The Harp(e) brothers have been called America's first serial killers, once notorious enough to be the stuff of folklore and legend before fading into obscurity. In the chaos of the post-Revolutionary frontier, the two men committed dozens of murders across Kentucky and Tennessee, their wives traveling alongside them the entire time.

My guest is Katherine Grandjean, author of "Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution", out now. She explains how the desperation of frontier life might have pushed two ordinary men toward violence, and what their story reveals about the darker side of the years following the American Revolution.

The author's publisher page: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2289902/katherine-grandjean/

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This is the first episode of American Criminal's latest season - all about Boss Tweed, the Tammany Hall politician who has become synonymous with civic graft and corruption.

Listen to my interview with Ken Ackerman about Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed here at the Most Notorious website:   https://www.mostnotorious.com/2020/09/28/tammany-halls-boss-tweed-w-kenneth-ackerman/

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William Morgan was last seen in Batavia, New York, in September 1826, shortly after threatening to publish purported Masonic secrets. He was arrested that same month in Canandaigua, transported to Fort Niagara and never seen again, and the local Freemasons were blamed for his disappearance. When a body was discovered a year later, many wanted it to be Morgan's for political purposes. But nearly two hundred years later, the case remains officially unsolved.

My guest this week is forensic anthropologist Dr. Ann Webster Bunch. Her book, "The William Morgan Affair: A Masonic Mystery in Upstate New York", explores the fate of this polarizing historical figure.

The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-william-morgan-affair-978

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Ted Bundy grew up in Tacoma in the shadow of one of the most toxic smelters in the United States, and he wasn't the only one. Between the 1970s and '80s, the Pacific Northwest was home to a bizarre, outsized cluster of serial killers including Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Charles Manson and many more. Could there be a connection between lead and arsenic poisoning and the making of a serial killer?

My guest is New York Times bestselling author Caroline Fraser, and in her book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, she explores this possible link, and how toxins like lead were promoted to the American public despite the known dangers.

The paperback version of her Edgar Award-winning book just came out in June.

The author's website: ⁠https://www.carolinefraser.net/

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My guest this week is Phillip Barlag, author of "Evil Roman Emperors: The Shocking History of Ancient Rome's Most Wicked Rulers from Caligula to Nero and More."

He shares stories about some of the worst rulers in Rome's history and the horrific deeds they committed, including Tarquin, Caligula, Nero, Caracalla and Elagabalus.

He is also the creator/host of The "Greats" of History podcast, available on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-greats-of-history/id1741228862. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1mS1MVueNYjtkomqWEtkjG. Podbean: https://phillipbarlag.podbean.com/ and everywhere else great podcasts are heard.

And he is available for questions related to his books, his podcast and anything Rome via email here: [email protected] and his book can be purchased on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Roman-Emperors-Shocking-Caligula/dp/1633886905

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Joaquin Murrieta has been remembered as a Robin Hood of the California Gold Rush — a wronged miner turned avenging outlaw, the supposed inspiration for Zorro. The truth is far darker and more complicated: the real Murrieta led one of the bloodiest bandit gangs of the era. He was killed in 1853, and his severed head became its own strange piece of California history.

My guest is New York Times bestselling author John Boessenecker, and his book is called "Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta: The Bandit Chief Who Terrorized California and Launched the Legend of Zorro". He has been on the show twice before, and back to separate the myth of Murrieta from the man.

The author's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/p/John-Boessenecker-100039302328585/

The author's publisher page: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/john-boessenecker

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(Orig pub date: 3/28/23) In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recogniz­able. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping— a crime then punishable by death.

But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South.

My guest, Tal McThenia, first introduced listeners of NPR's This American Life to this case in 2008. A few years later he co-wrote, along with Margaret Dunbar Cutright (the granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar) the definitive book about this historical whodunnit, called "A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation".  

The author's website:  https://www.talmcthenia.com/

Listen to This American Life's "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" here:  https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/transcript

The author's Audubon article:  https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2021/the-strange-true-story-john-williams-and-charles

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On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane.

Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case.

My guest is Robert Fitzgibbon, author of the new book "Murder in Salem, Massachusetts: The Death of Frances Cochran".

The author's blog: https://medium.com/@chebacco.parish

The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/murder-in-salem-massachusetts-9781467171298

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On October 7, 1964, Debra Miller’s life turns upside down when her mother is arrested for the murder of her father. At only fourteen years old, Debra becomes a ward of the court, grappling with the unfathomable trauma of watching her mother’s trial and conviction—a devastation that is only amplified when her family’s tragedy is splashed across headlines nationwide and featured in Joan Didion’s "Slouching Towards Bethlehem".

Debra is the author of the new book "The Most Wonderful, Terrible Person: A Memoir of Murder in the Golden State". She joins me to share intimate details about her family and the murder case that has so deeply shaped her life — and to wonder whether her mother really killed her father that autumn night so long ago.

The author's publisher page: https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/debra-miller/

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In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloon proprietor Erastus Wallace Scott of Des Moines―with his cousins in the infamous Carter Gang―operated a campaign of murder, fraud, corruption, and prostitution from his bar on East Court Avenue. In 1908, the local paper denounced the neighborhood as “given up almost entirely to houses of prostitution. At one end stands a notorious saloon, the scene of many crimes, even murders, and for years a harbor for criminals and a plotting place for the evil minded."

That reviled enterprise was none other than Scott’s seedy shack of sin. Initially, Scott gained the most notoriety, due to a slaying, numerous assaults, and sex trade associated with his establishment. But a subsequent murder brought cousin Will to the forefront. A land fraud scheme involving all three Carter brothers followed, including grand theft and even more deaths.

Authors David and Rose Donovan, authors of  The Nastiest Saloon in Iowa: Murder, Prostitution, and Corruption in the Heartland, recount the long-forgotten story of a crime family’s nefarious reach beyond the red-light district.

The authors' Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574329629177

The authors' publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-nastiest-saloon-in-iowa-9781467170826

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The night before Easter 1905, Miranda Bricker left her sister’s house and made her way through the darkness. Her destination was her living quarters and place of employment, the Maplehurst mansion, the home of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s leading industrialist. Within sight of her destination, an attacker emerged from the darkness, rushing her from behind. Their battle cut across the Maplehurst lawn, ending in Bricker’s death before witnesses could be sure what was happening. The killer melted away into the night.

My guest is Mark Sebastian Jordan, author of "The Maplehurst Murder: Mount Vernon’s Most Infamous Unsolved Crime". He walks us through Miranda's horrific murder, the bloodhound hunt that led to the sheriff's prime suspect, and the suspect's eventual death.

The author's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/marksebastianjordan/

The author's publisher's page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/vendors?q=Mark%20S%20Jordan&contributorID=18602

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