'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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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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Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were – controversially – convicted of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a security guard and a payroll clerk, during an armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Massachusetts. About a century has passed and experts -- and armchair experts, too! – continue to debate this case, but not whether they did or didn't do it. They continue to debate one very big thing: whether or not Sacco and Vanzetti received a fair trial. 

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Mary Blandy was desperate to marry, but none of her suitors met the stringent standards set by her father -- until she met William Cranstoun, son of a Scottish peer. But her engagement to him turned out to be her downfall; William was already married. When it was divulged, her father did not approve the engagement, but William "had a method of conciliating [her father's] esteem" -- and it involved feeding her father a 'love powder' to soften him up a bit. The love powder turned out to be arsenic, and Mary killed her father by administering it. Though she claimed she didn't know, there were clues she maybe did. The question remains: Was she a partner to this crime, or wasn't she?

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When Verne Sankey told his wife he and his gang were planning a kidnapping, he said, if “I don’t come back, don't identify my body.” Verne and his accomplice, Gordon Alcorn, were a pair of Depression-era outlaws whose successful high-profile kidnappings of Haskell Bohn, heir to Bohn Refrigeration, and millionaire Charles Boettcher II turned them into two of the most wanted criminals in the United States – in fact, their success inspired other gangsters to try kidnapping as a lucrative gig, and prompted FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to name Verne America's very first 'Public Enemy'.

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On January 9, 1990, a bank robber nicknamed the Bearded Bandit entered the First Nationwide Bank in Wilmette, Illinois, disguised with a false beard, a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and driving gloves. He carried a gun and police radio scanner, and threatened bank employees that he'd, ”blow their brains out.” While he collected from the vault, his wife prepared their getaway. The Ericksons, a husband-and-wife bank robbing duo, committed a series of armed robberies in the Chicago area in 1990 andd 1991. And when it ended, it was in a dramatic and desperate way. 

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A man walked into the Corn Exchange Bank at Elkton, South Dakota, on the afternoon of August 25, 1938, and announced, quote, “This is a holdup.” Bennie and Stella Dickson were Depression-era bank robbers and outlaws who successfully stole what authorities then estimated to be more than $50,000 over an eight-month period. They were tagged by the FBI as Public Enemies No. 1 and 2., and J. Edgar Hoover, who led the bureau at that time, compared them to other notorious criminals of the era including John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, “Babyface” Nelson, and “Pretty Boy” Floyd. That's quite a cast of crooks. But were they?

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Lester Warfel Brockelhurst, Jr. was the president of the Mormon church's Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and he was a Sunday school teacher -- he was generally and genuinely known as a, “good boy.” But in his early 20s, he picked up a new nickname: "crime tourist,” after he and his girlfriend, Bernice Felton, pulled off multiple robberies and killed three men during a six-week crime spree that spanned across more than a dozen states in 1937. 

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This story is one of murder, but it's also a tale of woe. It begins when a young ship's steward named Frederick 'Freddy' Bywaters became involved with a married woman named Edith Thompson. They had known each other growing up in the same London suburb as her husband Percy Thompson; and, it was generally considered that Freddy would marry Edith's sister, Avis. But life doesn't always work out the way you think it will -- and he ended up being executed for Percy's murder. And so did Edith. History now suggests maybe she wasn't a woman who killed for her lover, but, rather, a witness to the event. Were Freddy and Edith partners in murder, or was Edith sentenced to death for adultery?

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Joseph Bowers is considered the first prisoner to try escaping Alcatraz, but was killed during his attempt. The next to attempt it was a pair of conspiring inmates named Ted Cole and Ralph Roe. Both men had long rap sheets and were known escape risks -- including from high security facilities. As a last resort, each was sentenced to time at the most inescapable prison in the United States: Alcatraz. With hindsight, and it's easy for us to say with time on our side, maybe they should have been kept apart, because these prisoners-in-crime totally escaped Alcatraz Island, and were never seen again.

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Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt were sentenced in July of 2008 to life in prison for the murders of Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid. The women, who were both in their 70s, appeared to be in the business of rescuing down-on-their-luck men in Los Angeles, but it was a deadly ruse. Instead, theymanipulated their marks with offers of free food and housing, and then manipulated them into helping them open life insurances policies – with the women listed as beneficiaries. Helen and Olga then killed these men in staged hit-and-run car accidents, on which they collected payouts totaling in the millions. Let's meet these Black Widow murderers and their victims.

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