sensationalism.
Psychological observations are interpretive and not clinical diagnoses.

Listener discretion is advised.

Primary and secondary sources consulted include:

• The Life and Times of Al Capone — Laurence Bergreen

• Capone: The Man and the Era — Laurence Bergreen

• FBI Vault: Al Capone Files

• Chicago Tribune archives (1919–1931)

• U.S. Department of the Treasury historical records

• Court transcripts from United States v. Capone (1931)

• Contemporary reporting from The New York Times and Associated Press