Criminalia

Nov 19 2024 237 ep. 28 mins 9.9k

Criminalia Podcast artwork

Humans have always committed crimes. What can we learn from the criminals and crimes of the past, and have humans gotten better or worse over time?

True Crime Society & Culture

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The Reluctant Blanche Barrow: Bonnie Wasn't the Only Dame in Clyde Barrow's Gang

Nov 19 2024 29 mins

In the Ambush Museum in Gibson, Louisiana, hangs a copy of a poem written by a woman named Blanche Barrow, and it reads: "Across the fields of yesterday / She sometimes calls to me / A little girl just back from play / the girl I used to be / And yet she smiles so wistfully / once she has crept within I wonder if she hopes to see / the woman I might have been." For four months, Bla

Where Prohibition-era Gangsters Went to Hide: The Farmer's Farm

Nov 12 2024 30 mins

'Pretty Boy' Flloyd. John Dillinger. The Barkers. A lot of well-known gangsters emerged in the 1920s and 1930s; all of them criminals known as 'public enemies' to the government, and highly sought after by authorities, as you can imagine. But lesser known are the hideouts these criminals used -- and the people who ran those illegal safe houses. This is the story of husband and wife

The Black Widows of Liverpool: Sisters Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins

Nov 05 2024 23 mins

When Catherine Flannagan and her younger sister Margaret moved to Liverpool from Ireland in the late 1800s, they were among the tens of thousands of poverty-stricken Irish laborers and their families who left Ireland during the potato famine to find work in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. To make their money, Catherine and Margaret established and ran a boarding house. In

The Trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

Oct 29 2024 35 mins

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were – controversially – convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a security guard and a payroll clerk, during an armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Massachusetts. About a century has passed and experts -- and armchair experts, too! – continue to debate this case

Did Mary Blandy Know the 'Love Powder' She Gave Her Father Was Arsenic?

Oct 22 2024 32 mins

Mary Blandy was desperate to marry, but none of her suitors met the stringent standards set by her father -- until she met William Cranstoun, son of a Scottish peer. But her engagement to him turned out to be her downfall; William was already married. When it was divulged, her father did not approve the engagement, but William "had a method of conciliating [her father's] esteem" --

Verne Sankey and Gordon Alcorn and Their Depression-Era Kidnappings

Oct 15 2024 27 mins

When Verne Sankey told his wife he and his gang were planning a kidnapping, he said, if “I don’t come back, don't identify my body.” Verne and his accomplice, Gordon Alcorn, were a pair of Depression-era outlaws whose successful high-profile kidnappings of Haskell Bohn, heir to Bohn Refrigeration, and millionaire Charles Boettcher II turned them into two of the most wanted cr

The Story of Suburban Chicago Booksellers and Bank Robbers, Jeff and Jill Erickson

Oct 08 2024 27 mins

On January 9, 1990, a bank robber nicknamed the Bearded Bandit entered the First Nationwide Bank in Wilmette, Illinois, disguised with a false beard, a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and driving gloves. He carried a gun and police radio scanner, and threatened bank employees that he'd, ”blow their brains out.” While he collected from the vault, his wife prepared their getaway.

Public Enemies No. 1 and 2: Bank Robbers Bennie and Stella Dickson vs. the G-Men

Oct 01 2024 37 mins

A man walked into the Corn Exchange Bank at Elkton, South Dakota, on the afternoon of August 25, 1938, and announced, quote, “This is a holdup.” Bennie and Stella Dickson were Depression-era bank robbers and outlaws who successfully stole what authorities then estimated to be more than $50,000 over an eight-month period. They were tagged by the FBI as Public Enemies No. 1 and 2

Lester Brockelhurst and Bernice Felton and the 'Crime Tourist' Murders

Sep 24 2024 30 mins

Lester Warfel Brockelhurst, Jr. was the president of the Mormon church's Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and he was a Sunday school teacher -- he was generally and genuinely known as a, “good boy.” But in his early 20s, he picked up a new nickname: "crime tourist,” after he and his girlfriend, Bernice Felton, pulled off multiple robberies and killed three men durin

How Her Illicit Love Letters Got Edith Thompson Hanged for a Murder

Sep 17 2024 40 mins

This story is one of murder, but it's also a tale of woe. It begins when a young ship's steward named Frederick 'Freddy' Bywaters became involved with a married woman named Edith Thompson. They had known each other growing up in the same London suburb as her husband Percy Thompson; and, it was generally considered that Freddy would marry Edith's sister, Avis. But life doesn't alway