Crimes We Forgot

Aug 19 2024 2
Crimes We Forgot Podcast artwork

Crimes We Forgot is an independent true crime podcast that looks a century past to explore unique and sensational crimes that have vanished from public awareness. We share the in-depth stories of murders, kidnappings, robberies and other intriguing cases. But it doesn’t end there, as we also dig through public records and newspaper archives to find out what happened to those involved in the decades that followed.

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The Bludgeoned Tailor

Aug 19 2024 16 mins  
George Dietz was a popular Chicago women’s tailor and cutter, running a successful shop and investing in artwork and real estate, at least until the morning of April 14, 1913, when he was found beaten to death in his bed. Clues found in his pockets and around his body pointed to a revenge killing for his ill treatment of a teenage girl, but the police soon brushed those off as be

The Murderous Son of a Preacher Man

Jul 29 2024 16 mins  
On a warm evening in August 1925, 17-year-old Warren Vandervoort climbed the stairs of the Parkersburg, Iowa Methodist parsonage where he lived with his parents. In his hands he held a .22 caliber rifle, and when his father appeared at the top of the stairs, Warren fired, ending his father's life. Then, as his mother emerged from her bedroom, Warren shot her in the head, then s

The Dirty Cop in Sing Sing's Chair

Jul 08 2024 22 mins  
In the early decades of the 20th century, New York City Policeman Charles Becker strutted the city's streets while building a small fortune from the kickbacks he received from local criminals. But when Herman Rosenthal, the operator of an illegal gambling hall, was gunned down in front of the Metropole Hotel late on July 15, 1912, fingers pointed to Becker, who despite his deni

The Homesteader Ambush

Jun 17 2024 17 mins  
On an evening in March 1922, Utah homesteaders Charles and his nephew George Bradford were in a buggy heading back to their ranch, having gone to the town of Monticello earlier that day on business. But when the buggy finally arrived home, Charles and George weren't with it, and blood was splattered on the seat. A few miles away, the two men laid dead on the road, the victims o

The School Teacher's Icy Crypt

May 27 2024 17 mins  
On November 16, 1930, school teacher Enid Marriott vanished after getting off a train in Wiggins, Colorado. Within days a search of the area started. But more than two months passed before her younger brother Roy, who was with a search party, spotted a white, stilled hand sticking up from the frozen water of an irrigation ditch, ending the mystery of where she went, but not the one

The Habitual Criminal & The Taking of Alma McKinley

May 06 2024 20 mins  
For around 24 hours in October 1930, Alma Wilson McKinley was missing, kidnapped from the family home in Greenfield, Missouri. Her abductor, after his plans fell apart, let her go less than a day after taking her. Local authorities identified several suspects in the following months before landing on Aden Aven, who was already sitting in a jailcell in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The

The Child Inmate: San Quentin at 14

Apr 15 2024 18 mins  
Standing less than 5 feet and only 14 years old, orphan Claude Hankins would seem an unlikely candidate for California's notorious San Quentin prison. But in 1904, after Claude shot and killed a man who was physically, verbally and possibly sexually abusing him, Judge Eugene McDaniel turned down pleas from the defense council and the jury for the child to go to a reformatory an

Poisoner or Scapegoat? Winifred Ankers & the Brooklyn Baby Deaths

Mar 25 2024 19 mins  
In February 1912, babies started dying at the Brooklyn Nursery & Infants Hospital. The nursing staff was quick to accuse Winifred Ankers, the hospital's cook and an unwed mother who's own child was a patient there, but as the woman's murder trial unfolded, the poor management of the facility came under scrutiny. By the time it was over, nine babies, all under a year

A 20th Century Texas Blood Feud

Mar 05 2024 20 mins  
The son of a wealthy Texas ranching family, John Beal Sneed was used to getting his own way. So when his wife ran off to Canada with their former childhood friend Al Boyce, Sneed took matters into his own hands. In the year that followed, Sneed would gun down Boyce and Boyce's father, and two witnesses to the elder Boyce's killing would themselves die under mysterious circumstances

The Kidnappings of the Incubator Baby

Feb 12 2024 18 mins  
On an August day in 1909, a woman and three men snatched a five-year-old girl from a home in Topeka, Kansas. It was at least the second time the child had been kidnapped, and would open the last chapter of a series of custody cases and actions going back to 1904, when the same little girl was a baby on display in the baby incubator exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In