Retro Crime Story Time

Stuck In Trafficking

We visited the former Ma's Tea House in Key West, Florida for this episode. It used to be a brothel owned by longtime local madam Alice Reid. Almost exactly 85 years before we arrived, resident Cecelia Thompson Tunks had been murdered with her own undergarments. The exact same incident happened again 6 months later in Philadelphia. Yet one case went cold, and the other didn't. We explore the crimes of human trafficking, prostitution, vagrancy, and murder.

Holiday Spirits

On Christmas Eve in 1963, Lucille Chester shot her husband Elmer in the small town of Jeanette, Pennsylvania. What kind of woman spends Christmas Day in jail? I'll tell you what kind, and where that kind came from.

Goldie Locked And Loaded

Goldie Mae Richmond grew up in the mountains of West Virginia among alcoholics and violent criminals. In 1959, she became one herself when she shot and killed her father. Was she protecting her child? Or was she no more innocent than the people she grew up with.

Freak The Buckhout

Happy Halloween! On our latest visit to Sleepy Hollow, New York, we researched the village's second most popular ghostly resident. Isaac Van Wart Buckhout killed his wife Louisa and neighbor Arthur Rendall on New Year's Day in 1870. He was hanged and has become a part of the region's haunted folklore.

The Mann Actor

In Clearwater, Florida in 1915, the charred remains of 19 year old Susie Eliot and her mother Bessie were found in a car that had been set on fire. The chauffeur pointed the finger at the Citrus King of Pinellas County, John Mendenhall, who pointed the finger right back at the driver. The investigation revealed a story of misogyny, immorality, and all three traits of the dark triad.