Crimes of the Centuries

Latest Episodes:

S6 Ep22: Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin's Three-Year Race War Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

For three years in the late 1970s and into 1980 — before shared databases and DNA evidence — one man moved freely across 11 states trying to start a race war. He changed his name to honor a Nazi propagandist and a founding father. He bombed synagogues, gunned down interracial couples, shot a magazine publisher in broad daylight, and left whole communities living in fear of a killer they couldn't identify.

Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com

Order the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!

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S6: The Botched Execution of Tony Carruthers: Future COTC? Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

Three people vanished from a Memphis home in February 1994. A week later, they turned up in a local cemetery, buried in a grave dug for someone else's funeral — held the day after they disappeared, with mourners who had no idea what was beneath the casket. Tony Carruthers was convicted of the murders in 1996, representing himself after burning through six court-appointed attorneys. Thirty years, one botched execution, and one recanted medical examiner later, Tennessee still hasn't tested the DNA that might resolve the crime.

S6 Ep21: The Murder of Leslie Preer Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

Investigators were certain they knew who killed Leslie Preer. Their main suspect had motive, a suspicious alibi, and a failed polygraph. Investigators had everything they needed — except the right guy. Twenty-three years later with a pair of fresh detectives, a water bottle at Dulles Airport told a very different story.

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S6 Ep20: The Wrong Kind of American Jul 27, 2026

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Twenty-two-year-old Fred Korematsu was parked on a San Francisco hillside with his girlfriend, listening to music on the car radio, when the broadcast stopped on Dec. 7, 1941. In the weeks that followed, the U.S. government imprisoned 120,000 people based solely on their ancestry. Fred, a California-born welder who had tried to register for the draft on the very first day he could, decided he wasn’t going anywhere. His decision would lead to one of the most consequential civil liberties cases in American history, and a decades-long effort to prove something that should never have needed proving.

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S6 Ep19: "Goodnight, Sweet Wife:" Murder in Mission Hill Jul 20, 2026

Show notes

On the night of Oct. 23, 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 from a car phone in Boston's Mission Hill neighborhood, his voice strained with panic. He said he and his wife Carol had been shot by a Black man. Within hours, Boston police had launched the most intensive manhunt in the city's history — tearing through a predominantly Black neighborhood, stopping and searching anyone who dared answer their door or walk the streets. They were certain they knew what had happened. They were wrong in ways that would take decades to reckon with.

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S6 Ep18: The Girl Scout Murders on Cookie Trail Road Jul 13, 2026

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Dozens of Girl Scouts arrived at Camp Scott in the Oklahoma woods in June of 1977 expecting songs, crafts and campfires. By morning, three of the girls were dead, their bodies discovered along a dirt path called Cookie Trail Road. The investigation that followed became the largest manhunt in Oklahoma history, fueled accusations of corruption and racism, and left behind a mystery that still divides people nearly 50 years later.

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S6: ENCORE: The Forgotten Serial Killer of the Victorian Era Jul 09, 2026

Show notes

In Victorian England, a serial killer preyed on sex workers and other vulnerable women, targeting the people society was least likely to mourn or protect. But unlike the infamous Jack the Ripper, whose identity remains one of history's great unsolved mysteries, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream had a name, a medical degree, and a chilling willingness to use both. Cream weaponized his professional knowledge, exploiting the trust his victims placed in him as a physician to devise methods that were slower, more calculated, and in many ways more sinister than anything the Ripper was known for. When he was finally caught, the case against him didn't just end his reign of terror — it helped shape the legal landscape for decades to come.

S6: TRUTH DEFERRED S1E1: Love Lost & Justice Unraveling Jul 06, 2026

Show notes

In 1884 Cincinnati, a string of brutal murders and a verdict that outraged the public set off a chain of events that would end in one of the darkest moments in American history — the largest massacre of unarmed civilians by National Guard troops on U.S. soil. In Truth Deferred, historians Mike and Amy Morgan investigate what actually happened — and present the truth that was deliberately buried for over 140 years. While Amber's on vacation, we share Episode 1 of Truth Deferred: The story starts on Monday, March 31, 1884. The streets are covered in blood. Over 50 people are dead, and some are dying in the hallways of the hospital. Every window has been smashed out of the jail, and the county courthouse is a smoldering ruin. To find out how we got here, we travel back to an imperfect love story ending in a public murder, and how the case of William McHugh illustrates a growing distrust of the criminal justice system. (Truth Deferred began as a Grab Bag Collab podcast available only at GrabBagCollab.com. After its initial run, it was released wherever you get podcasts, so subscribe today.)

S6: ENCORE: The Manhattan Well Murder Jul 02, 2026

Show notes

When a 22-year-old woman living with relatives in a boarding house disappeared on Dec. 22, 1799, her loved ones didn't immediately worry. But when she still hadn't returned days later, all eyes turned to her lover, whom she'd supposedly been set to marry the last time she was seen alive. Levi Weeks came from a family with money, so his rich brother did something that was unheard of at this point in American history: He hired fancy lawyers. And that's how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr ended up on the same side defending a man against murder charges in 1800. The case, referenced in Lin Manuel Miranda's award-winning musical "Hamilton," marks two firsts: The defense panel was America's first legal Dream Team, and the Weeks' case was the first recorded murder trial in the country's history.

S6: THE CATALYST: The Traveler Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

Amber's on vacation, so she's yanking an episode of The Catalyst from behind the paywall over at Grab Bag Collab. Dive deep into the upbringing and backstories of individuals who committed history's most notorious crimes, shedding light on the psychological factors that shaped their paths. With a suspenseful twist, the identities of these individuals won’t be unveiled until the end of each episode. ‘The Catalyst’ will unravel the complex narratives behind these disturbing cases and try to understand what triggered them. This episode is called "The Traveler."

To get our back catalog of Catalyst episodes, plus all of our other shows, subscribe at www.grabbagcollab.com.

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