Crimes of the Centuries

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
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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.)

Weeks after a woman's mysterious disappearance, a ship's captain noticed something off about two of his passengers — a quiet, bespectacled man and his teenage "son." He couldn't shake the feeling he'd seen that face somewhere recently. So he did something no ship's captain had ever been able to do before: He alerted police, instantly, from the middle of the ocean that two murder suspects might be aboard his vessel. What followed was one of the strangest manhunts in criminal history, and a case that would later split a forensic field down the middle more than 100 years later.
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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For three years in the late 1970s and into 1980 — before shared databases and DNA evidence — one man moved freely across 11 states trying to start a race war. He changed his name to honor a Nazi propagandist and a founding father. He bombed synagogues, gunned down interracial couples, shot a magazine publisher in broad daylight, and left whole communities living in fear of a killer they couldn't identify.
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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