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Serial killers. Gangsters. Gunslingers. Victorian-era murderers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Each week, the Most Notorious podcast features true-life tales of crime, criminals, tragedies and disasters throughout history. Host Erik Rivenes interviews authors and historians who have studied their subjects for years. Their stories are offered with unique insight, detail, and historical accuracy.
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Eli Frankel, author of "Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, The Prairie Heiress, & Their Hunter", returns to share his thoughts on the recent explosion of interest in Marvin Margolis as the possible Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killer. While the discussion touches on both cases, Frankel keeps his focus mainly on the Black Dahlia side of the theory, breaking down the evidence presented in Michael Connelly's Killer in the Code podcast, which has made a splash this year for its claim that both cases have been solved. The author's websites: https://www.sistersindeath.com/ and https://www.elibfrankel.com/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On August 23, 1969, the badly decomposed body of twelve-year-old Tina Marie Andrews was found under a discarded sofa in the woods outside McComb, Mississippi. Days earlier, she and a friend had accepted a ride home but were instead driven to a remote area, where Andrews was murdered. Her friend eventually came forward and accused two local police officers of the brutal crime. My guest is Trent Brown, who wrote the definitive book on the case, "Murder in McComb: The Tina Andrews Case". More about the author here: https://english.mst.edu/people/facultyandstaff/brown/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Just months after the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders, the body of a 19-year-old woman was discovered off a secluded stretch of Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles on November 16th, 1969. She had been stabbed over a hundred times, and there was no identification on or near the body. It would be decades before she was identified as Reet Jurvetson, an Estonian-Canadian woman who had only been in California for a short time before her murder. My guest is Catherine Fogarty, author of the new book "The Girl with No Name: The Story of Jane Doe #59 and My Relentless Search for Her Killer". She walks us through the crime scene, how Reet was identified, and the many challenges faced along the way - including finding leads on her possible killer. The author's website: https://www.catherinebfogarty.com/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My conversation with Derek Sherwood, author of Nittany Nightmare: The Sex Murders of 1938–1940 and the Panic at Penn State, continues. He shares a story about trying to find the location of Faye Gates's murder, talks about another possible suspect in the Rachel Taylor case, and recounts his long, frustrating attempts to get the Taylor case files from the Pennsylvania State Police. The author's publisher page: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/nittany-nightmare/ The author's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@truth_revealed2k More on his Amazon author page, including a link to his book "Who Killed Betsy? Uncovering Penn State University's Most Notorious Unsolved Crime." https://www.amazon.com/stores/Derek-Sherwood/author/B005E0586W Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Between November 1938 and May 1940, Margaret Martin, Rachel Taylor and Faye Gates were abducted and sexually assaulted, their bodies dumped within 50 miles of Penn State College. My guest is Derek J. Sherwood, author of "Nittany Nightmare: The Sex Murders of 1938–1940 and the Panic at Penn State". He discusses the murders and investigators' attempts to determine whether a serial killer was responsible, all set against the backdrop of the college. The author's publisher page: https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/nittany-nightmare/ The author's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@truth_revealed2k More on his Amazon author page, including a link to his book "Who Killed Betsy? Uncovering Penn State University's Most Notorious Unsolved Crime." https://www.amazon.com/stores/Derek-Sherwood/author/B005E0586W Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Orig Pub Date 11/8/17) My guest is former criminal defense attorney Mark Shaw, author of "The Reporter Who Knew Too Much: The Mysterious Death of What's My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen". He talks about the life of Pulitzer nominated reporter and television star Dorothy Kilgallen, who was allegedly on the brink of breaking wide open a story about John Kennedy's assassination before her mysterious and suspicious death abruptly ended her investigation. The author's website: https://markshawbooks.com/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Harp(e) brothers have been called America's first serial killers, once notorious enough to be the stuff of folklore and legend before fading into obscurity. In the chaos of the post-Revolutionary frontier, the two men committed dozens of murders across Kentucky and Tennessee, their wives traveling alongside them the entire time. My guest is Katherine Grandjean, author of "Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution", out now. She explains how the desperation of frontier life might have pushed two ordinary men toward violence, and what their story reveals about the darker side of the years following the American Revolution. The author's publisher page: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2289902/katherine-grandjean/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This is the first episode of American Criminal's latest season - all about Boss Tweed, the Tammany Hall politician who has become synonymous with civic graft and corruption. Listen to my interview with Ken Ackerman about Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed here at the Most Notorious website: https://www.mostnotorious.com/2020/09/28/tammany-halls-boss-tweed-w-kenneth-ackerman/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
William Morgan was last seen in Batavia, New York, in September 1826, shortly after threatening to publish purported Masonic secrets. He was arrested that same month in Canandaigua, transported to Fort Niagara and never seen again, and the local Freemasons were blamed for his disappearance. When a body was discovered a year later, many wanted it to be Morgan's for political purposes. But nearly two hundred years later, the case remains officially unsolved. My guest this week is forensic anthropologist Dr. Ann Webster Bunch. Her book, "The William Morgan Affair: A Masonic Mystery in Upstate New York", explores the fate of this polarizing historical figure. The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-william-morgan-affair-978 Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ted Bundy grew up in Tacoma in the shadow of one of the most toxic smelters in the United States, and he wasn't the only one. Between the 1970s and '80s, the Pacific Northwest was home to a bizarre, outsized cluster of serial killers including Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Charles Manson and many more. Could there be a connection between lead and arsenic poisoning and the making of a serial killer? My guest is New York Times bestselling author Caroline Fraser, and in her book Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, she explores this possible link, and how toxins like lead were promoted to the American public despite the known dangers. The paperback version of her Edgar Award-winning book just came out in June. The author's website: https://www.carolinefraser.net/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My guest this week is Phillip Barlag, author of "Evil Roman Emperors: The Shocking History of Ancient Rome's Most Wicked Rulers from Caligula to Nero and More." He shares stories about some of the worst rulers in Rome's history and the horrific deeds they committed, including Tarquin, Caligula, Nero, Caracalla and Elagabalus. He is also the creator/host of The "Greats" of History podcast, available on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-greats-of-history/id1741228862. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1mS1MVueNYjtkomqWEtkjG. Podbean: https://phillipbarlag.podbean.com/ and everywhere else great podcasts are heard. And he is available for questions related to his books, his podcast and anything Rome via email here: phillipbarlag@gmail.com and his book can be purchased on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Roman-Emperors-Shocking-Caligula/dp/1633886905 Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Joaquin Murrieta has been remembered as a Robin Hood of the California Gold Rush — a wronged miner turned avenging outlaw, the supposed inspiration for Zorro. The truth is far darker and more complicated: the real Murrieta led one of the bloodiest bandit gangs of the era. He was killed in 1853, and his severed head became its own strange piece of California history. My guest is New York Times bestselling author John Boessenecker, and his book is called "Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta: The Bandit Chief Who Terrorized California and Launched the Legend of Zorro". He has been on the show twice before, and back to separate the myth of Murrieta from the man. The author's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/p/John-Boessenecker-100039302328585/ The author's publisher page: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/john-boessenecker Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Orig pub date: 3/28/23) In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recognizable. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping— a crime then punishable by death. But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South. My guest, Tal McThenia, first introduced listeners of NPR's This American Life to this case in 2008. A few years later he co-wrote, along with Margaret Dunbar Cutright (the granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar) the definitive book about this historical whodunnit, called "A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation". The author's website: https://www.talmcthenia.com/ Listen to This American Life's "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/transcript The author's Audubon article: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2021/the-strange-true-story-john-williams-and-charles Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane. Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case. My guest is Robert Fitzgibbon, author of the new book "Murder in Salem, Massachusetts: The Death of Frances Cochran". The author's blog: https://medium.com/@chebacco.parish The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/murder-in-salem-massachusetts-9781467171298 Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On October 7, 1964, Debra Miller’s life turns upside down when her mother is arrested for the murder of her father. At only fourteen years old, Debra becomes a ward of the court, grappling with the unfathomable trauma of watching her mother’s trial and conviction—a devastation that is only amplified when her family’s tragedy is splashed across headlines nationwide and featured in Joan Didion’s "Slouching Towards Bethlehem". Debra is the author of the new book "The Most Wonderful, Terrible Person: A Memoir of Murder in the Golden State". She joins me to share intimate details about her family and the murder case that has so deeply shaped her life — and to wonder whether her mother really killed her father that autumn night so long ago. The author's publisher page: https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/debra-miller/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloon proprietor Erastus Wallace Scott of Des Moines―with his cousins in the infamous Carter Gang―operated a campaign of murder, fraud, corruption, and prostitution from his bar on East Court Avenue. In 1908, the local paper denounced the neighborhood as “given up almost entirely to houses of prostitution. At one end stands a notorious saloon, the scene of many crimes, even murders, and for years a harbor for criminals and a plotting place for the evil minded." That reviled enterprise was none other than Scott’s seedy shack of sin. Initially, Scott gained the most notoriety, due to a slaying, numerous assaults, and sex trade associated with his establishment. But a subsequent murder brought cousin Will to the forefront. A land fraud scheme involving all three Carter brothers followed, including grand theft and even more deaths. Authors David and Rose Donovan, authors of The Nastiest Saloon in Iowa: Murder, Prostitution, and Corruption in the Heartland, recount the long-forgotten story of a crime family’s nefarious reach beyond the red-light district. The authors' Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574329629177 The authors' publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-nastiest-saloon-in-iowa-9781467170826 Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The night before Easter 1905, Miranda Bricker left her sister’s house and made her way through the darkness. Her destination was her living quarters and place of employment, the Maplehurst mansion, the home of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s leading industrialist. Within sight of her destination, an attacker emerged from the darkness, rushing her from behind. Their battle cut across the Maplehurst lawn, ending in Bricker’s death before witnesses could be sure what was happening. The killer melted away into the night. My guest is Mark Sebastian Jordan, author of "The Maplehurst Murder: Mount Vernon’s Most Infamous Unsolved Crime". He walks us through Miranda's horrific murder, the bloodhound hunt that led to the sheriff's prime suspect, and the suspect's eventual death. The author's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/marksebastianjordan/ The author's publisher's page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/vendors?q=Mark%20S%20Jordan&contributorID=18602 Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Orig Pub Date 8/10/2016) My conversation with author Mark Lee Gardner continues, about his book "Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape". In the second part of the story, we talk about the James-Younger Gang's flight into the Big Woods of southern Minnesota, and the difficulties that they faced navigating through unknown territory, and also the troubles the local posses had finding them. The author's website: https://songofthewest.com/ This is the 150th Anniversary of the Raid! Visit the official The Defeat of Jesse James Days website for more about the festivities: https://www.djjd.org/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
(Orig pub date: 8/3/2016) Much has been written about Jesse James, including his gang's ill-fated trip to Northfield, Minnesota, a botched bank raid met with death and tragedy, but never told like this. Mark Lee Gardner, author of "Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid and the Wild West's Greatest Escape", joins me to tell the story of the James-Younger gang's foray north from Missouri and the chaos that followed. The author's website: https://songofthewest.com/ This is the 150th Anniversary of the Raid! Visit the official The Defeat of Jesse James Days website for more about the festivities: https://www.djjd.org/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My guest this week is Merry Gordon, author of Arizona's Murdered Madams: Death in the Red-Light Districts. She shares the stories of two of Territorial Arizona's most infamous madams, former Mormon Minnie Powers and "Belgian Jennie" Bauters, including the cold-blooded murders that ended their lives. She also talks about the colorful and often dangerous world of sex workers in the Old West. The author's Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Merry-Gordon/author/B07F99X97T The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/arizonas-murdered-madams-9781467171069 The author on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merrygordonwrites/ Free shipping and 365-day returns with Quince! Refresh your wardrobe here: https://www.quince.com/notorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Observed September 20, 2026.
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