Criminalia
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Criminalia
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?
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Farewell, From Criminalia, and Thanks for All the Crime
Thank you for joining us for the final episode of our season of stray heists AND the finale of Criminalia. This is goodbye, but it's also thank you –...

'America': The Stolen Golden Toilet
The plan was to keep the 18-karat-gold toilet called 'America' on display indefinitely at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. But it did go out on...

Mayhem, Madness, and Marshmallow the Bunny: When the World Lost Its Mind Over Beanie Babies
When Beanie Babies hit the scene in 1993, the original line of stuffed toys featured nine characters -- but that number would grow to hundreds. The br...

Piano 'Movers' Play a Felonious Tune
Just after lunch on July 14, 2013, a white van drove away from Toronto General Hospital. Its cargo? A stolen Boston Steinway baby grand piano, taken f...

California Nut Crimes: Nuts Cases Can Be Difficult to Crack
Tree nuts have become are a hot commodity on the black market, and thieves have been making off with shipments of California-grown nuts to cash in. Of...

Opening the Lid on Manhole Cover Capers
In the spring of 2008, 12-year-old Shamira Fingers was walking down a street near her home in South Philadelphia when she suddenly and surprisingly fe...

Big Syrup': The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist
"You can't prove what tree the syrup came from," stated one of the accomplices in The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist during his trial. Over the span...

Welcome to the Season Finale of Criminalia: THE GENTLEMEN ROBBER
Stand and deliver! Welcome to the final episode of our season about highway robbery and the outlaws who preyed upon road travelers. There were plenty...

The Guillotine's First Victim: French Highwayman Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier
French highwayman Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier rode and robbed the streets around 18th-century Paris, but didn't come to the attention of French authorit...

Tom Cox: The 'Handsome' Highwayman Who Robbed the King's Jester
Tom Cox began his life as a gentleman with a small estate inherited from his father -- but he spent that small fortune in the blink of an eye with his...

Jonathan Wild: The Thief-Taker or Thief? Or Both?
People thought Jonathan Wild was a fine, upstanding kind of a guy: he was a thief-taker who was very good at catching criminals. The Privy Council, ad...

Juraj Jánošík: How a Slovak Bandit Became a National Hero
England has Robin Hood. Australia has Ned Kelly. Japan; Goemon Ishikawa. There are many legendary heroic outlaws in many cultures. Juraj Jánošík has,...

William Davis: Farmer by Day, Highwayman by Night
William Davis led a double life. He was a successful highway robber by night, and a respectable farmer by day. Farming was honest work, but, it was al...

The Life and Death of the Laughing Highwayman: Jerry Abershawe
Never confused with the legend of Robin Hood or a 'gentleman robber' among highwaymen, there was really nothing to admire about Jerry Abershawe. He wa...

The First and Final Crimes of Jocelin Harwood
Jocelin Harwood was a highwayman who committed such “Barbarous Murders” – and he was just so ...wow – that his fellow criminal associates betrayed him...

The Tale of Highway Robber William Spiggot and His Death
William Spiggot was an 18th century English highwayman and the leader of a gang of at least eight men. While he may have started out as an apprentice...

Scoop: John Nevison Was Not Dick Turpin and Dick Turpin Was Not John Nevison
John Nevison was a very good highwayman, though you may not recognize his name. And that's largely because his crimes have, over the years, gotten att...

The Adventures of Robber Lewis: Counterfeiter/Robber/Jailbreaker
Though dealing in counterfeit currency may have been David 'Davy' Lewis' first criminal efforts, he eventually added highway robbery as a lucrative gi...

Joan and Edward: The Bonnie and Clyde of Highway Robbery
Joan Phillips was a known beauty with an artful and cunning mind -- and both her looks and the famiy's money attracted the attention of many suitors –...

Not Every Tom, Dick, and Harry Were Highwaymen; But These Were
This is the tale (and legend) of the Dunsdon brothers: Thomas, Richard, and Henry – yes, a real life Tom, Dick and Harry. Known as the Burford Highway...

Claude Duval: The First Gallant Highwayman
Some highwaymen were straight-up thugs. But some, like Claude Duval, were highwaymen who were polite, chivalrous, and sometimes portrayed as a version...

Lady Ferrers: An Heiress Turned Highwaywoman
English gentlewoman and heiress named Lady Katherine Ferrers who, as a highwaywoman known as The Wicked Lady, terrorized England in the mid-1600s. Her...

Welcome to the Season Finale of Criminalia: COLD CASES
Welcome to the final episode of our season about cold cases -- unsolved crimes, where the perpetrator was never identified and there are no active lea...

The Tragedy That Inspired AMBER Alerts
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, 19...

A Tennis Tragedy: The Murder of Andrea Buchanan
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...

The Unsolved Murder of Jean Townsend
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 sh...

Cleveland's 'Torso Murders': Who Was the 'Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run'?
The press nicknamed the killings, 'the Torso Murders'. They called the killer, who had murdered, dismembered, and decapitated at least a dozen people,...

Who Killed the Sheriff Who Killed Billy the Kid?
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....

The Mysterious Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce
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...

The Phantom Killer: The Unsolved Texarkana Moonlight Murders
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 bru...

The Death of Robert Pakington: England's First Murder By Gun
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...

The Lovers' Lane Murders of Rev. Edward Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills
Edward Hall, a minister, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir, were found together, dead, on an improvised 'lovers' lane' near an abandoned farmho...

The Murder of Mabel Greenwood
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 suspe...

Elma Sands and the Manhattan Well Murder
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...

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 fr...

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 we...

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 w...

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...

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...

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...