Crime Scholar

Happy Halloween! In this episode, I'm sharing one of my favorite short ghost story called "Faces at the Window" by Rose Wilder Lane. It is based, in part, on the true story of the Bloody Benders, who murdered lodgers at their residence in the 1800s. Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairie book series. Lane did not publish this story before her death in 1968; it was released posthumously in 1972. Enjoy! If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, and consider supporting this one-woman show at Patreon. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Credits: Podcast artwork by: Nathalie Rattner (nathalierattnerart@gmail.com) Featured photo: The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum Social Media: Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Reddit discussion group Sources: Lane, Rose Wilder. "Faces at the Window." 1972. A Little House Sampler. U of Nebraska P, 1988. Music Clip: "Midnight, the Stars, and You." Performed by Al Bowlly with Ray Noble and his Orchestra. Written by Harry M. Woods, Jimmy Campbell, and Reginald Connelly. Published in 1934 by Cinephonic Music Company, LTD.

The character of Dr. Gonzo in the book and film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is based on a real person: a one-time military airman...turned Baptist missionary...turned legal aid attorney...turned Los Angeles County Sheriff's candidate...turned author...turned missing person. This is the story of the intriguing life and mysterious, unsolved disappearance of Oscar Zeta Acosta. We'll take a trip back to Los Angeles in the 1970s that features psychedelics, Chicano civil rights activism--and a lone, self-described brown buffalo wandering the halls of justice. If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, and consider supporting this one-woman show at Patreon. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Credits: Podcast artwork by: Nathalie Rattner (nathalierattnerart@gmail.com) Featured photo: The New Yorker Social Media: Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Reddit discussion group Sources: Aguirre, Abby. “What ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ Owes to Oscar Acosta.” The New Yorker, 13 Jul 2021. Brown, Paris W. “’The Mexican Situation:’ An Evolution of the Marked Body in The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo.” 2012. Cassidy, Craig. “Remember Oscar? Memories Stir over Long-Lost Folk Figure, OHS Alumnus.” The Oakdale Leader [Oakdale, California], 17 May 1995. Maza, Michael. “’Buffalo’ Roams into the Hollywood Slapstick Trap.” Arizona Republic, 29 Apr 1980, p. 17. Moore, Burton. Love and Riot: Oscar Zeta Acosta and the Great Mexican American Revolt. Floricanto P, 2002. Moreno, Dorinda. Personal interview, 20 Nov 2021. Nájera, Marcos. “The Ladies in His Life.” The Zeta Podcast Series 1.3. 17 Mar 2018. The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo. Directed by Phillip Rodriguez, performances by Dave Beaudrie, Xavier Becerra, and Anahi Bustillos, City Projects, 2017. Stavens, Ilan. Bandido: Oscar “Zeta” Acosta and the Chicano Experience. HarperCollins, 1995. ADDITIONAL SOURCES LISTED ON LINKED WEBSITE BELOW. Music: “Theme for ‘The Mad Thinker’” from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein’s Lab. Dr. Frankenstein, 2005 ADDITIONAL SOURCES LISTED ON LINKED WEBSITE BELOW.

Paris' lifelong search for her family's genealogical records leads her to investigate the reason they are missing: the lynching of a 41-year-old African American man named George Hughes in 1930. Accused of assaulting a white woman in Sherman, located within Grayson County, Texas, George never gets his day in court. Instead, locals burn down the courthouse with Hughes trapped inside and later carry out a postmortem lynching. Special guest Melissa Thiel, a public historian and a native of...

A glamorous but ostracized socialite shoots her husband in their home one night but claims she thought he was a prowler. High society (mostly) takes her word for it...until Truman Capote, the author of the first true crime novel, In Cold Blood, reminds the public of the Woodwards' fraught relationship and accuses Ann of murder by writing a vicious short story about her. This is part 2, which focuses on Ann and Billy Woodward and the infamous shooting. At the 45-second mark, Batty the podcat joins in with the cutest little squeak ever. This is the fourth episode in the podcast's second season, "Stranger than Fiction." Click on our website link below for source information. If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, and consider supporting us at Patreon. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Recorded at The Dope Spot Studios, Pomona, CA., USA. Music: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and Tchaikovsky. "Piano Concerto No. 1," 1874-75, as performed by Martha Argerich, 1975. Creative Commons attribution license. Podcast artwork by: Nathalie Rattner (nathalierattnerart@gmail.com) Logo lettering by: St. Anchor Graphics Website Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube Reddit discussion group

A glamorous but ostracized socialite shoots her husband in their home one night but claims she thought he was a prowler. High society (mostly) takes her word for it...until Truman Capote, the author of the first true crime novel, In Cold Blood, reminds the public of the Woodwards' fraught relationship and accuses Ann of murder by writing a vicious short story about her. This is part 1, which focuses on Capote's own tumultuous life. This is the third episode in the podcast's second season,...

In 1969, Assia Wevill--hailed as a great beauty and advertising talent--bizarrely committed suicide in the same manner as her paramour's wife six years earlier. To add to the tragedy, she killed her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. This is the story of a woman tormented by the dead poet Sylvia Plath, the refusal of Sylvia's husband Ted to commit to her even after he fathered her child, and the memory of her narrow escape from Hitler and the Holocaust. This is the second episode in the podcast's second season, "Stranger than Fiction." Click on our website link below for source information. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Punch Deck. "Oppressive Ambiance," 2018, under a Creative Commons attribution license. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

Some people best know Sylvia Plath for her unusual mode of suicide; others remember her for as one of the first authors to write openly about her own mental illness. But there's even more to her than that: the early loss of her father, the obsessive desire to be an over-achiever, that time she made national news as a missing person, the desire to find a 'perfect' husband, and the wild betrayal she felt when that perfect husband had an affair. But what exactly caused the author of THE BELL...

This preview opens the chapters of Season 2! This second season, titled "Stranger Than Fiction" goes into storytelling mode about the strange and tragic lives of some famous--or infamous, as may be the case--of some famously fascinating authors. Topics will include schizophrenia, suicide, high society, beat society, clinical depression, strange deaths, mysterious disappearances, attachment disorder, alcoholism, and obsession. Join us at the 2019 TRUE CRIME PODCAST FESTIVAL IN Chicago, IL on July 13th! Visit https:tcpf2019.com for ticket information and a list of podcast hosts who will be in attendance. See you there! Host: Paris Brown Produced & written by: Paris Brown Edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

If your parent had asked you to do something illegal as a teen, how would you have reacted? What it it was murder; what recourse would you have? This is the sad and sordid tale of a selfish Orange Co., CA man who, in 1985, persuaded his 14-year-old daughter to kill her stepmother. It's a tale that delves into the twisted mind of a bad dad who cherished wealth and under-aged young women more than he did his children. When his scheme was uncovered, he doubled down and ordered the killing of...

The Midwest U.S. was rocked in the late 1950s not just by new-fangled rock 'n roll music or by its bout of horrific flooding, but by an even more sinister kind of horror. Fourteen-year-old Caril Fugate accompanied her 19-year-old boyfriend Charles Starkweather on a murder spree that would claim 11 lives between December 1957 and January 1958 and would later inspire a host of films and music about their rampage through the Badlands. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Julie Maxwell. "Childhood Memories" from Farther Than All the Stars, 2016. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

Bonnie Parker Thornton and Blanche Caldwell Callaway were two despondent flappers at the close of the 1920s. In fact, the popular 1929 song "Am I Blue?" could have been written for them. But in 1930, at the start of the U.S.'s Great Depression, they met two brothers, Clyde and Buck, who were known as the 'Barrow Gang.' Somehow, these two petty criminals and ex-cons won the hearts of Bonnie and Blanche to the extent that neither woman would desert them, even when the Barrow brothers' violent deaths were inevitable and their own lives were in danger. This episode presents the details of their hardscrabble lives before, during, and--in Blanche's case--after voluntarily becoming road-mates with the men who eventually became murderers and the subjects of one of the largest manhunts of the 1930s. Bonnie and Blanche were at once tough and vulnerable, glamorous and unsophisticated, self-centered and utterly devoted to others. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher. Host: Paris Brown Produced & written by: Paris Brown Edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Haunted Corpse. "Haunted House" from Dirges for the Undead, 2014. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

It was the '80s: big hair, gold lamé, car phones, greed, Satanic Panic...and a young borderland woman who had a hand in helping to create that panic. When Sara Aldrete met cult leader Adolfo Constanzo, her goal of becoming a state college transfer and P.E. instructor changed to dark dreams of becoming a black magic high priestess. Before police caught up with what was later dubbed the "Matomoros Murder Cult," 23 people were brutally murdered, including a young college student named Mark Kilroy, whose disappearance helped bring publicity to the case. Sara was desperately infatuated with Adolfo--but was she culpable for these crimes? This is the fourth episode in the podcast's first season, "Accessories to Murder." Click on our website link below for source information. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or wherever you access podcasts. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Edited by: Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

This is a story local to us, and we've never heard it discussed on any other podcast. In 1959, a glamorous, well-to-do doctor's wife named Barbara Jean Finch was gunned down one night in front of her mid-century modern West Covina, California home. A witness, her young au pair, saw the murderer with her own eyes. It was Barbara's estranged husband, Bernard "Bernie" Finch. But what the au pair didn't notice was Bernie's lover, Carole Tregoff, hiding in the bushes on the property. Even after Bernie fled the scene, she stayed there all night. Why was Carole there, and was she part of a plot to get rid of Barbara so that she and Bernie could marry? Join us to find out and, along the way, travel to Las Vegas and back, meet an accused gigolo hitman, and muse over why celebrities were so enamored with Bernie Finch. This is the third episode in the podcast's first season, "Accessories to Murder." Click on our website link below for source information. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or wherever you access podcasts. Hosts: Paris Brown and Desi Robba Produced, written, & edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Lobo Loco. "Town Searching Murder" from Headcrash, 2018. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter

1955, rural, Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Emmett Till, just 14 years old, met a horrific death after being accused of whistling at and putting his arm around 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. Over 60 years later, her account of their fateful encounter changed. Just who is Carolyn, and what forces propelled her toward the center of a murder that would become a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement? This is the second episode in the podcast's first season, "Accessories to Murder." If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or wherever you access podcasts. Hosts: Paris Brown and Desi Robba Produced & written by: Paris Brown Edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Lobo Loco. "Town Searching Murder" from Headcrash, 2018. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Mitchell, Jerry. “Son of Emmett Till’s Killer in Panama Papers Scandal.” Clarion-Ledger. 9 May 2016. Nave, R.L. “Emmett Till Murder: The Full Text Testimony of Carolyn Bryant.” Mississippi Today. 12 Jul. 2018. Perez-Pena, Richard. “Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims were False.” The New York Times. 27 Jan. 2017. “Three Hurt in Collision Near Here on Sunday.” The Delta Democrat-Times. 19 Nov. 1956, p. 1. Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till. Simon & Schuster, 2017. Weller, Sheila. “The Missing Woman: How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case.” Vanity Fair. 26 Jan. 2017.

You've undoubtedly memorized the story of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders, but how much do you know about the lives of his followers, especially before they met him? Here's the life stories of five Manson Family members, which helps to explain how they became, well, Manson Family members: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie VanHouten, Lynette Fromme (who attempted a presidential assassination), and Dianne Lake, the youngest member of the group. This is the first episode in the podcast's first season, "Accessories to Murder." Click on our website link below for source information. If you like this episode, please subscribe, rate us with 5 stars on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher, and consider supporting us at Patreon. Host: Paris Brown Produced, written, and edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005 and by Julie Maxwell. "Childhood Memories" from Farther Than All the Stars, 2016. Podcast artwork by: Nathalie Rattner (nathalierattnerart@gmail.com) Logo lettering by: St. Anchor Graphics Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Reddit discussion group SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING: The Anniston Star. “Relative of Miss Krenwinkel Found Dead in Mobile.” 22 Jun. 1970, p. 7. Atkins, Susan. Child of Satan, Child of God. 1977. Menelorelin Dorenay’s Publishing, 2011. Bravin, Jess. Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme. St. Martin’s P, 1997. Bugliosi, Vincent. Helter Skelter. W.W. Norton, 1974. CieloDrive.com. “Leslie Van Houton.” —. “Patricia Krenwinkel.” —. “Susan Atkins.” “Jeanne F. Jett Atkins.” Find A Grave. Kendall, John. “‘Sexy Sadie’s’ Snitching Closed Door on Family.” Los Angeles Times. 26 Jan. 1971, p. 3. Lake, Dianne. Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside his Cult, and the Darkness that Ended the Sixties. William Morrow, 2017. Larsen, David. “Took Up with Strange Man: Father Recalls Odd Behavior of Girl Suspect in Tate Crime.” Los Angeles Times. 2 Dec 1969. Sanchez, Mike. “Sharon’s Wedding Dress among Items Stolen from Debra Tate’s Home.” The Sensational Sharon Tate. 7 Sept 2011. Torgerson, Dial. “‘Susan was a Good Kid’; Then Came Sadie Glutz. Los Angeles Times. 12 Dec. 1969. Waters, John. Role Models. Farrah, Straus, & Giroux, 2010.

Introduction to the hosts, two mid-20th-century enthusiast sisters with murder on their minds. We discuss our backgrounds and what drives our interests in true crime and vintage culture. This episode also previews the first season of the podcast, "Accessories to Murder." Hosts: Paris Brown and Desi Robba Produced & written by: Paris Brown Edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005. Website Facebook Instagram Twitter