The Travels of Clara Elizabeth Skarin

Episode 204 tells the interesting tale of a young woman who shoots her aged benefactor and loots his trunk for a poke full of gold, then goes on a spending spree to update her wardrobe. Was it self-defense (as she would claim eight months later when police finally catch up with her)? Or premeditated? That's the question.

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Pulp Nonfiction
A celebration of the pioneers of true crime

In a remote part of Florida in the 1920s, a brother and sister in business together running a curio shop and gas station are found brutally murdered. Was it a robbery gone awry? Or were there more sinister forces at work? Detectives on the case soon dig up some telling secrets.

• Adapted from True Detective, v. 43, no. 2, May 1945.

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More Prison Breaks!

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A Crossing Guard Confesses

Episode 150 is the brutal tale of one of the most fiendish murders on record in California (or anywhere else for that matter) that a dogged prosecutor pins on the town’s simple-crossing guard. The man confesses four times, then retracts it at the trial. I think maybe they got the wrong maniac. What do you think?

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More episodes about kidnappings

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Baby Irene & Her Two Mothers

Episode 208 seems to start out like a murder case: An elderly man marries a woman 40 years younger and suddenly dies three months later under suspicious circumstances. But it turns out to be something much more complicated-even an international incident!-the macguffin being a tiny baby girl. The final decision on this case is dramatically made by the famous Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, who (incidentally) was born right down the road from me.

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More Courtroom Shenanigans

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Pregnant Church Worker Found Dead In Harvey’s Lake

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If the tropes in Episode 275 sound a bit like Episode 96, “The Body In Big Moose Lake,” the familiarity was not lost on the people of the day, either. The 1906 murder of Grace Brown in Big Moose Lake inspired novelist Theodore Dreiser to write “An American Tragedy,” which became an instant classic when it was published in 1925. The story you are about to hear struck such a familiar chord that the press made many comparisons and headlines described the murder of Freda McKechnie and the trial of Bobby Edwards in the same terms. Theodore Dreiser was called upon by the New York Post to cover the trial, and he makes a brief appearance in our story when he receives an admonition from the bench.

Culled from the historic pages of the Wilkes-Barre Record, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Wilkes-Barre Evening News and other newspapers of the era.

More tales of Capital Crimes

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'Billy' Brown's Tragic Affair 

Episode 96 is a tragic story of young love gone bad. Real bad. So bad, in fact, that it ended with the body of a young girl floating in an up-state New York lake one summer day in 1906. The man she came there went missing, but not for long. Was it a simple accident as Chester Gillette would claim, or a brutal, cold-blooded murder on a honeymoon trip? The answer may be in the tear-stained letters she wrote to him.

Theme music by Dave Sams. Incidental music by Chuck Wiggins, 

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The Kidnapping And Murder of Betty Schnaidt

Episode 203 is dedicated to listener Charlene Hall, who not only requested a story about a certain brutal kidnappng and murder in her hometown, but also sent me her personal collection of clippings to form the basis for this story. Turns out Charlotte's hometown murder was the culmination of a summer of terror and a cross-country kidnapping spree.

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More stories of Serial Killers



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Nagging Mother Killed In Her Own Kitchen 

Episode 151 is the twisted little tale of a family quarrel gone extreme. There are a couple of different explanations as to how things got so heated on that July afternoon in 1936, but my take is that four beers in a 110-pound girl coming home to a chronically nagging mother with a hatchet nearby... Yeah, whether it started over dinner or a kiss or something else, that’s not gonna end well.

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More Axe Murders

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A Bad Year For The Crabbs

Episode 274 tells the tragic story of the Crabb family of Delavan, Illinois. One minute, they were well-respected bankers, pillars of the community. But the aftermath of a tragic death in the family mansion led to charges of manslaughter, perjury, and embezzlement, and another untimely death.

Culled from the historic pages of the Bloomington, Illinois, Pantagraph and other newspapers of the era.

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More Falls From Grace

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The Kansas City Typhoid Murders

Episode 205 tells the story of a dark shadow that fell over Kansas City when the death of philanthropist Thomas H. Swope resulted in a murder trial, the defendant a member of his own family. Did Dr. Hyde kill the Colonel? And infect the whole family with typhoid, too? Or is he just the victim of a lingering family grudge? Includes an interesting sidebar about a runaway juror. 

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More Courtroom Shenanigans

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