Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

(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/

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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/

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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/

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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

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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/

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