Advertise on podcast: 15 Minutes of Infamy

It was a long, dangerous two mile walk to the Pembroke Academy, a school situated between Manchester and Concord, in New Hampshire's Merrimac County. Josie Langmaid, the pretty 17-year-old daughter of a mill worker, usually made the daily journey with a group of friends. But on the morning of October 4, 1875, Josie was running late. Her friends had already departed. On that morning, Josie walked alone. Local landowner Brainard Gile recalled that he had passed Josie in his buggy that morning and had waved to her. Josie, with her usual cheerful disposition, waved back. And that was the last anyone saw of Josie Langmaid, until her headless corpse was discovered in a swamp. This is the true story of Merrimac County's most astonishing murders-- and the peculiar monument that was erected to keep her memory alive.

Lake Como, in northern Italy, is celebrated as one of the most romantic and picturesque spots in the world and has attained fame as one of the most popular honeymoon destinations in Europe. It also attained international notoriety in 1910 for being the scene of a remarkable murder mystery involving the son of an American judge.

On March 27, 1914, schoolteacher Lida Beecher left her boarding house in upstate New York to mail a letter but never returned home. When her body was found the next morning, it led to the arrest of one of her teenage students. The trial of Jean Gianini was a national sensation, raising questions about how to punish those of low intelligence who commit murder-- questions that our legal system still wrestles with today.

This is the story of a girl, who drowned in a river and shocked the whole world. And while she looked so sad in photographs, Poe absolutely loved her-- and so she became the inspiration behind one of his most famous stories.

When penmanship instructor Asa Wheeler fell on hard times, he decided to rent out space to an aspiring textbook author with a very famous brother. But if Wheeler felt that the Colt name-- a name synonymous with firearms since the 1850s-- couldn't possibly hurt his business, he would be mistaken. What transpired next became one of the most discussed true crime cases of Old New York-- a case which famously spawned a conspiracy theory involving a faked death, a doppelganger corpse, and powerful family connections.

This week, we visit the Emmanuel Church in San Francisco-- a church with a very dark history. One of its former pastors had committed suicide in his study, another pastor had murdered a member of the congregation, and a third had carried on so many extramarital affairs that he had been forced to resign. But, in 1895, when the body of a missing teenage housekeeper was discovered inside the church library with a dinner knife protruding from her chest and a college student was found butchered in the belltower, it created a media sensation that helped launch one of the greatest careers in the history of journalism.

During WW2, thousands of young women invaded the city of Washington. With all the able-bodied men fighting the war, many of these women took government jobs and were, for the first time in their lives, out on their own. One such woman Dorothy Berrum, an 18-year-old from Wisconsin who left home and went to work for the War Department. When Dorothy began dating men in uniform her friends implored her to be careful...If only she had listened. The search for Dorothy's killer produced a Marine Corps belt buckle found near the scene of the crime. But there was just one problem-- the soldier it belonged to was stationed thousands of miles away in the South Pacific at the time of her murder.

This week, we meet William Udderzook, a criminal mastermind who might've gotten away with the perfect murder... if only his victim hadn't practiced such fantastic oral hygiene.

One of the most infamous murders in the history of Denver, Colorado, took place in 1911. But this murder didn't involve a wily gold prospector, a Wild West bandit, or a rugged cattle rancher. It grew out of a good, old-fashioned love triangle involving a gas company worker, a playboy hot air balloonist, and the young socialite wife of a wealthy banker. This is the true story of Isabel Springer and the men who loved her-- a story that serves as a cautionary tale of just how quickly one can go from the penthouse to the poorhouse.

Neighbors hadn't seen Willian Druse for days, but then someone noticed his farmhouse windows were covered with newspaper, and a foul-smelling smoke was billowing from his chimney. Little did they suspect, however, that his wife and daughter were inside, exacting their revenge with rope, a hatchet, a revolver--- and several cauldrons of boiling water.

The children of Reverend William Christy, a traveling preacher from Ohio, were flabbergasted. Their father hadn't mentioned anything about marriage, and so when they learned that he had tied the knot in January of 1926, they were left speechless. William's wife had died three years earlier, and his children, though stunned, were happy for the 56-year-old preacher, even though they knew nothing about his new 48-year-old bride, Laura. If only they had looked into her past, they would've discovered that death seemed to follow Laura wherever she went.

On a Saturday afternoon in June of 1897, three boys playing along East 11th Street and the East River found a bundle bobbing on the surface of the water. It contained part of a man's body-- the shoulders, arms and chest, to be precise. The case of the East River Torso Murder stumped New York's best detectives and probably would've remained unsolved-- if not for one thirsty newspaper reporter and a discolored duck.

Early on the morning of February 23, 1929, James Boyle of Newark, New Jersey, turned his car off the main highway to take a shortcut home. He had traveled only a short distance when he saw flames on the snowy ground off the edge of the road. He pulled over for a closer look, and what he saw chilled the blood in his veins-- the burning object was the body of a woman. This is the astonishing tale of a most peculiar killer-- with a peculiar penchant for teddy bears.

In 1924, a 35-year-old chemist from the Bay Area of California took over an abandoned factory at Walnut Creek and started a business called the Pacific Cellulose Chemical Company. The community was intrigued after the chemist explained how he had mastered a secret process for manufacturing artificial silk-- a process he claimed to have discovered in Germany during his stint as an Allied spy in WW1. But after a deadly explosion rocked his laboratory the truth about the mad scientist finally came to light-- and the truth was much more sinister than anyone could've imagined.

On the afternoon of Saturday, February 27, 1859, the nation's capital was thrown into a state of excitement over an incident which took place at Lafayette Square. At two o'clock, two distinguished gentlemen met each other on the square. One offered his hand for a handshake, the other refused. Instead, he put his hand in his pocket and drew a pistol. This is the true story of a self-taught lawyer with the audacity to try a never-before-used defense-- with his own neck on the line.