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Ep. 5: Isaac Sawtelle

Unlike so many murderers who have been forgotten by history, Isaac Sawtelle earned his fifteen minutes of infamy-- not just for the brutal nature of his crime, but for having the rare distinction of being sentenced to death in a state where the crime wasn't committed. Christmas Day of 1889 had a special meaning for one Boston family. Isaac Sawtelle, Jr., would be reunited with the family he hadn't seen in sixteen years. Isaac's long absence from home was neither the result of his seeking fortune out West or traveling abroad, nor was it because of a family rift. No, the reason for Isaac's long-awaited homecoming was because he had just been pardoned by the Governor of Massachusetts after serving half of his sentence for raping three young girls. And the reason why he was welcomed home with open arms was because Isaac's elderly mother, Hannah, had never believed that he was guilty in the first place.  In 1889, Hannah Sawtelle found herself living with her other son, ...
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Ep. 22: The Imbecile Defense

Lydia 'Lida' Beecher Fourteen miles north of Utica, New York, lies the sleepy village of Poland. On the Saturday morning of March 28, 1914, a farmer driving along the road leading out of this little Herkimer County village noticed something strange in the freshly fallen snow. It was blood, and an assortment of random objects haphazardly strewn about, as if scattered by a violent struggle. When the farmer realized that one of the objects was a woman's hair comb, he followed the tracks into the woods, past a barbed wire fence, where he found the mutilated body of a young woman. Lydia Beecher, known to friends and family simply as Lida, was the 21-year-old daughter of Reverend William A. Beecher, a Presbyterian minister from Cayuga County. Lida, who was a teacher at the one-room schoolhouse in the village of Poland, lived in a rented room in a boarding house not far from the spot where her body was discovered. According to her housemates, Lida had gone out to mail a letter on ...
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Ep. 2: Unchained Medley

  After Nancy Boyer, a middle-aged hairdresser, was found murdered in her apartment by her landlady, Washington D.C.'s top detectives leaped into action-- but little did they know that the man they were after had left a trail of red-haired victims from New Orleans to Chicago. So, what was the reason for the killer's distaste for redheads? Chief Detective Robert J. Barrett of the Washington DC homicide squad arrived at the crime scene and observed that the door to Nancy Boyer's ninth-floor apartment had a peephole. The red-haired, 45-year-old hairdresser must've known the person she let into the apartment on 16th street on the night of Tuesday, March 6, 1945. That was the last time anyone had seen Nancy alive. It was the manager of the building, Mrs. Ida Soelter, who entered Nancy's apartment with a pass key on the night of Thursday, March 8, to check on her tenant at the urging of friends and neighbors. She found Nancy's lifeless body slumped against the kitchen...
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