Murd Up Podcast

The Ku Klux Klan was birthed in 1865 without a moment’s hesitation when the Civil War ended but thanks to the first two Republican Presidents, laws were put in place to help keep the group at bay.

However, a resurgence occurred around 1915, leading to a rumored 4 to 5 million men being Klansmen by the 1920s. This group is what we know now as the KKK-being the first to don hoods and burn crosses.

Throughout the next sixty years, the KKK created a violent atmosphere around the United States, but specifically in the South with a general focus on Alabama. Many bombings and murders occurred during this time, with many thinking that things calmed down after the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 70s.

However, the one and only KKK member to be convicted in the death of a black individual happened in the 1980s, which many consider to be the “last lynching” to take place in the United States.

Darrell Abbott and his brother Vinnie Paul were sons of a musical family, where learning how to pay an instrument was encouraged. By the time both were teenagers, they were already in a successful band which recorded their first album when Darrell was 16.

Soon the band, Pantera, found regional success and later commercial success, with Darrell being considered one of the greatest guitarists in history and a discography that covers several decades and reflects the ever changing style of the group.

But around the early 2000s, Pantera ended and the brothers decided to form a new band and start the process all over again, playing in nightclubs across the country. Until one show in Ohio, which changed things forever for the fans of the brothers and for Darrell.

Rachel Hoffman, Treasure Hilliard & Andrew Sadek are three of many “police informants”, who were pressured into accepting the offer instead of facing a long stint in prison, over small drug charges for marijuana use. Currently, there are over 100,000 informants working off charges for the police in America working throughout all lines of law enforcement.

But what happens when the police do not secure the operation, train the individuals well or at all, and put them in situations that are well beyond their caliber of crime?

How did this start and why? And is it really that helpful? Because statically speaking, it doesn’t. Neither do no-knock raids, executed for faked testimony or misinformation, like in the deaths of Dennis Tuttle & Rhoegona Nicholas or Kathryn Johnson. Or Breonna Taylor.

Waynesboro, Virginia is a small community that was established after a passage through the Blue Ridge Mountains allowed travelers to settle the area, around the early 1800s.

The community is still small now, with a likelihood of a violent crime happening to you being 1 and 500.

But Waynesboro is also home to a 20-year cold case that was dangerously close to never being solved and the outcome was less than what most would determine to be justice.

Tulsa, Oklahoma has a long history of land seizing, racial tension and slavery, amongst being one of the most beautiful cities in the United States now. In the 1830s, the area was Indian Territory, and after the Civil War a small section of the town was dedicated to the black community of freed citizens, as the white citizens of Tulsa put up many rules to keep the more affluent areas of the city, segregated.

Even when the town boomed, thanks to oil, and other affluent black men arrived in the area, they too were restricted to Greenwood. So they took their wealth and invested it into the small black-own businesses operating with the small area of the town they were allowed to have, and soon the community of Greenwood flourished with all individuals gaining individual wealth.

Until Memorial Day in 1921, when a small interaction that is almost not even worth nothing, led to a white mob completely destroying Greenwood, without a single consequence.

Tulsa, Oklahoma has a long history of land seizing, racial tension and slavery, amongst being one of the most beautiful cities in the United States now. In the 1830s, the area was Indian Territory, and after the Civil War a small section of the town was dedicated to the black community of freed citizens, as the white citizens of Tulsa put up many rules to keep the more affluent areas of the city, segregated.

Even when the town boomed, thanks to oil, and other affluent black men arrived in the area, they too were restricted to Greenwood. So they took their wealth and invested it into the small black-own businesses operating with the small area of the town they were allowed to have, and soon the community of Greenwood flourished with all individuals gaining individual wealth.

Until Memorial Day in 1921, when a small interaction that is almost not even worth nothing, led to a white mob completely destroying Greenwood, without a single consequence.

Fred Hampton was from Chicago, Illinois, and by the time he was a youth in school, he was a fan of Malcolm-X, Dr. King and many others, and was setting up community programs and leading the youth chapter of the NAACP.

By the time he was an adult, Fred had seen multiple daily examples of violence against the black community and police brutality and he had joined and was rising through the ranks of the Black Panthers Party. Quickly, he got on the FBI’s radar and eventually they decided that Fred was “trouble”, as he was speaking out against all the injustices in America.

That’s when the Chicago PD conducted a raid on Fred’s apartment, on the suspicion of illegal weapons. Instead of searching the house, they committed murder.

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, Illinois who went to visit family in Money, Mississippi in 1955. Within seven days of arriving, Emmett was beaten and murdered.

Brigham Young took over leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, when Joseph Smith died in the 1840s and ran with it until his death almost thirty years later. In that time, he married numerous women and had multiple children, including John, who was his favorite child. John was everything Brigham was and many things he wasn’t, like spoiled, lazy, unmotivated and entitled.

John passed this on to his son, William, who continued to disgrace the family name and eventually left the Salt Lake City area for good, due to a morphine addiction. By 1902, he had drifted around much of the country and ended up in New York City where his father was living.

When John was gone on business trips, William would use his place to entertain lady friends...and one night things turned deadly and ended with a body being dumped in Jersey City.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were both highly intelligent and rich young men, growing up in the 1920s. Both graduated high school and college at very young ages and by 1924, they were bored with everyone but themselves and the thought that they were supermen: superior beings who are above laws and rules set in place to “keep the unimportant” in line.

To test this theory, they decide to plan the perfect crime to prove that they were indeed supermen. That crime...murder.