Criminalia

Shondaland Audio and iHeartPodcasts

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?

  • 21 minutes 31 seconds
    Who Shot Belle Starr, Outlaw Queen of the Old West?

    Belle Starr, 'Petticoat Terror of the Plains', once said of herself, quote, “I regard myself as a woman who has seen much of life.” On the American frontier, she was thought of as “a demon with a bloody knife between her teeth and a pistol in each hand terrorizing whole communities and making deputy marshals hit the high places.” She lived a larger-than-life life, that's for sure. But there's one big missing detail: what no one knows is, who shot her in the back? And why?

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    14 January 2025, 11:00 am
  • 27 minutes 38 seconds
    The Chicago Tylenol Murders and Their Aftermath

    Tylenol has been for decades the best-selling, non-prescription pain reliever in the United States. It used to come as gelatin capsules, pills that were possible to open, and that meant anyone could remove its active ingredient, acetaminophen, and replace the contents with ... anything else. And someone did, resulting in the deaths of seven people by cyanide poisoning. Holly and Maria look at how the case unfolded, and how more than 40 years later, the identity of the person who tampered with Tylenol is still unknown.

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    7 January 2025, 11:00 am
  • 30 minutes 26 seconds
    Was Jeannette DePalma's Death an Occult Sacrifice, a Crime of Opportunity, or Something Else?

    On August 7, 1972, Jeannette DePalma disappeared in Springfield, New Jersey, four days after her 16th birthday. That afternoon, she told her mom she was going to see friends, but when she didn't return later that evening, her mother called the police; the police discovered she never made it to her friend's house. When her body was discovered six weeks later, investigators suspected she may have overdosed; many others suspected she was sacrificed in an occult ritual. Five decades later, it's still a mystery. Welcome to a new season of Criminalia, where we're exploring historical cold cases.

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    31 December 2024, 11:00 am
  • 48 minutes 20 seconds
    Welcome to the Season Finale of Criminalia: PARTNERS IN CRIME

    Welcome to the final episode of our season about partners in crime -- some of whom were criminal duos, some of whom worked in gangs, but, unlike what we've found in some of our previous seasons, most of these people were absolutely guilty as charged. This season had quite a variety of crimes and criminals, everything from dirty cops who moonlighted with the mob to America's first serial killers. Join Holly and Maria as they share their top shows and drinks inspired by these criminal duos. 

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    24 December 2024, 11:00 am
  • 23 minutes 21 seconds
    The 'Last of America's Classic Train Robbers' Weren't Train Robbers at All

    “Two gaudily-dressed 'Brooklyn cowboys' attempted a desert train robbery”, reported the Associated Press on November 25, 1937. Henry Loftus and Harry Donaldson have been referred to as, "the last of America's classic train robbers," but the pair weren't professional criminals. This is the story of two men who wanted their lives to be like those they read about in Western-dime novels – but didn't realize they were decades too late.

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    17 December 2024, 11:00 am
  • 24 minutes 43 seconds
    Prohibition Outlaws: The Rise and Fall of the Kimes-Terrill Gang

    Led by Matthew Kimes and Ray Terrill, the Kimes–Terrill Gang were known for successfully pulling off some very high-profile bank robberies -- but they may have been better known for their daring prison escapes. In the lore of their gang it's said that each member swore a blood oath promising to free other members from their prison cells – even if it meant they, themselves, were apprehended or killed while trying to spring a fellow associate. While that may be just part of their legend, it does very much seem to be true when you hear their story. Prison, say modern historians, was nothing more than, quote, “just another occupational hazard.”

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    10 December 2024, 11:00 am
  • 24 minutes 53 seconds
    Serial Killers on the American Frontier: "Big" and "Little" Harpe

    Herman Webster Mudgett of New Hampshire, better known by the alias H.H. Holmes, was responsible for anywhere from 20 to 200 killings before he was apprehended in 1894, and is known as one of America’s first serial killers. But ... not THE first. That title -– at least on record -- belongs to the Harpes: "Big" and "Little" Harpe, who killed at least 40 men, women, and children – and likely more. Be warned, this may be the most violent episode we have yet told.

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    3 December 2024, 11:00 am
  • 21 minutes 5 seconds
    Samuel Green and William Ash, the 'Terrors of New England'

    When the priest asked, "Are you penitent, my son?", Samuel Green, with the rope around his neck and standing at the gallows, said with a smirk, "If you wish it." On their best days, Samuel Green and William Ash were burglars, highway robbers, and counterfeiters. On their worst; violent murderers. This is the story of their criminal career.

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    26 November 2024, 11:00 am
  • 29 minutes 7 seconds
    The Reluctant Blanche Barrow: Bonnie Wasn't the Only Dame in Clyde Barrow's Gang

    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, Blanche found herself a member of the outlaw Barrow gang – along with the famously known, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The story of Bonnie and Clyde is woven into American lore; but there was more than one criminal in the Barrow family: Clyde's long-time outlaw older brother Marvin 'Buck' Barrow AND his reluctant-criminal ride-or-die wife, Blanche.

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    19 November 2024, 11:00 am
  • 30 minutes 21 seconds
    Where Prohibition-era Gangsters Went to Hide: The Farmer's Farm

    '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, Herb and Esther Farmer, who ran such an establishment. 

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    12 November 2024, 11:00 am
  • 23 minutes 28 seconds
    The Black Widows of Liverpool: Sisters Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins

    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 short time, the house was filled to capacity with lodgers. But there was one problem: guests were dying in suspiciously similar circumstances.

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    5 November 2024, 11:00 am
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