True Crime Historian

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The Gangster Called "Fat" Oct 03, 2016

Show notes

The Gangster Chronicles 2.2.2-
George "Fat" Wrassman figures heavily (so to speak) in the saga of Crane Neck Nugent. While this case doesn't bear directly on Nugent's story, it tells you the kind of man that Fat was, and will help inform some of the action in a later episode, so I offer this as a bonus to The Gangster Chronicles Book Two at no extra charge.

Cincinnati Gangster War (Crane Neck's Early Hits) Oct 03, 2016

Show notes

Crane Neck Nugent: Prohibition Trigger-
The Gangster Chronicles 2.2.1
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YESTERDAY'S NEWS
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The murders of Gus Fitch, Bob Sollick, Glenn Hiatt, Martin Dailey and Buddy Ryan. Crane Neck Nugent was involved in four of these, and will soon avenge a fifth.

What the Cab Driver Forgot Sep 26, 2016

Show notes

Crane Neck Nugent, Prohibition Trigger -
The Gangster Chronicles 2.1
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YESTERDAY'S NEWS
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A reading from historic newspapers in the golden age of yellow journalism
The second volume of The Gangster Chronicles explores one of the many side effects of the Great Experiment, America's Prohibition on alcohol.
I’ve often contended that Prohibition made criminals out of a lot of ordinary people who just wanted to drink and serve drinks. But it also gave some truly bad men an opportunity to misbehave.
Although he had one of the worst nicknames names ever, Raymond "Crane Neck" Nugent, was one of the most ruthless of the era's gangsters.
At 25, he went to trial for the murder of a bootlegger, and when the witness who came forward right after the event changed his mind at the trial -- well, we’ll look at that here in Chapter One.
Before his own demise, Nugent would be suspected in at least 15 high-profile murders, including the most famous gangland massacre of the Prohibition era. Yeah, he was probably one of the guns at the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
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Musical direction by Dave Sams

The Pig Woman's Tale Sep 12, 2016

Show notes

Murder Under the Crab Apple Tree By Damon Runyon
When a friend of mine started pitching Hall-Mills murder to me as a potential episode, I was immediately enthralled by the tale of an Episcopalian rector and his tragic affair with the choir singer, but when he told me the case hinged on the eyewitness testimony of “the pig woman,” I knew this was a story for True Crime Historian.
But it gets even better. I started looking into it and discovered that the famed sportswriter Damon Runyon covered the trial with the same breezy prose he used in the short stories he wrote that inspired the musical “Guys and Dolls,” with daily dispatches drawing vivid word pictures of the trial and its participants. I felt it worthy of in depth exploration, so we’ll be doing a six episode series released on consecutive Sundays to hear all about the case and its cast of characters as told by one of America’s premier storytellers, who turns out to also be a Pioneer of True Crime.

The Calumet Christmas Catastrophe Aug 26, 2016

Show notes

Panic at the Italian Hall
This episode comes from the request of a listener in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who wanted to know more about the panic disaster that took place at the Calumet Italian Hall in 1913.
We just took nice camping trip to the Keneewah Peninsula, Michigan's upper Upper Peninsula. You'd be hard pressed to find a more beautiful place in the world. The weather was sublime and Lake Superior is one of my favorite bodies of water--crystal clear, unsalted and shark-free. My girlfriend wants to move up there, at least for the summers, and I'm not opposed.
While we were there, we took the time to stop at Calumet and visited the memorial to the the Italian Hall. I'm usually a pretty cynical person, but I was truly moved to tears thinking about how horrible a person it took to instigate this tragedy, especially when most of the victims were little children. I took some pictures of the memorial and that evening, dug Episode 67 out of the vault, made a few edits, enhanced some of the audio, and while listening to it, found myself with the sniffles all over again.
It’s a sad story, folks, but I think it’s an important one to remember because it’s all about what happens when we lose our civility.
Theme music by Dave Sams Some incidental music via musopen.org Creative Commons license

The Death Cell Confession of Anna Marie Hahn Aug 19, 2016

Show notes

AN EYE FOR AN EYE-
A special edition of Yesterday’s News exploring the criminal justice system at its most extreme: Inflicting the Death Penalty.
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This episode comes at the request of a faithful listener in Cincinnati who wanted to hear more about Anna Marie Hahn, the first woman to be executed in Ohio's electric chair.
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Although ‘Arsenic Annie’ had stoically proclaimed her innocence right up until her dying day, Anna Marie Hahn left a handwritten 20-page confession in her death row cell on December 7, 1938, when they led her to Ohio’s electric chair, literally kicking and screaming.
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In the letter, she not only takes responsibility for six murders, she denies other poisoning attempts and goes into details about her life and how she began her series what the governor called cold-blooded and horrifying crimes when he made the final decision to take her to the chair.
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The letter is such a remarkable and revealing self-portrait, more entertaining than her pathetic execution, that I gave it to a professional actress, my friend and colleague Emily Simer Braun, to help bring out some of the nuances in this rare insight into the mind of a mass murderer.
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Music by Dave Sams
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www.truecrimehistorian.com/1938hahn

Dillinger at the Biograph Jun 06, 2016

Show notes

THE GANGSTER CHRONICLES A special edition of Yesterday’s News focusing on the notorious scoundrels of the Prohibition and Depression eras.
The Final Chapter of the Dillinger Saga
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The first volume of this this series has been devoted to the exploration of 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. Last month, we heard about one more narrow escape from the clutches of the law and one final bank robbery.
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The narration for this episode was recorded on 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. It was a movie theater then, and Dillinger, his hair dyed black, came here with two women to see Clark Gable in “Manhattan Melodrama,” and on the way out… Well, listen to this episode to see how it all shakes out.
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Music by Chuck Wiggins
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www.truecrimehistorian.com/1934dillingers0106

Hanged Three Times and Lived May 27, 2016

Show notes

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

Dillinger at Little Bohemia May 02, 2016

Show notes

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.
-
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

The Strangler's Wife Apr 22, 2016

Show notes

TRUE CRIME STORY TIMEThe Sad Tale of Anna May Gamble Knapp
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Around the jails and the Indiana and Ohio neighborhoods where he lived, Alfred Knapp carried the nickname “Looney” Knapp for his bizarre, often childish behavior. He spent half of his adult life in prison for petty larcenies and attacks upon young women. When he was released from the Michigan City Penitentiary in the summer of 1902, he joined his third wife, Hannah, in her hometown of Hamilton, Ohio. Three days before Christmas that year, Knapp strangled his wife in the early morning hours and put her body in a box and put the box in the Great Miami River, then told everyone that Hannah had left him. Some in his family became suspicious, and when he remarried two months later, they had him arrested for bigamy. Alfred Knapp then not only confessed to killing his wife, but four other women in Cincinnati and Indianapolis, including his second wife. Consequently, “The Strangler Knapp” became a Midwest sensation and dozens of newspapers sent reporters to cover the case.
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One of the many things that makes the Knapp case a remarkable story worth telling is the intense family and courtroom drama that was chronicled in the extensive press coverage. One of the most colorful real-life characters in this tale is the young, simple-minded fourth wife, from whose bed he was arrested for bigamy at four in the morning. So I want to tell you her story in a series of excerpts from my latest book, The First Celebrity Serial Killer: Confessions of the Strangler Alfred Knapp.
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I invite you to visit my website, www.truecrimehistorian.com, for source information and instructions on how you can buy an inscribed edition of “The First Celebrity Serial Killer.”

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