Crimes of the Centuries

On September 5, 1982, 12-year-old Johnny Gosch left his West Des Moines home to deliver newspapers. He never made it back. What followed was a police chief with his own violent history, an FBI that wanted nothing to do with it, and a mother who refused to let the case go quiet — even when the few answers she found led somewhere far stranger than anyone expected.
Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com
Order the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!
Follow us on Instagram and other social media: @centuriespod
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A con man with a gift for talking fast and a knack for never getting caught made himself invaluable to the FBI in the late 1970s — and the FBI made him the centerpiece of the biggest political corruption sting in a generation. It never should have worked, yet it went further than anyone expected.
Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com
Order the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!
Follow us on Instagram and other social media: @centuriespod
 Episode Sponsors: 
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In 1979, a federal judge in San Antonio was known for one thing above all else: He did not show mercy. John H. Wood Jr. had earned his nickname the hard way, one maximum sentence at a time. Just before he was set to face off with a powerful drug empire, he was killed outside his home in broad daylight. What followed would become the most expensive FBI investigation since the Kennedy assassination, a courtroom circus involving a Las Vegas kingpin, a hitman with the world's most unusual business card, and a famous son fighting to clear his father's name.
Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com
Order the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!
Follow us on Instagram and other social media: @centuriespod
 Episode Sponsors: 
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The roaring '20s of last century were fueled in part by a new industry: filmmaking in Hollywood. Directors were rolling in dough, as were the silver screen's first stars. But in 1921, the future of cinema would forever be altered after internationally beloved comedian Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle was charged in the death of a young starlet after attending a boozy Prohibition-era party in Arbuckle's hotel suite. 
Please enjoy this encore episode from Season 1, sparked by a listener suggestion who'd missed it in our lineup. 
"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

A young woman named Elsie Cameron vanished after delivering an ultimatum to her fiancé, chicken farmer Norman Thorne. Weeks later, investigators dug up his property and found her dismembered remains buried in an unmistakable place — the same spot where he'd posed for a photograph days earlier, smiling, surrounded by his birds. Thorne had an explanation. It was a strange one. And the only person whose opinion would really matter in deciding whether to believe it was a man whose word, by 1925, was treated as close to unimpeachable in a British courtroom. A jury took less than 30 minutes to decide who was telling the truth. A century later, people are still arguing about whether they got it right. (Amber is off this week for her birthday and to clean up after the recent derecho in Ohio. Please enjoy this bonus episode from behind the paywall.)