True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

Dan Zupansky -
True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers

Every week host Dan Zupansky will interview the true crime authors that have written about the most shocking killers of all time.

  1. 6 ЯНВ.

    THE SINNERS ALL BOW-Kate Winkler Dawson

    Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America. On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery was uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide...or something much darker? Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding and wrote what many claim to be the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now. In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to nineteenth-century small-town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—including “forensic knot analysis” and criminal profiling (which was invented fifty-five years later with Jack the Ripper)—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams’s research to find the truth and bring justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given. THE SINNERS ALL BOW: Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne-Kate Winkler Dawson

    52 мин.
  2. 23.12.2024

    JonBenet Ramsey and Det. Lou Smit

    On Christmas Night 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was found in the home, but it was hours before her father, John, found her body in the basement. She had been strangled with a garrote and her skull was fractured. The media sensationalized the tragic death of the “child beauty queen” and public speculation and rumors ran rampant. What followed was one of the most notorious unsolved murder investigations in American history. Boulder police fixated on JonBenet’s parents as suspects. Needing investigative help, the Boulder DA brought in legendary homicide detective Lou Smit. However, he was soon disenchanted with law enforcement’s obsession with the Ramsey family as the primary suspects, excluding other possibilities. Smit resigned but continued to work on his own time, and at his own expense, determined to find justice for JonBenet. He determined the Ramsey family was not involved in her death but died in 2010 before he could identify the killer. Thousands of people attended his funeral service, including John Ramsey, and the detective’s lifelong friend and colleague, John Anderson. Along with a handful of retired detectives, Anderson and Smit’s family continue to pursue justice based on Smit’s work. Now, for the first time in LOU AND JONBENET, Anderson tells the story of Smit’s investigation and why the Smit family team now believes that the killer can be identified. LOU AND JONBENET: A Legendary Lawman's Quest To Solve A Beauty Queen's Murder-John Wesley Anderson

    58 мин.
  3. 16.12.2024

    POSTMORTEM-Courtney Lund O'Neil

    On a December night in 1978, Courtney Lund O’Neil’s mother, teenaged Kim Byers, saw her friend Rob Piest alive for the last time. At the end of his shift at the pharmacy where they both worked, fifteen-year-old Rob went outside to speak to a contractor named John Wayne Gacy about a possible job.That night Rob became Gacy’s final victim; his body was later found in the Des Plaines River. Kim’s testimony, along with a receipt belonging to her found in Gacy’s house, proving that Rob had been there, would be pivotal in convicting the serial killer who assaulted and killed over thirty young men and boys.Though she grew up far from Des Plaines, Courtney has lived in the shadow of that nightmare, keenly aware of its impact on her mother. In search of deeper understanding and closure, Courtney and Kim travel back to Illinois. Postmortem transforms their personal journey into a powerful exploration of the ever-widening ripples generated by Gacy’s crimes. From the 1970s to the present day, his shadow extends beyond the victims’ families and friends—it encompasses the Des Plaines neighborhood forever marked by his horrific murders, generations of the victims’ families and friends, those who helped arrest and convict him, fandom communities, and many others.Layered and thought-provoking, Postmortem is a complex story of loss and violence, grief and guilt, and the legacy that remains long after a killer is caught. POSTMORTEM: What Survives the John Wayne Gacy Murders-Courtney Lund O'Neil

    57 мин.
  4. 02.12.2024

    TRIAL BY AMBUSH-Marcia Clark

    In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman’s case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution. Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse―offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster.But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines.When a robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder, Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus. Her beauty enraptured the press, and they were quick to portray her as a villainous femme fatale despite abundant evidence to the contrary―a fiction the prosecution eagerly promoted.The frenzy of public interest and willful distortion paved a treacherous path for Barbara Graham. In Trial by Ambush, author and criminal lawyer Marcia Clark investigates the case exposing the fallacies in the demonizing picture they painted and the critical evidence that was never revealed. TRIAL BY AMBUSH: Murder, Injustice, and the Truth about the Case of Barbara Graham-Marcia Clark

    45 мин.

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Every week host Dan Zupansky will interview the true crime authors that have written about the most shocking killers of all time.

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