Crime Scholar
16 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 41 ratingsIn-depth research by Paris Brown, a PhD candidate, former 9-1-1 police radio dispatcher, and vintage curator of true crime, mysteries, tragedies, eccentrics, and the beauty of the bizarre--all told with flair and big hair. Formerly 'Class A Felons.'
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Episodes
Halloween Short Story: Faces at the Window
October 31, 2022 08:38 - 23 minutes - 21.4 MBHappy Halloween! In this episode, I'm sharing one of my favorite short ghost story called "Faces at the Window" by Rose Wilder Lane. It is based, in part, on the true story of the Bloody Benders, who murdered lodgers at their residence in the 1800s. Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House on the Prairie book series. Lane did not publish this story before her death in 1968; it was released posthumously in 1972. Enjoy! If you like this episode, please subs...
Oscar Zeta Acosta: Fear, Loathing, and the Disappearance of a Brown Buffalo
May 30, 2022 05:52 - 58 minutes - 134 MBThe character of Dr. Gonzo in the book and film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is based on a real person: a one-time military airman...turned Baptist missionary...turned legal aid attorney...turned Los Angeles County Sheriff's candidate...turned author...turned missing person. This is the story of the intriguing life and mysterious, unsolved disappearance of Oscar Zeta Acosta. We'll take a trip back to Los Angeles in the 1970s that features psychedelics, Chicano civil rights activism--and a...
The Sherman Courthouse Riot: The Lynching of George Hughes
November 04, 2021 18:55 - 1 hour - 83.5 MBParis' lifelong search for her family's genealogical records leads her to investigate the reason they are missing: the lynching of a 41-year-old African American man named George Hughes in 1930. Accused of assaulting a white woman in Sherman, located within Grayson County, Texas, George never gets his day in court. Instead, locals burn down the courthouse with Hughes trapped inside and later carry out a postmortem lynching. Special guest Melissa Thiel, a public historian and a native of Gray...
11. Truman Capote & Ann Woodward: Miss Bang-Bang, Part 2
July 28, 2019 22:15 - 1 hour - 64.6 MBA glamorous but ostracized socialite shoots her husband in their home one night but claims she thought he was a prowler. High society (mostly) takes her word for it...until Truman Capote, the author of the first true crime novel, In Cold Blood, reminds the public of the Woodwards' fraught relationship and accuses Ann of murder by writing a vicious short story about her. This is part 2, which focuses on Ann and Billy Woodward and the infamous shooting. At the 45-second mark, Batty the podcat...
10. Truman Capote: The Socialite, the Shooting, and the Suicide, Part 1
July 21, 2019 23:44 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBA glamorous but ostracized socialite shoots her husband in their home one night but claims she thought he was a prowler. High society (mostly) takes her word for it...until Truman Capote, the author of the first true crime novel, In Cold Blood, reminds the public of the Woodwards' fraught relationship and accuses Ann of murder by writing a vicious short story about her. This is part 1, which focuses on Capote's own tumultuous life. This is the third episode in the podcast's second season, "...
9. Assia Wevill: The Oven Suicides, Part 2
April 02, 2019 09:08 - 1 hour - 185 MBIn 1969, Assia Wevill--hailed as a great beauty and advertising talent--bizarrely committed suicide in the same manner as her paramour's wife six years earlier. To add to the tragedy, she killed her 4-year-old daughter, Shura. This is the story of a woman tormented by the dead poet Sylvia Plath, the refusal of Sylvia's husband Ted to commit to her even after he fathered her child, and the memory of her narrow escape from Hitler and the Holocaust. This is the second episode in the podcast's ...
8. Sylvia Plath: The Oven Suicides, Part 1
March 11, 2019 08:49 - 1 hour - 225 MBSome people best know Sylvia Plath for her unusual mode of suicide; others remember her for as one of the first authors to write openly about her own mental illness. But there's even more to her than that: the early loss of her father, the obsessive desire to be an over-achiever, that time she made national news as a missing person, the desire to find a 'perfect' husband, and the wild betrayal she felt when that perfect husband had an affair. But what exactly caused the author of THE BELL JA...
Season 2 Teaser
February 11, 2019 07:32 - 3 minutes - 3.73 MBThis preview opens the chapters of Season 2! This second season, titled "Stranger Than Fiction" goes into storytelling mode about the strange and tragic lives of some famous--or infamous, as may be the case--of some famously fascinating authors. Topics will include schizophrenia, suicide, high society, beat society, clinical depression, strange deaths, mysterious disappearances, attachment disorder, alcoholism, and obsession. Join us at the 2019 TRUE CRIME PODCAST FESTIVAL IN Chicago, IL on...
7. Cinnamon Brown: Named for Fame
January 30, 2019 22:16 - 1 hour - 66.9 MBIf your parent had asked you to do something illegal as a teen, how would you have reacted? What it it was murder; what recourse would you have? This is the sad and sordid tale of a selfish Orange Co., CA man who, in 1985, persuaded his 14-year-old daughter to kill her stepmother. It's a tale that delves into the twisted mind of a bad dad who cherished wealth and under-aged young women more than he did his children. When his scheme was uncovered, he doubled down and ordered the killing of mo...
6. Caril Fugate: Bad Love in the Badlands
December 22, 2018 07:46 - 58 minutes - 54 MBThe Midwest U.S. was rocked in the late 1950s not just by new-fangled rock 'n roll music or by its bout of horrific flooding, but by an even more sinister kind of horror. Fourteen-year-old Caril Fugate accompanied her 19-year-old boyfriend Charles Starkweather on a murder spree that would claim 11 lives between December 1957 and January 1958 and would later inspire a host of films and music about their rampage through the Badlands. If you like this episode, please subscribe and rate us with...
5. Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow: The Bluest Shot-At Eyes in Texas
December 09, 2018 06:39 - 1 hour - 102 MBBonnie Parker Thornton and Blanche Caldwell Callaway were two despondent flappers at the close of the 1920s. In fact, the popular 1929 song "Am I Blue?" could have been written for them. But in 1930, at the start of the U.S.'s Great Depression, they met two brothers, Clyde and Buck, who were known as the 'Barrow Gang.' Somehow, these two petty criminals and ex-cons won the hearts of Bonnie and Blanche to the extent that neither woman would desert them, even when the Barrow brothers' violent ...
4. Sara Aldrete: Community College Cultist
November 22, 2018 05:29 - 48 minutes - 44.3 MBIt was the '80s: big hair, gold lamé, car phones, greed, Satanic Panic...and a young borderland woman who had a hand in helping to create that panic. When Sara Aldrete met cult leader Adolfo Constanzo, her goal of becoming a state college transfer and P.E. instructor changed to dark dreams of becoming a black magic high priestess. Before police caught up with what was later dubbed the "Matomoros Murder Cult," 23 people were brutally murdered, including a young college student named Mark Kilr...
3. Carole Tregoff: Lover in the Bushes
November 07, 2018 08:31 - 51 minutes - 117 MBThis is a story local to us, and we've never heard it discussed on any other podcast. In 1959, a glamorous, well-to-do doctor's wife named Barbara Jean Finch was gunned down one night in front of her mid-century modern West Covina, California home. A witness, her young au pair, saw the murderer with her own eyes. It was Barbara's estranged husband, Bernard "Bernie" Finch. But what the au pair didn't notice was Bernie's lover, Carole Tregoff, hiding in the bushes on the property. Even after ...
2. Carolyn Bryant: Whistle Bait and the Murder of Emmett Till
October 31, 2018 03:36 - 32 minutes - 29.9 MB1955, rural, Jim Crow-era Mississippi. Emmett Till, just 14 years old, met a horrific death after being accused of whistling at and putting his arm around 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. Over 60 years later, her account of their fateful encounter changed. Just who is Carolyn, and what forces propelled her toward the center of a murder that would become a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement? This is the second episode in the podcast's first season, "Accessories to Murder." If you like th...
1. The Manson Women: Look at Your Game, Girl
October 26, 2018 00:09 - 1 hour - 70.7 MBYou've undoubtedly memorized the story of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders, but how much do you know about the lives of his followers, especially before they met him? Here's the life stories of five Manson Family members, which helps to explain how they became, well, Manson Family members: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie VanHouten, Lynette Fromme (who attempted a presidential assassination), and Dianne Lake, the youngest member of the group. This is the first episode ...
Season 1 Teaser: Refashioning Morbidity
October 16, 2018 21:38 - 6 minutes - 6.03 MBIntroduction to the hosts, two mid-20th-century enthusiast sisters with murder on their minds. We discuss our backgrounds and what drives our interests in true crime and vintage culture. This episode also previews the first season of the podcast, "Accessories to Murder." Hosts: Paris Brown and Desi Robba Produced & written by: Paris Brown Edited by: Paris Brown Music by: Dr. Frankenstein. "Theme for 'The Mad Thinker'" from The Cursed Tapes: Stolen Songs from Dr. Frankenstein's Lab, 2005...