Amber Hagerman had long brown hair and freckles. She liked playing with her Barbie dolls, and was a Girl Scout. But on the afternoon of January 13, 1996, everything changed. Amber, age 9, was abducted while riding her pink bicycle in an abandoned Winn-Dixie parking lot in Arlington, Texas; only two-tenths of a mile from her grandparents' house. It only took eight minutes for Amber to disappear. This episode is about the legacy of third-grader Amber Hagerman, who inspired America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response, popularly known as AMBER alerts.

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It was her smile, everyone said, that was the first thing you noticed about Andrea Buchanan. People called her "Miss Personality," and spoke of her as being a “free spirit with much energy and vitality.” Andrea was a rising professional tennis star who was murdered, at age 26, while she was working in a restaurant in Los Angeles. Here's what happened.

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Twenty-one-year-old Jean Townsend's body was discovered the morning of September 15, 1954, around 7 a.m., in an empty lot just 600 yards from where she lived on Bempton Drive in South Ruislip. She had spent the evening at a party with friends at a nightclub called the Pyramid Club, not far from her work in London's West End -- but she never made it home.

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The press nicknamed the killings, 'the Torso Murders'. They called the killer, who had murdered, dismembered, and decapitated at least a dozen people, 'The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run', an area of Cleveland where most of the victims were found. The majority have never been identified -- and neither has the killer. Brace yourself for some ugly details.

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Las Cruces, New Mexico, newspapers reported on March 1, 1908: "Pat F. Garrett ... fulfilled his own prophecy ... that he would die with his boots on. Garrett was killed ... between 10 and 11 o'clock on the road to his Bear Canyon ranch at a point five miles from [Las Cruces]." Best known as a lawman and the guy who fatally shot Billy the Kid, Pat's life was high-profile. When it comes to his death, though, a lot of questions remain. Was it a conspiracy? Or was he shot in self-defense? People had thoughts about what happened – and still do.

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Ambrose Bierce was an American Civil War veteran, and he was also a writer: he was one of the most famous journalists of the late 19th century; he was a literary critic, a poet and a short story writer (primarily exploring themes of war, death, and the general absurdity that is life). And he is also one of the biggest disappearing acts of the 20th century. When he was 71 years old, Bierce rode into Mexico, and that's about the last anyone ever heard from him. Of course, there are plenty of theories about what happened.

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Texarkana was a bit of a bustling town back in 1946, but it wasn't a particularly dangerous town. But beginning in February that year, a series of brutal attacks occurred over a span of 10 weeks. Three victims were seriously wounded and five were killed; and they were all attacked at night. Let's talk about who they were and the investigations that led ... no where.

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It was early morning, about 6 a.m., on November 13, 1536, when Robert Pakington, a London merchant, was fatally shot while on his way to attend early Mass. It was the first recorded firearm crime in London's history, and a crime that has never been solved -- though there are some theories to talk about, even this long time later.

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Edward Hall, a minister, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir, were found together, dead, on an improvised 'lovers' lane' near an abandoned farmhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in September of 1922. Edward had been a popular minister at St. John’s Episcopal Church, and was the husband of Frances Stevens Hall, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Eleanor was a working-class homemaker married to Jim Mills, the parish sexton; and, she sang soprano in the choir at St. John's. Hall and Mills had been having an affair for a few years; and it had been a poorly kept secret. But the best kept secret is: who killed them?

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This is the story of the unsolved death of Mabel Greenwood; who killed her, and why no one knows what really happened 100 years later. The prime suspect in the case? Harold Greenwood, her husband of more than 20 years, was arrested on June 17, 1920, accused of fatally poisoning her. Let's look at what happened, the messy trial, and the one detail that got Harold acquitted. 

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If there had been true crime podcasts in the year 1800, this sensational murder trial would have been a hot topic under discussion: a young woman was killed just before Christmas in New York City, on the night she was to elope with her lover. The prime suspect was Levi Weeks, her presumptive fiancé, but he denied to authorities they had any relationship – and his defense team was the hottest trio of lawyers in town. This is the story of Elma Sands, and how the criminal justice system never established what really happened to her or who was to blame.

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