Detective Louis N. Scarcella was a legendary figure in New York City during the '90s. In a city overrun with violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. But the story changed when a group of convicted murderers-turned-jailhouse lawyers made a startling discovery that linked all their cases: Scarcella was the cop who helped put many of them away. They made a vow: Take down Scarcella. And with the help of a relentless New York Times reporter, they did just that. Thirty years later, 20 people who Scarcella helped put behind bars have since walked free. In the media, he’s known as the disgraced, rogue cop who hoodwinked an entire system. But was this really the workings of one person? 

The team behind The Burden spent hundreds of hours talking with witnesses who were coerced, jailhouse lawyers, outraged attorneys, and righteous cops. Scarcella insists he didn’t do anything wrong. And after finally tracking him down, he agreed to take us into the belly of the beast... where justice is done (and undone). Listen to The Burden wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hallie Rubenhold joins Betwixt the Sheets host Kate Lister to discuss our culture’s fascination with serial killers. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper…. these violent people are famous, but we only know them for their horrific crimes. What role does misogyny play in how these serial killers are portrayed on our screens and in our newspapers? And how does it affect court cases? Hear more from Betwixt the Sheets, from our friends at History Hit, wherever you get podcasts. 

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The rich and famous leave many traces in the historical records, but how can you reconstruct the lives of ordinary people who lived decades and decades ago? 

That was the challenge facing the team behind the Bad Women podcast. Hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes sit down with genealogist Kate Healy to discuss the detective work involved in scouring the archives for the scraps of information which - when gathered together -  created a richer picture of the women chronicled in seasons one and two. 

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Season Finale: Marjorie Cummins is certain that her husband is innocent - he's not the violent Blackout Ripper and he shouldn't hang for murder. She loyally supports him in court - refusing to believe the compelling evidence against him. Will the jury agree with her?

In wartime London, it seems, men could murder some women and still escape the hangman. Some juries defied the directions of judges to reach 'not guilty' verdicts if the female murder victims were painted as being promiscuous, immoral or unfaithful.   

One heavily-pregnant mother - Kathleen Patmore - was fatally stabbed by her soldier husband. Seemingly an open-and-shut case of murder, many instead felt that Kathleen deserved her fate and that her husband was the innocent party.    

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The murders of The Blackout Ripper - indeed many of the crimes committed against women in World War Two - aren't often spoken about by historians of the conflict. That's changing. The co-host of Bad Women Hallie Rubenhold and regular guest Dr Julia Laite recently appeared on the WW2 podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk to talk to James Holland about the wartime experiences of women. Here's chance to hear the conversation.  

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Doris had made her living as "Olga" - a dominatrix alter ego charging men handsomely for sex involving corsets, whips and "unusual methods". But when she married aged businessman (and former client) Henri Jouannet, she'd promised to give it all up.  

The coming of war put a strain on the couple's finances and their relationship - and Doris secretly returned to selling sex. But the trade had changed - instead of seeing her regular clients, "Olga" now meets strangers on the street... including The Blackout Ripper. 

Further reading:

Billock, Jennifer. ‘Five Hotels That Were Occupied by the Military During World War II’, Smithsonian Magazine, 28 October 2019

Laite, Julia. Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885 - 1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

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The story of the Blackout Ripper partly takes place in the wartime bars and clubs of West End London. To recreate their sound, Bad Women's composer and sound designer Pascal Wyse put together a quartet to play jazz tunes of the time.  

Here Pascal and guitarist Ed Gaughan talk about the history of that music and play some of the numbers in full on this episode on Pushkin Industries' Broken Record show, hosted by Justin Richmond. 

The band included Ed Gaughan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller and Marcus Penrose. They were recorded by Nick Taylor at Porcupine Studios, under the direction of Pascal Wyse. Pushkin’s Ben Tolliday mixed the tracks.   

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Greta Heywood is being strangled in a Piccadilly doorway when a passerby interrupts the Blackout Ripper, who disappears into the night. Greta survives the attack and the killer leaves vital clues as to his identity. 

The police are now closing in on their man - but can they catch him before he can claim more victims?

Further reading:

Andrews, Maggie and Lomas, Janis. The Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)

Laite, Julia. Common Prostitutes And Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London 1885 - 1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Lewis, Jane. ‘The problem of lone mother families in twentieth century Britain’, The Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, Vol. 20 No. 3 (1998),  pp. 251-283

Reeves, Josephine. ‘The Deviant Mother and Child: The Development of Adoption as an Instrument of Social Control’, Journal of Law and Society, Winter, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter 1993),  pp. 412—426)

Roberts, Elizabeth. A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women, 1890 – 1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)

Slater, Stefan. ‘Prostitutes and Popular History: Notes on the ‘Underworld’ 1918 - 1939’, Crime, History and Society, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2009), pp. 25 - 48

Sweet, Matthew. ‘The West End Front' (Faber 2012)

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Rachel Dobkin has come to see her psychic advisor, Madam Nerva. After years of bitter disagreements and financial wranglings with her estranged and violent husband, Rachel wants to know what the spirits think she should do next. Through Madam Nerva the spirts tell Rachel not to go near her husband again... but will she heed their warnings? 

The case of Rachel Dobkin is another face of wartime crime and not the work of the Blackout Ripper - but it reveals a common thread. It shows how some men thought the disruption and chaos of war would help them get away with murder. 

Further reading:

Carroll, Niamh. ‘The History of the Boundary Estate’, Bethnal Green London, 14 May 2021,

Cole, Mike. ‘The Battle of Cable Street’, Historic UK.

Cowan, Colin. ‘Mental observation wards: an alternative provision for emergency psychiatric care in England in the first half of the twentieth century’, History of Psychiatry, 

Eilers, Nicole Kvale. ‘Emigrant Trains: Jewish Migration through Prussia and American Remote Control, 1880 - 1914’, in Brinkmann, T. (ed), Points of Passage: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain 1880 - 1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).

Lefebure, Molly. Murder on the Home Front (London: Sphere, 2013).

Marks, Lara V, Model Mothers: Jewish Mothers and Maternity Provision in East London 1870 - 1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)..

Odell, Robin. Medical Detectives: The Lives and Cases of Britain’s Forensic Five (Cheltenham: The History Press, 2013).

Roberts, Elizabeth. A Woman’s Place: An Oral History of Working Class Women 1890 - 1940 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

Summerscale, Kate. The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

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Unlike white GIs, it was made virtually impossible for African-American servicemen to marry the women they met and fell in love with in the UK during World War Two. If these couples had children, those so-called "Brown Babies" were stigmatized and scorned - with many ending up in grim children's homes. 

Pausing the story of the Blackout Ripper - this episode examines the experiences of those Black GIs, their white partners and two "Brown Babies" - Leon Lomax and Terry Harrison - who have both spent decades trying to piece together their family histories. 

Professor Lucy Bland's work can be seen here: http://www.mixedmuseum.org.uk/brown-babies

Further reading:

Bland, Lucy. Britain's 'Brown Babies': The stories of children born to black GIs and white women in the Second World War. (Manchester University Press), 2019

Osur, Alan. Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II. (Office of Air Force History), 1977

Schindler, David and Westcott, Mark ‘Shocking Racial Attitudes: Black G.I.s in Europe’, The Review of Economic Studies. (University of Oxford), 2021

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Seamstress Doris Staples doesn't want to see Private John Waters any more... but the American soldier has other ideas. He goes to her workplace to make sure she doesn't "step out" with any other man... and carries with him a pistol.

Men were expected to seek an outlet for their sexual appetites, but any women who saw multiple partners or wanted to exit a relationship faced stigma, hostility and deadly violence.  

Further reading:

Ashton, John R; Machin, David; Osmond, Clive; Balajaran, Rasaratnam; Adam, Sheila A and Donnan, Stuart P B. ‘Trends in Induced Abortion in England and Wales’, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, vol. 37, 1983, pp. 105 - 110.

Dryden, Steven. ‘A Short History of LGBT Rights in the UK’.

Ellwood, David. ‘The American Challenge in Uniform: The Arrival of America’s Armies in World War II and European Women’, European Journal of American Studies  vol. 7, no. 2, 2012.

Laite, Julia. Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885 - 1960 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 

Monckton Smith, Jane. In Control: Dangerous Relationships and How They End in Murder. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022).

Vickers, Emma. Queen and Country: Same-sex desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939-45. (Manchester University Press, 2013).

Wagner, Paul. The Youngest Crew (Cheyenne, WY: Lagumo Press, 1997).

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