YESTERDAY’S NEWS-

A reading of historical newspapers from the golden age of yellow journalism.

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The Trial and Travails of Norma Brighton Millen

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On Sunday, I will be presenting the final chapter of the Dillinger saga, which I recorded from the main stage of the Biograph Theater, where the scoundrel John Dillinger watched his last gangster picture. Today’s episode takes place around the same time that the Dillinger story began reaching its climax in the first half of 1934.

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It’s the story of a young girl, the daughter of a prominent minister and graduate of a fine finishing school, who fell into the wrong crowd and married a man who would be executed for the crime of the gang he was trying to build. The papers never said, but I can’t help but think the Millen-Faber Gang fancied themselves to be the Dillingers of the East Coast. The story grabbed my attention because of the way Norma Brighton Millen presented herself after her capture. Is she the innocent dupe as she proclaimed? Or was she using her pretty face and sophisticated air to disguise her inner bad girl and get off easy? I’d like to hear your thoughts, so leave me some comments on my Facebook page after you listen.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.truecrimehistorian.com/1934millen

YESTERDAY'S NEWSA reading from America’s historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism.

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Today I bring you the sad tale of a family massacre. This will be the first time I’ve reported on a murder/suicide, because you rarely get to hear about the drama that led up to the tragedy, because there’s no one left to tell the story. There are still a lot of unanswered--and over-answered--questions in this one, but I like how the reporter included the details of the family history and their daily lives into the narrative, although I do think they’ve put too much emphasis on the role of the man’s politics in his decision to commit this horrible act.

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The descriptions of the photographs and posters on the wall refer to Chicago’s Haymarket Riot of May 1886, a protest by radical labor organizers that went wild. Seven police and one civilian were killed by a bomb thrown that day, and seven men were given death sentences as a result, with four eventually hanged. That’s a good story in itself, and I’m adding it to the list of future episodes.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.trucrimehistorian.com/1896klaettke

YESTERDAY'S NEWSA reading from America's historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism.
Luke Brannon Thwarts a Lynching
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The Classic Village of Oxford, Ohio, got so riled up over a shooting in a local saloon, that they bust open the jails and drag the culprits to the local hanging tree. The tree had been  used once before, and if you go to my archives, you can hear about that tale in the episode two, "An Outrageous Murder in Oxford," in which the town got so outraged over the apparent murder of one of the town matrons that they hung a dead man. A decade later, another Oxford mob attempts another lynching, but it doesn’t really go any better for them, not when brave Deputy Luke Brannon swoops in just in the nick of time.
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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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EYE FOR AN EYEA special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring the American criminal justice system at its most extreme, inflicting the death penalty.

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Although this episode stands alone, it is something of a follow-up to "The Shocking Death of William Kemmler," which I published about two months ago. If you remember, that execution went so badly that many thought it was a failed experiment. Indeed, it took the state of New York nearly a year to perform a second electric chair execution, but it did so with a bang, putting four men to death on the same day, July 7, 1891.

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Will it work out any better? Listen and find out…

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.truecrimehistorian.com

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twitter: @trucrimehistory

PULP NONFICTIONA Reading from the Pioneers of True Crime

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Today’s story of an 1883 murder appeared in newspapers across the country in 1905 under the byline of Captain Patrick D. Tyrrell, who at that time had retired from a career as a detective in the United States Secret Service. His job was mainly to hunt down counterfeiters, but he achieved some fame when he foiled a plot to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln, a case I hope to take up in a future episode. He wrote this and other stories in a syndicated newspaper feature titled “Tales from the Secret Service”.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.truecrimehistorian.com

PULP NONFICTIONA reading from the pioneers of true crime.

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True crime history is not just about reviving the stories of America's scandals, scoundrels and scourges, but also about exploring the history of true crime as a genre.

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This episode is also a bonus sidebar to The Gangster Chronicles, a special edition of Yesterday's News focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression eras.

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On the first Sunday of each month, The Gangster Chronicles has been exploring newspaper accounts of John Dillinger’s fourteen month murderous rampage across middle America.

Episode Six, Dillinger at the Biograph, will be released June 5. In doing my homework for this episode, I came across a feature story by Jim Tully that was datelined July 21, 1934, but published on July 22, the very day that Dillinger would see his last movie.

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Jim Tully was a fairly well-known writer in the 1920s and ‘30s, but not for true crime. He wrote novels based on the hard-luck life of Irish immigrant like his parents and his nine-year stint as a young hobo riding America’s rails. He was one of the first freelance reporters to work the Hollywood beat and for a time served as secretary to Charlie Chaplin, who later sued Tully for writing an unflattering article about him.

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He was a large, soft-spoken man, but also a professional boxer, and a year before writing this article was himself the subject of a profile by the famed sportswriter Damon Runyon.

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On my website, www.truecrimehistorian.com, you can read what Hollywood columnist Walter Winchell had to say about Tully’s association with gangsters, because as it would happen, Jim Tully grew up in the factory towns of Northern Ohio and knew Charles Mackley as a teenager.

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Mackley, you may recall, was one of the ten escapees from the Michigan City Prison, involved in Dillinger’s delivery from the Lima jail, and captured in Tuscon. At the time of this article, Mackley and Harry Pierpont, the trigger man in the Lima murder, were both awaiting their execution.

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This feature story not only detail’s Tully’s visit to “the death row,” but also an account of a poignant lunch later with the parents of Harry Pierpont.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

UNSOLVED!A special edition of Yesterday's News exploring some of history’s greatest mysteries.

The Curious Murder of Mary Ekhart

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In this episode, we look at newspaper accounts of the murder of Mary Ekhart, a young woman from Dayton, Ohio, who separated from her husband and went to live in Cincinnati, where she had a lead on a job in a candy factory. A few days later, her body was found dead in a rooming house, and police tracked down every lead trying to find the mysterious stranger seen lurking in front of the house on the morning of the day of her murder.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.truecrimehistorian.com

THE GANGSTER CHRONICLES 1.5A special edition of Yesterday's News focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression eras.
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We're beginning this series with newspaper accounts of the trail of terror blazed by one of America's most famous, dare I say most beloved, gangsters, John Dillinger.
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From the time he was paroled from the Michigan City prison in May, 1933, to the time he was gunned down by police on a Chicago sidewalk 14 months later, John Herbert Dillinger was one of America's most notorious scoundrels.
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In previous chapters, we read the newspaper accounts of the escape of ten convicts from the Indiana penitentiary at Michigan City and the bloody delivery of Dillinger from the Lima, Ohio, jail; how Dillinger and his new gang blazed a trail of terror across the Midwest until he was captured in Tuscon, his second daring escape using a gun he made from broomstick, and his continuing reign of terror. In this chapter, we’ll hear about one more narrow escape from the clutches of the law and one final bank robbery.
I’m pleased to announce that on Sunday, May 8, I will be recording the final chapter of the Dillinger saga from the main stage of the Biograph Theatre in Chicago, where Dillinger saw his last film just minutes before meeting his fate on the sidewalks of the Windy City. Please visit my website, www.truecrimehistorian.com, for updates on that event.
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Musical Direction by Chuck Wiggins

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-historian--2909311/support.

You can pay more if you want to, but rent at the Safe House is still just a buck a week, and you can get access to over 400 ad-free episodes from the dusty vault, Safe House Exclusives, direct access to the Boss, and whatever personal services you require.

We invite you to our other PULPULAR MEDIA podcasts:

If disaster is more your jam, check out CATASTROPHIC CALAMITIES, telling the stories of famous and forgotten tragedies of the 19th and 20th centuries. What could go wrong? Everything!

For brand-new tales in the old clothes from the golden era of popular literature, give your ears a treat with PULP MAGAZINES with two new stories every week.

UNSOLVED!Exploring one of history's most baffling murder mysteries.

The Awful Death of Miss Elsie Sigel

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In this episode, we’ll take a look at the newspaper accounts in the case of Elsie Sigel, a pretty young girl from a prominent New York family who went to work as a missionary in Manhattan’s Chinatown. In the summer of 1909, police found Elsie’s body packed in a trunk in an apartment above a chop suey joint.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins

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www.truecrimehistorian.com

EYE FOR AN EYE

Exploring America's criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the Death Penalty

The True Crime of Irene Schroeder

During the early days of the Great Depression, one patrolman is killed and another seriously wounded while trying to prevent a trio of bandits who had robbed a department store in Western Pennsylvania from making a getaway. The surviving officer said it was not one of the two men who killed his partner, but the woman of the group, a young blonde, who was using her four-year-old son as a shield in the getaway. The child, recovered a few days later at his grandfather’s house, confirmed the story, and a nationwide manhunt ends in the desert mountains near Phoenix, Arizona, where the blond and her companions shoot it out with police for six hours, until they run out of ammunition.

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Visit www.truecrimehistorian.com for clippings and sources.

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Music by Chuck Wiggins