Crimes of the Centuries

A boy’s discovery in the Yellow River launched one of the South’s most shocking murder investigations. What authorities found on John S. Williams’s farm in 1921 exposed a brutal system hiding in plain sight. The Georgia...

In 1985, Christie’s auctioned off a dusty Bordeaux engraved with the initials “Th.J.” The seller claimed it had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, and the bottle fetched an astonishing $157,000. It was a record-setting...

He gave up comfort for a calling, left Spain for the wilds of California, and walked thousands of miles to bring the Gospel to Indigenous people. Father Junípero Serra is revered by some as a saintly hero — the man who...

He was the BBC’s quirky golden boy — cigar in hand, tracksuit on, always ready to raise money for charity. Margaret Thatcher lobbied to get him knighted. The Queen pinned the honor on him. And all the while, Jimmy...

While Crimes Of The Centuries is dark this week, please enjoy this special episode of the podcast, More Like Ancient Fail-iens, where Amber Hunt was a special guest! Whether you are in your enormous underground city...

In August 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell — founder of the American Nazi Party and one of the most hated men in America — was shot by a sniper while doing laundry at a suburban strip mall. His murder made international...

When Horst Wessel died in 1930, he was an obscure 22-year-old member of the SA. Within months, Joseph Goebbels had elevated him into a saint of the Third Reich, complete with a theme song that would echo through...

London in the early 1930s was captivated by the Bright Young Things — aristocratic sons and daughters whose glittering parties and endless scandals filled the tabloids. Among them was Elvira Mullens Barney, a socialite...

Despite police informants thwarting one of his deadly plans, cult leader Jeffrey Lundgren’s appetite for violence couldn’t be satiated. When one target was out of reach, he simply shifted his sights to another — this...

In 1980s Ohio, Jeffrey Lundgren wasn’t just studying scripture — he was twisting it into something dangerous. To outsiders, he was a soft-spoken tour guide at a historic church site. But behind closed doors, Lundgren...

For a brief, dazzling moment in early 1990s New York, biographer Lee Israel became one of the most notorious literary forgers of all time. Out of money, out of friends, and with a sick cat to care for, Israel turned her...

It was the score of all scores: a $6 million haul in cash and jewels lifted from JFK Airport in 1978. The headlines called it the Lufthansa heist; Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas turned it into legend. But the real story...

In the piney woods of East Texas in 1910, a mob of white men stormed through the Black community of Slocum, murdering dozens — possibly hundreds — of unarmed residents. The killers faced almost no consequences, and the...

Crime doesn’t take a day off. And neither does Crime House Daily. Hosted by self-defense instructor and advocate for victims, Katie Ring, Crime House Daily is coming to you twice every weekday, covering the biggest...

When a major German magazine announced it had uncovered Adolf Hitler’s long-lost diaries, the world took notice. But what began as a journalistic coup turned into a scandal that rattled media empires — and left a...

The murder of Barbara Hamburg might read like fiction — a bitter divorce, a mysterious pyramid scheme, a family full of secrets — but for her son Madison, it was all too real. In 2010, Barbara was found bludgeoned to...

This week on Crimes of the Centuries, we’re breaking from tradition. Instead of a crime from decades past, we’re looking at a case that’s still shaping headlines — and raising questions that may take years to answer...

In 1981, 21-year-old Danny Hansford was shot and killed inside one of Savannah’s grandest mansions. The man who pulled the trigger, antiques dealer Jim Williams, claimed self-defense. What followed was a legal circus...

Bella Wright was a shy, working-class woman whose life was cut short on a summer night in 1919, just short of her 22nd birthday. At first, her death looked like a tragic accident – until a single bullet found lodged in...

Laura Fair wanted what many women in Gilded-Age San Francisco wanted: security, respectability, and a husband who told the truth. What she got instead was a years-long affair and a heap of public scorn. When a single...

You’d think the guy helping build the deadliest weapon in history would be someone the Allies vetted carefully. You’d be wrong. Klaus Fuchs was a physicist, a refugee, and a trusted member of the Manhattan Project. He...

In 1974, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood left her home with a binder full of evidence and a plan to blow the whistle on dangerous conditions at the plutonium plant where she worked. She never arrived. What followed was a...

Jerry Sandusky was a legend at Penn State University. As the right hand of head football coach Joe Paterno, he was known not only as an exceptional coach but also as a big-hearted philanthropist and advocate for...

In 1935, 12-year-old Lillian Gobitas and her little brother William were kicked out of their Pennsylvania public school — not for misbehaving, but for quietly refusing to salute the flag, which they believed went...

Crimes Of The Centuries is dark again this week, so here is an episode that you might not have heard previously... or might just want to listen to again. When news spread that a high-profile comedian was killed in a...