Criminal

Fri, 15 Nov 2024

In 1993, Gary Settle was sentenced to 177 years in prison. Twenty-six years into his sentence, he st...

Fri, 08 Nov 2024

In 1977, a man named Robert Burns went to a funeral and shot someone, in the head, in front of 300 p...

Fri, 01 Nov 2024

This week, part two of the Reels family story – how two brothers went to jail in an attempt to sav...

Fri, 25 Oct 2024

Melvin Davis and Licurtis Reels refused to leave the land that had been in their family for generati...

Fri, 18 Oct 2024

Today, a personal story from Phoebe about her mother, Valentine, who died this spring. Say hello on ...

Fri, 11 Oct 2024

Soon after the Berlin Wall went up, a group of students knocked on Joachim Rudolph’s door. They to...

Fri, 04 Oct 2024

Before Guantánamo Bay became the prison we know today, Marie Genard spent more than a year of her l...

Fri, 27 Sep 2024

In 1977, a new bar opened on North Wells Street in Chicago. Things weren’t as they seemed at the a...

Fri, 20 Sep 2024

One morning, two men got in a boat and sailed down a river in the Amazon rainforest. They were never...

Fri, 13 Sep 2024

In the summer of 1975, two best friends attempted a robbery unlike any they’d ever pulled off befo...

Fri, 06 Sep 2024

When Madison Smith went to her county attorney’s office to talk about her rape case, she knew she ...

Fri, 23 Aug 2024

In 2010, a $16.5 million Hot Lotto ticket was sold at a gas station in Des Moines, Iowa. At first, n...

Fri, 16 Aug 2024

Two men turned in the winning catch at a Lake Erie fishing tournament. But when the tournament direc...

Fri, 09 Aug 2024

Phoebe: Are there a lot of spies in this country today? Scott: Far more than people can probably eve...

Fri, 02 Aug 2024

Hunters in the Everglades used to kill millions of birds every year for their feathers. In 1902, a m...

Fri, 26 Jul 2024

“There was a saying I heard a few times: ‘under the influence, above the law.’ And I think tha...

Fri, 19 Jul 2024

In the 1980s, Pablo Escobar smuggled four hippopotamuses into Colombia for a zoo on his ranch. Today...

Fri, 12 Jul 2024

In 1967, a 24-year-old named Leslie Arnold escaped from prison. The FBI looked for him for years. An...

Fri, 05 Jul 2024

On the afternoon of June 23rd, 1972, Martin McNally walked into the St. Louis airport with a wig, a ...

Fri, 28 Jun 2024

When Karen Bethea-Shields was in college, she heard a judge say, “No way in the world a Black woma...

Fri, 21 Jun 2024

“The ingenuity of depraved human genius has culminated in the production of margarine.” Say hell...

Fri, 14 Jun 2024

The Lawrence H. Woodward funeral home in Brooklyn has been run by one family for generations, and ha...

Fri, 07 Jun 2024

When JonRe Taylor was called for jury duty in 2007, she voted ‘not guilty’ on every charge. But ...

Fri, 24 May 2024

In 1989, three people confessed to participating in a murder. Eventually, a total of six people were...

Fri, 17 May 2024

Six people were arrested for a murder in Nebraska. Some said they couldn't remember details of the c...

Fri, 10 May 2024

When we last spoke with Trevell Coleman, he was waiting to hear back about his clemency application....

Fri, 03 May 2024

In 1991, two police officers stopped Tupac Shakur for jaywalking. He said he was knocked unconscious...

Fri, 26 Apr 2024

In 1980, posters appeared in subway stations and on telephone poles in New York City with a phone nu...

Fri, 19 Apr 2024

When he was 14 years old, Ron Bishop testified in a murder trial. Decades later, he told an investig...

Fri, 12 Apr 2024

When people started saying that John D. Rockefeller Jr. was responsible for the deaths of two women ...

Fri, 05 Apr 2024

Sultan Alam was the first Pakistani officer to join the traffic department of the Cleveland Police i...

Fri, 22 Mar 2024

For almost thirty years, Adolfo Kaminsky lived quietly, forging documents for people all over the wo...

Fri, 15 Mar 2024

As the famous English actor William Macready was preparing to go on stage in New York, over 300 poli...

Fri, 08 Mar 2024

In the early 1920s, painters at a watch dial factory in New Jersey started to get sick. No one could...

Fri, 01 Mar 2024

In 1974, musician Connie Converse drove away from home and was never heard from again. Howard Fishma...

Fri, 23 Feb 2024

“I never did anything wrong. I never had a speeding ticket. I think I just saved all my stuff up f...

Fri, 16 Feb 2024

“The police had surrounded the house. They had been there for quite a while. They didn’t want to...

Fri, 09 Feb 2024

In May 1991, a bank robber walked into a bank in Irving, Texas, and without speaking handed the tell...

Wed, 07 Feb 2024

Listen to the latest Criminal Plus bonus episode completely for free. Phoebe and Lauren hit record o...

Fri, 02 Feb 2024

A conversation with a 911 operator about what happens on the other end of the line – and the day s...

Fri, 26 Jan 2024

Martin Abramowitz knew that his father had worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, but he always ...

Fri, 19 Jan 2024

This episode picks up where 48 Hours, Part 1 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. When ...

Fri, 19 Jan 2024

“I think it was around 3:00 a.m., and that’s when I heard a strange man’s voice waking me from...

Fri, 12 Jan 2024

In 2016, the FBI attaché in Pretoria, South Africa, got a phone call from a woman asking the FBI to...

Fri, 05 Jan 2024

Ken Eto worked for the Chicago Outfit for 30 years. He was known as the mob’s bolita expert, bring...

Fri, 22 Dec 2023

Stories of animals really going for it. Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telli...

Fri, 15 Dec 2023

Today we meet “Genius Grant” winner Andrea Armstrong. In 2019, she started the Incarceration Tra...

Fri, 08 Dec 2023

When a young woman showed up at a boarding house in Manhattan, she said her name was Nellie Brown –...

Fri, 01 Dec 2023

In the early 1970s, Marty Goddard was worried about the high rates of sexual assault in Chicago. She...

Fri, 24 Nov 2023

In the 1950s poodles were all the rage — one tabloid even reported that when a girl “makes the b...

Fri, 17 Nov 2023

In 1913, museums and art galleries in London received a memo from the police. It told them to be car...

Fri, 10 Nov 2023

In the 1980s, Liverpool was having what journalists called a heroin epidemic. The chairman of a loca...

Fri, 03 Nov 2023

After a 17-hour-long interrogation, a woman confesses to a murder. But then, evidence surfaces provi...

Fri, 27 Oct 2023

In 1989, Helen Ackley decided to sell her old Victorian house in Nyack, New York. It didn’t go as ...

Fri, 20 Oct 2023

Jack Barsky was a college student in 1970 when the KGB knocked on the door of his dorm room to inqui...

Fri, 13 Oct 2023

Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert were once members of the radical activist group the Weather Undergrou...

Wed, 11 Oct 2023

Here's a little preview of what we’re making over on Criminal Plus! We’re having a lot of fun ma...

Fri, 06 Oct 2023

This episode continues where Episode 237 leaves off. 17 years after he shot a man, Trevell Coleman w...

Fri, 29 Sep 2023

Trevell Coleman signed with Bad Boy Records in 1998. He made it onto the Billboard charts, and was c...

Thu, 28 Sep 2023

We’re coming up on 10 years of Criminal. In the past decade, we've loved taking the show all over ...

Fri, 22 Sep 2023

On September 16, 1922, a reverend and a choir singer were found dead under a tree. Between their bod...

Fri, 15 Sep 2023

Jeff German was a reporter for over 40 years in Las Vegas. He spent his life covering the mafia, cor...

Fri, 08 Sep 2023

In 1916, two British soldiers were held captive in a remote prisoner-of-war camp. People said the ca...

Fri, 25 Aug 2023

Iceland is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, but people there love to read about crim...

Mon, 21 Aug 2023

A preview of what we’re making over on Criminal Plus! Hear me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr...

Fri, 18 Aug 2023

In April of 1995, wildlife biologists flew small airplanes over Yellowstone National Park, looking f...

Fri, 11 Aug 2023

When Amy Loughren started working as a nurse at Somerset Medical Center, she did everything she coul...

Fri, 04 Aug 2023

A story about religion, sex, an assassination, and silverware.  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and ...

Fri, 28 Jul 2023

In the summer of 1917, 16-year-old Elsie Wright took a photograph of her 9-year-old cousin, Frances ...

Fri, 21 Jul 2023

The UNABOM investigation was one of the longest manhunts in American history - it lasted for 18 year...

Fri, 14 Jul 2023

In the summer of 1984, a local newspaper reporter outside of Manchester, England, got a tip from the...

Fri, 07 Jul 2023

A little over sixty years ago, there were 250 prison newspapers being published on a regular basis. ...

Fri, 30 Jun 2023

Mary Jones could sing just like Aretha Franklin. One night, a James Brown impersonator saw her perfo...

Fri, 23 Jun 2023

In 1934, a man collecting driftwood along the Lake Erie shore found a human torso on the beach. No ...

Fri, 16 Jun 2023

When a toymaker and a doctor teamed up to make the world’s first CPR doll, they decided to make th...

Fri, 09 Jun 2023

As recently as 1965, if you had a medical emergency, the people who showed up at your door would be ...

Fri, 02 Jun 2023

Helen James grew up in a military family — her great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, he...

Fri, 26 May 2023

There’s an old sailors’ saying about the ocean at the southernmost part of the world — “belo...

Fri, 19 May 2023

In the late 1870s, a woman named Sarah Howe started a bank just for single women called the Ladies’...

Fri, 12 May 2023

“What we ask jurors to do is to just absorb all this trauma and just to keep on absorbing it and n...

Fri, 05 May 2023

In 2008, Sven Berger was chosen to serve on the jury for a murder trial. He says the sentence that h...

Fri, 28 Apr 2023

When she was 14 years old, Elizabeth Coppin was sent to a place called Peacock Lane in Cork, Ireland...

Fri, 21 Apr 2023

In 1948, two horse jockeys were riding on a beach in Australia when they came across a man lying in ...

Fri, 14 Apr 2023

When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. It's been called the lar...

Fri, 07 Apr 2023

When Debra Miller woke up on October 8th, 1964, she was expecting to see a black Volkswagen in her f...

Fri, 24 Mar 2023

In 1911, two sisters traveled to Seattle to meet a "doctor" named Linda Hazzard. The sisters didn’...

Fri, 17 Mar 2023

In the 1980s, the discount electronics chain store Crazy Eddie was so famous, its commercials were p...

Fri, 10 Mar 2023

In 1964, one of the best javelin throwers in Australia traveled to England to see if he could qualif...

Fri, 03 Mar 2023

This episode continues where Episode 208 leaves off. In 2001, Daniel Taylor wrote a letter from pris...

Fri, 24 Feb 2023

Daniel Taylor was 17 years old when he was arrested for a 1992 double homicide in Chicago. But Danie...

Fri, 17 Feb 2023

In 2016, a man named Anthony Novak created a parody Facebook page of his local police department. "I...

Fri, 03 Feb 2023

On October 4, 1960, Eastern Airlines Flight 375 took off from Boston’s Logan airport, and then, tw...

Fri, 20 Jan 2023

Debbie Schum waited a long time to receive the cremated ashes of her friend, LoraLee Johnson. When s...

Fri, 06 Jan 2023

When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August of 2021, they unlocked the prisons and freed ...

Fri, 16 Dec 2022

Stories of animals really going for it. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for ou...

Fri, 02 Dec 2022

In February of 1910, members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild in London received a strange letter from...

Fri, 18 Nov 2022

On September 29, 1982, Adam Janus suddenly collapsed in his home outside of Chicago. He died within ...

Fri, 04 Nov 2022

On a Saturday night, in February 1949, the music programming on one of the most popular radio statio...

Fri, 21 Oct 2022

On Halloween night, in 1992, an unusual television special aired on the BBC. Nobody expected what ha...

Fri, 07 Oct 2022

In the winter of 1803, residents outside of London reported strange encounters with a ghost. Some sa...

Fri, 23 Sep 2022

Ed and Bertha Briney’s unoccupied farmhouse was reportedly broken into 50 times over 10 years. The...

Fri, 09 Sep 2022

In March of this year, a biologist working in a nature preserve in Florida saw an alligator swimming...

Fri, 19 Aug 2022

In 1967, a very unlikely group of individuals gathered to quietly break the law and help facilitate ...

Fri, 05 Aug 2022

This episode picks up where Episode 193 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. Blanche Mo...

Fri, 22 Jul 2022

In 1895, Blanche Chesebrough moved into a small apartment in Gramercy Park, in New York City. She br...

Fri, 08 Jul 2022

There is a cave in the middle of the Mojave Desert called Devil's Hole. It's home to a small iridesc...

Fri, 24 Jun 2022

In 1982, forensic dentists examined the teeth of thousands of sailors stationed on an aircraft carri...

Fri, 10 Jun 2022

When Laura Coates decided to become a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., she was told that the job woul...

Fri, 27 May 2022

In 2018, we talked with three of America’s most experienced trauma surgeons about what happens whe...

Fri, 13 May 2022

For 10 years, Detective John Reilly and his horse Trooper were the only mounted team assigned to Cen...

Fri, 22 Apr 2022

Pontiac Correctional Center is a maximum security prison in the small town of Pontiac, Illinois. It’...

Fri, 08 Apr 2022

When Shigeru Yabu was 9 years old, he and his family were incarcerated at Heart Mountain Internment ...

Fri, 25 Mar 2022

One night in 1817, a woman appeared in the village of Almondsbury, in England. No one could figure o...

Fri, 11 Mar 2022

Miles Hargrove was in his sophomore year of college when he got a phone call that his father had bee...

Fri, 25 Feb 2022

In 1971, a woman visited an F.B.I. office in Pennsylvania. She identified herself as a college stude...

Fri, 11 Feb 2022

In 2013, a small boat called The Midnight Slider was found floating empty in the waters off of Is...

Fri, 28 Jan 2022

When it comes to Kentucky bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle is among the most exclusive. You can’t get it ...

Fri, 14 Jan 2022

15 years after the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional in Brown v. Boar...

Fri, 17 Dec 2021

Stories of animals really going for it. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for ou...

Fri, 03 Dec 2021

1. Please continue. 2. The experiment requires that you continue. 3. It is absolutely essential th...

Fri, 19 Nov 2021

When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. There were 22 defendants...

Fri, 05 Nov 2021

In 2006, a man named William Ramsey went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida for a life-savi...

Fri, 22 Oct 2021

The story of two famous friends — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini — and the disagreemen...

Fri, 08 Oct 2021

“There is something he hasn’t been telling me and I’m about to find out what it is.” Bobby a...

Fri, 24 Sep 2021

When Beverley Schottenstein’s husband Alvin died, she and her children sold their stake in his fam...

Fri, 10 Sep 2021

Michael Hingson was on the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, ...

Fri, 27 Aug 2021

Today's episode begins with rock & roll and ends with royalty. When bands like the Rolling Stones an...

Fri, 30 Jul 2021

"The phone rang and rang and a lady picked up on the other end and I still remember the operator say...

Fri, 16 Jul 2021

The story of a cryptic children’s book, a real-life treasure hunt, and its very mysterious winner:...

Fri, 02 Jul 2021

This episode picks up where Episode 167 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. When Aar...

Fri, 18 Jun 2021

“I think it was around 3:00 a.m., and that’s when I heard a strange man’s voice waking me from...

Fri, 04 Jun 2021

On November 12th, 2012, the Accomack County volunteer fire departments got a call. An abandoned hous...

Fri, 21 May 2021

In August 1934, Ann Cooper Hewitt was having lunch with her mother when she suddenly felt pain in he...

Fri, 07 May 2021

After 32 years in the United States, José Chicas was told he had to leave. He bought a plane ticket...

Fri, 23 Apr 2021

The Pacific Northwest was said to be terrorized by a serial killer in the early 20th century. Bodies...

Fri, 09 Apr 2021

The song “I Fought the Law” by the Bobby Fuller Four reached number 9 on the Billboard Charts in...

Fri, 26 Mar 2021

When Joan Borsten married actor Oleg Vidov, also known as “the Soviet Robert Redford,” he introd...

Fri, 12 Mar 2021

In 2010, a $16.5 million Hot Lotto ticket was sold at a gas station in Des Moines, Iowa. At first, n...

Fri, 26 Feb 2021

One Sunday afternoon, a man named William Mumler decided to take a self portrait. He said he was alo...

Fri, 12 Feb 2021

“What I recall most is the way that she grabbed my wrist and, shaking a bit, she said over and ove...

Fri, 29 Jan 2021

Qandeel Baloch grew up in a conservative village in Pakistan called Shah Sadar Din, a place where it...

Fri, 15 Jan 2021

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row in Louisiana’s A...

Thu, 24 Dec 2020

A day in the life of the town of Kalispell, Montana. Thanks very much for listening this year, and h...

Fri, 18 Dec 2020

With Covid-19 shutdowns, people have been taking advantage of quiet highways to drive as fast as the...

Fri, 04 Dec 2020

When Nathan Myers and Clifford Williams were charged with the murder of Jeanette “Baldie” Willia...

Fri, 20 Nov 2020

One Sunday night in November 1987, something very odd happened in the middle of the WGN nine o’clo...

Fri, 13 Nov 2020

Early one morning in 1948, a phone call woke up the police chief in the small town of Clearwater, Fl...

Fri, 06 Nov 2020

In 1932, a group of men in a speakeasy in Prohibition-era New York City hatched a plan — to take o...

Fri, 23 Oct 2020

On May 8, 2013, a man named Timothy Jones was arrested in Chicago. He says it wasn’t until he got ...

Fri, 09 Oct 2020

In the mid-1800s, Harvard Medical School had a reputation for being a “den of body snatchers.” A...

Fri, 25 Sep 2020

Early in his career, Errol Morris read about a shocking series of alleged insurance crimes in a smal...

Fri, 11 Sep 2020

The summer after Jessica Maple finished 6th grade, she found out that her great-grandmother’s hous...

Fri, 28 Aug 2020

Tim Jenkin was a member of the ANC (African National Congress). The organization had been declared u...

Fri, 07 Aug 2020

In 1989, Helen Ackley decided to sell her old Victorian house in Nyack, New York at 1 Laveta Place. ...

Fri, 17 Jul 2020

People incarcerated in California’s San Quentin State Prison aren’t allowed to have pets — but...

Fri, 03 Jul 2020

“I didn’t do what they said I did. And it was like, I don’t know how to disprove the police. I...

Fri, 19 Jun 2020

On May 13, 1862, in Charleston, South Carolina, a man named Robert Smalls took command of a Confeder...

Fri, 05 Jun 2020

On August 10th, 2014, one day after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren ...

Fri, 15 May 2020

In May 1991, a bank robber walked into a bank in Irving, Texas, and without speaking handed the tell...

Fri, 01 May 2020

“I’ve been teaching law for almost 40 years. And I recently realized we don’t really teach peo...

Fri, 17 Apr 2020

In January 2000, the bodies of two First Nations men were found frozen in a remote area of Saskatoon...

Fri, 03 Apr 2020

In April of 1995, wildlife biologists flew small airplanes over Yellowstone National Park, looking f...

Wed, 25 Mar 2020

Our other show, This is Love, is coming back on April 1. All new stories, about animals and the wild...

Tue, 24 Mar 2020

Phoebe reads Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. For more, visit Phoeb...

Fri, 20 Mar 2020

Sgt. David Mascarenas was the Dive Supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s been div...

Fri, 06 Mar 2020

Just before midnight on October 15, 1990, police arrived at 527 Lime Street in Jacksonville, Florida...

Fri, 21 Feb 2020

For decades, TV news reporter Russ Ewing stood beside more than 100 people—at their request—as t...

Fri, 07 Feb 2020

One day Adam Braseel got a phone call from his mother. She said that a man in Grundy County, Tenness...

Fri, 24 Jan 2020

In the spring of 1922, the United Mine Workers of America announced a national strike. And then, tha...

Fri, 10 Jan 2020

Debbie Schum waited a long time to receive the cremated ashes of her friend, LoraLee Johnson, from S...

Fri, 20 Dec 2019

Crime Blotter: “The Learning Center on Hanson Street reports a man across the way stands at his wi...

Fri, 13 Dec 2019

We are trying something different. Have a question for Phoebe? You can call into our voicemail at (...

Fri, 06 Dec 2019

In 1995, two men filmed an episode of the daytime talk show, The Jenny Jones Show. A few days later,...

Fri, 22 Nov 2019

World-class biathlete Kari Swenson was on an afternoon trail run in the mountains near Big Sky, Mont...

Fri, 08 Nov 2019

In 1977, a man named Robert Burns went to a funeral and shot someone, in the head, in front of 300 p...

Wed, 30 Oct 2019

In 1930, a Cuban woman named Elena de Hoyos went to the hospital in Key West, Florida. She had a bad...

Fri, 25 Oct 2019

SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 51: Money Tree before you listen to this one. Three years ...

Fri, 11 Oct 2019

After a crime occurs, or when someone dies, the police aren’t responsible for cleaning up. That’...

Fri, 27 Sep 2019

In 1917, 18-year-old Ruth Cruger disappeared. She’d last been seen getting her ice skates sharpene...

Fri, 13 Sep 2019

John Buettner-Janusch was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. He held prestigious faculty po...

Fri, 30 Aug 2019

“I never did anything wrong. I never had a speeding ticket. I think I just saved all my stuff up f...

Fri, 02 Aug 2019

In the late 1800s, North Carolina was trying to build a railway system through the Western part of t...

Fri, 19 Jul 2019

Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland’s Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an...

Fri, 05 Jul 2019

One day in 1969, Paulette Cooper decided to see what she could get away with. Learn more about Paule...

Fri, 21 Jun 2019

Amanda Hamm and her boyfriend Maurice LaGrone drove to Clinton Lake one night in 2003. The next day,...

Fri, 07 Jun 2019

In our last episode we spoke Cecilia Gentili, a trans Latina who worked for many years as an undocum...

Fri, 24 May 2019

When Cecilia Gentili was growing up in Argentina, she felt so different from everyone around her tha...

Fri, 10 May 2019

When Philip Benight met Becky Golden, they made a promise to stick together, no matter how bad thing...

Fri, 26 Apr 2019

In the summer of 1973, Clark Olofsson and Jan-Erik Olsson robbed the Kreditbanken in Stockholm’s N...

Fri, 12 Apr 2019

This episode contains adult content. Please use discretion. When Sarah Garone was 13 years old, she ...

Fri, 29 Mar 2019

In 2016, Silvon Simmons was shot in the back by police officer Joseph Ferrigno. The Rochester Police...

Fri, 15 Mar 2019

Georgia Tann of Memphis, Tennessee bragged that she had a rigorous selection process that matched th...

Fri, 01 Mar 2019

It's one thing to get into an argument with a stranger on Facebook. It's another thing to try to rui...

Fri, 15 Feb 2019

When Fannie Davis and her family moved to Detroit in the mid-1950s, they had trouble finding steady ...

Fri, 01 Feb 2019

When Sarah Winchester's husband died, she inherited millions from the family business: the manufactu...

Fri, 18 Jan 2019

In a suburb outside of Salt Lake City, a 69-year-old woman named Linda Gillman hired a man named Chr...

Fri, 21 Dec 2018

John "Sonny" Franzese was once described as "largely responsible for the glamorization of the Mafia ...

Fri, 07 Dec 2018

We speak with a man who has given thousands of people new names, told them where they would live, an...

Fri, 30 Nov 2018

A story about Steve Hutton, a police constable in England, who decided to do things a little differe...

Fri, 16 Nov 2018

On a hot summer day in 1978, a group of friends started renovating an old house in a neighborhood in...

Wed, 14 Nov 2018

Our second podcast, This is Love, is back. We’re sharing this first episode with Criminal listene...

Fri, 02 Nov 2018

We spend the day in a police car in Austin, Texas. For a transcript of this episode, send an email t...

Fri, 19 Oct 2018

This episode picks up where Episode 100 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. When Marti...

Fri, 05 Oct 2018

Thanks for helping us celebrate 100 episodes! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

Fri, 21 Sep 2018

There is nothing Richard "Racehorse" Haynes of Houston, Texas wouldn't do to win a case. He’s wide...

Fri, 07 Sep 2018

Three of America's most experienced trauma surgeons speak with us about what happens when someone is...

Fri, 17 Aug 2018

When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. There were 22 defendants...

Fri, 03 Aug 2018

When Tyler Wetherall was a kid, her mother and father packed up the family car and drove through the...

Fri, 20 Jul 2018

Not long into his job as prison superintendent, Frank Thompson was asked to write the manual on leth...

Fri, 06 Jul 2018

Mark Roberts has attended almost every major sporting event in the world. And he's been escorted off...

Fri, 15 Jun 2018

Helen James grew up in a military family — her great-great-grandfather fought in the Civil War, he...

Fri, 01 Jun 2018

This episode picks up where Episode 91 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. The early...

Fri, 18 May 2018

The story behind the face of New York's Gilded Age. For more information, check out Paula Uruburu's ...

Fri, 04 May 2018

The U.S. Navy attempted to develop a shark attack repellant after many sailors were attacked during ...

Fri, 20 Apr 2018

SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to our first episode about Sheila, Episode 88: Cold Case, before y...

Fri, 06 Apr 2018

In 1984, Sheila Wysocki found herself helping the police investigate the murder of her college roomm...

Fri, 23 Mar 2018

David Dovala has lived in Casper, Wyoming since he was 19. He’s worked all kinds of cases, first a...

Fri, 09 Mar 2018

Before he was 10 years old, Willie Bosket had skipped school, started fires, picked pockets, and sto...

Fri, 23 Feb 2018

In 1993, Mildred and Trevor Horn, along with their live-in nurse Janice, were found murdered in thei...

Wed, 14 Feb 2018

In 1971, David Alexander went for a run in Central Park and started talking to a stranger. For our f...

Fri, 09 Feb 2018

In the 1950s poodles were all the rage — one tabloid even reported that when a girl “makes the b...

Fri, 26 Jan 2018

Some spiders eat their young, and some eat their parents … love is never simple. From the makers o...

Fri, 26 Jan 2018

There is a group in Durham, NC called "Parents of Murdered Children." This week, we meet three of it...

Mon, 15 Jan 2018

In 1892, a gruesome murder took place in a small fishing village in Argentina. The police had a susp...

Fri, 12 Jan 2018

As a child, Lawrence Lessig was a gifted singer. His church choir director encouraged him to attend ...

Fri, 15 Dec 2017

Three mysteries we can’t stop thinking about. The first is about an impossible photo taken at a be...

Fri, 01 Dec 2017

In 1988, a man in Hickory, North Carolina named Willie Grimes was sentenced to life in prison for ra...

Fri, 17 Nov 2017

Helen Duncan was a famous medium who travelled around Britain in the 1940s performing séances. She ...

Fri, 03 Nov 2017

In 1993, Gerald Boggs of Steamboat Springs, Colorado was found dead in his home. He'd been burned wi...

Fri, 20 Oct 2017

In 1962, brothers John and Clarence Anglin, along with fellow incarcerated person Frank Morris, man...

Fri, 06 Oct 2017

The Tennessee Walking Horse has a natural gait that's famously smooth. And, if trained in a certain ...

Fri, 22 Sep 2017

"I keep saying 'where's the body? Kill someone,'" Marilyn Stasio told us. She reads at least 200 cri...

Fri, 08 Sep 2017

In 1993, more than 1,000 levees broke along the Mississippi River, flooding thousands of acres. Most...

Fri, 18 Aug 2017

At the turn of the century, Carry Nation was “America’s foremost lady hellraiser” and "the apo...

Fri, 04 Aug 2017

As long as 2,500 years ago, Native Americans placed the bones of their dead in giant mounds of earth...

Fri, 21 Jul 2017

Amber Dawn was 20 when she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Enumclaw, Washington. On her very f...

Fri, 07 Jul 2017

In 1967, a very unlikely group of individuals gathered to help women quietly break the law and obtai...

Fri, 16 Jun 2017

Shortly after David Brown was sworn in as the Dallas Chief of Police, his son shot and killed a poli...

Fri, 02 Jun 2017

The “body farm” at Texas State University is a place almost no one is allowed to see, because it...

Fri, 19 May 2017

On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual pap...

Fri, 05 May 2017

Skidmore, Missouri is a very small town. In the '70s, there was only one bar, one grocery store, and...

Fri, 21 Apr 2017

In 1928, Huey P. Long became the youngest Governor in Louisiana’s history. He bragged that he boug...

Fri, 07 Apr 2017

The Colorado Department of Transportation says the 420 mile markers on the state's highways were sto...

Fri, 17 Mar 2017

Kim Dadou says she wishes she had a nickel for every person who has asked why she didn't leave her a...

Fri, 03 Mar 2017

In 2014, 16-year-old Wildin Acosta left Olancho, Honduras and traveled toward the U.S. border. When ...

Fri, 17 Feb 2017

People have faked death to escape criminal convictions, debts, and their spouses. In 2007, a man nam...

Fri, 03 Feb 2017

In 2005, Teri Knight drove 650 miles on midwestern roads through Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois, p...

Fri, 20 Jan 2017

In 1849, abolitionist and attorney Wendell Phillips wrote: "We should look in vain through the most ...

Fri, 06 Jan 2017

In 2010, Michael McIntosh's son was incarcerated at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in ...

Fri, 16 Dec 2016

To close out 2016, we're bringing you two lighter stories of people exhibiting everyday genius under...

Fri, 02 Dec 2016

Since 1938, a weekly African-American owned newspaper called The Evening Whirl has covered crime i...

Fri, 18 Nov 2016

The Magic Castle in Hollywood has been a private club for magicians since 1963, and its walls are li...

Fri, 04 Nov 2016

SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 53: Melinda and Judy before you listen to this one. Melind...

Fri, 21 Oct 2016

When Melinda Dawson was seven years old, she learned that she was adopted under suspicious circumsta...

Fri, 07 Oct 2016

SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 51: Money Tree before you listen to this one. While workin...

Fri, 23 Sep 2016

When Axton Betz-Hamilton was 11 years old, her parents' identities were stolen. At that time, in the...

Fri, 09 Sep 2016

To celebrate Criminal's 50th episode, we check in with some of our most memorable guests including...

Fri, 26 Aug 2016

In November of 1988, Robin Woods was sentenced to sixteen years in the notoriously harsh Maryland Co...

Fri, 12 Aug 2016

2008 was an exciting time to be a Harry Potter fan. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hal...

Fri, 15 Jul 2016

Shortly after Meridy Volz moved from Milwaukee to San Francisco, she received a phone call from a fr...

Fri, 01 Jul 2016

There are more tigers in captivity in America than wild tigers in the entire world. The exact number...

Fri, 17 Jun 2016

As a law student, Bryan Stevenson was sent to a maximum security prison to meet a man on death row. ...

Fri, 03 Jun 2016

Not only was John Frankford a famous horse thief, he was also a notoriously good escape artist. Peop...

Fri, 20 May 2016

In 1979, a group of labor organizers protested outside a Ku Klux Klan screening of the 1915 white su...

Fri, 06 May 2016

People have been giving each other "the finger" since Ancient Greece. The first documented use is sa...

Fri, 15 Apr 2016

Since 1965, there's been an unsolved murder in Houston, Texas. The main suspect, Charles Rogers, man...

Fri, 01 Apr 2016

When it comes to Kentucky bourbon, Pappy Van Winkle is among the most exclusive, according to food w...

Fri, 18 Mar 2016

In 1983, three men were prepared to plead guilty to the violent sexual assault of Elizabeth Daniel i...

Fri, 04 Mar 2016

Jane Toppan was born in Massachusetts in 1857. She attended the Cambridge Nursing School, and establ...

Fri, 19 Feb 2016

In 2010, an eighth-grader brought a loaded gun to a middle school in Hastings, Minnesota. We speak w...

Fri, 05 Feb 2016

The 500-year-old Treaty Oak in Austin, Texas was once called "the most perfect specimen of a North A...

Fri, 22 Jan 2016

As a young woman in the 60s, Andy Austin talked her way into a job as a courtroom sketch artist in ...

Fri, 08 Jan 2016

Michael Ross was the first person in Connecticut to be sentenced to death since 1960. He claimed th...

Fri, 18 Dec 2015

Sgt. David Mascarenas is the Dive Supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. He's been diving...

Fri, 11 Dec 2015

Ed Crawford had never been to a protest until he heard about the shooting of Michael Brown in Fergus...

Fri, 27 Nov 2015

When we're kids, we have ideas of what we want to be when we grow up -- movie star, doctor, astronau...

Fri, 13 Nov 2015

In 2005, Danny Egipciaco had the opportunity to participate in a robbery of a drug supplier's stash ...

Fri, 30 Oct 2015

Corporal Scott Foster of the Hillsborough, NC Police Department worked closely with his K-9 partner...

Fri, 09 Oct 2015

Patti Hammond Shaw is a transgender woman. She's legally female on her birth certificate and driver'...

Fri, 25 Sep 2015

In the early 90s, a wealthy magazine publisher was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 18 months in ...

Fri, 11 Sep 2015

In July of 2002, Philadelphia Homicide Detective Pat Mangold was called to the scene of a gruesome m...

Fri, 28 Aug 2015

More than eighty years ago, a North Carolina family of nine posed for a Christmas portrait. Two week...

Fri, 07 Aug 2015

In February of 1896, a little boy discovered a woman's headless body in a farmer's field in Fort Tho...

Fri, 17 Jul 2015

The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona has the largest collection of petrified wood in the wo...

Fri, 26 Jun 2015

Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books have been disappearing across America since th...

Fri, 05 Jun 2015

Julius Robinson had killed for revenge before, and so when his sister was brutally murdered in her s...

Fri, 15 May 2015

Karen Miller met a man named Gil Harper on Facebook. They started flirting. The flirtation grew more...

Fri, 24 Apr 2015

Sandie Alger is a 71-year-old woman with a very long rap sheet. She was in and out of prison through...

Fri, 03 Apr 2015

This episode won a “Best Documentary” award at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. Pol...

Fri, 13 Mar 2015

No one disputes that it's against the law to take another person's life, but is it against the law t...

Fri, 20 Feb 2015

On July 17th, 1889, the residents of Clayton County, Iowa woke up to news of the worst crime in thei...

Fri, 30 Jan 2015

Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an ...

Fri, 09 Jan 2015

In June 2014, authorities released information about a massive child pornography ring being conducte...

Fri, 19 Dec 2014

Raymond Chandler is often called the greatest American crime novelist, famous for murder mysteries l...

Wed, 26 Nov 2014

In 1999, most of America's tech hysteria centered around Y2K. But at that same time, a teenager in C...

Thu, 30 Oct 2014

In 1977, a mild-mannered aeronautical engineer sideswiped a parked car in Compton, CA. When he stopp...

Fri, 26 Sep 2014

Working as a reporter for a TV station in New Hampshire, Kevin Flynn was covering the capture and ar...

Fri, 29 Aug 2014

What does it mean when a woman commits a crime and attributes her actions to PMS? We revisit the fir...

Tue, 29 Jul 2014

In March 1964, a 35-year-old African-American woman named Johnnie Mae Chappell was walking along the...

Mon, 30 Jun 2014

Crime victims are often put under the same scrutiny as the accused. Not only for their version of ev...

Fri, 23 May 2014

On April 13, 2014, former KKK member Frazier Glenn Cross pulled into a Jewish Community Center and a...

Thu, 24 Apr 2014

Every year for the past few years, tens of thousand of flytraps have gone missing – from the wild,...

Fri, 28 Mar 2014

There are plenty of things we don't share with our mothers. Dark, sad things. Unless of course, you ...

Fri, 28 Feb 2014

With the advent of the Inkjet printer, counterfeiting money became as simple as a trip to Staples. B...

Fri, 14 Feb 2014

For nearly a century we've been trying to read someone's truthfulness by the way they act. Be it thr...

Wed, 29 Jan 2014

In 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead in her home. Her husband Michael Peterson was convicted of...