True Crime Campfire

Murder always makes an imprint in the lives of the people around it. But when a murder goes unsolved—or multiple murders—the imprint is even darker. It can linger through years, even decades. It can stain the history of an entire city. In the mid-1930s, there was a series of murders like that in Cleveland, Ohio. Gruesome, brutal murders that shocked the conscience of everyone who followed the story. We know for sure of 13. We suspect there were many more. Those murders have still never been solved. There are victims who have never been identified, never given back their names or their dignity. But a wealth of tantalizing clues remain, and there are some compelling theories on who the killer may have been.

Sources:

Cleveland Magazine, Erick Trickey: https://clevelandmagazine.com/articles/solving-the-cleveland-torso-murders/
https://www.clevelandpolicemuseum.org/collections/torso-murders/
"Unsolved Mysteries" with Robert Stack, S5, E13 (1992)

Cleveland.com, Laura DeMarco: https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/10/55d2b5ea596983/clevelands-infamous-torso-murd.html

Buzzfeed Unsolved, episode "The Ghastly Cleveland Torso Murders"

Various interviews and articles, James Badal

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Most of us have ordinary lives, with all its joys and heartbreaks, and that’s more than enough…but not for everyone. There will always be some people who want a brighter spotlight than their life has provided for them, but who ideally would like to avoid any hard work involved in earning it themselves. The kind of person who cares so much about how they’re perceived is also often the kind of person who finds it hard to care at all about the welfare of others. This can lead to some very dangerous decisions. Join us for a story of stolen valor, fraud, and murder.

Sources:

NBC's Dateline, S25E5, “Secrets in the Smoky Mountains”

https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/court-of-criminal-appeals/2019/e2018-00295-cca-r3-cd.html

https://tbinewsroom.com/2013/09/16/federal-prisoner-pleads-guilty-in-2006-monroe-county-murder/

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There are few crueler ways to harm someone than through poison. It turns your own body against you, making you a prisoner in a failing shell. Being poisoned can be terrifying, agonizing, drawn out for weeks or months…or it can push you out of consciousness and falling towards death as quickly and easily as turning off a light switch.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/10/curry-poisoner-guilty-murder

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb/11/poison-curry-killer-sentenced

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/06/poison-curry-murder-trial

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna25855779

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13424532/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/nurse-faces-extradition-for-us-murder-1.1022408

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/nurse-wanted-for-murder-in-us-now-living-in-dublin-1.1040566

Forensic
Files, S13E28 “Needle in a Haystack”

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In last week’s episode, we met John Smith, a lying, manipulative weirdo who almost certainly had killed his missing second wife, Fran. Towards the end of that episode, we learned that John had been married before, to a young woman named Janice Hartman—and that Janice, just like Fran, had gone missing, never to be seen again. We started that episode with a grim discovery six years after Janice’s disappearance—the skeleton of a young woman in a plywood box beside a country road in western Indiana, her legs cut off below the knees. This week, it all comes together.

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Sources:

Michael Fleeman, The Stranger in My Bed

NBC's Dateline, S32E37, “Chameleon”

https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/9/2002/2002-Ohio-4402.pdf

https://legalclarity.org/betty-fran-smith-case-from-disappearance-to-dropped-charges

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/oct/03/handler-hailed-for-her-search-dogs-sent-to-prison

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If there’s one old folktale that finds a frequent echo in true crime stories, it has to be ‘Bluebeard,’ about a man who marries and then murders a series of wives. It’s a pattern we’ve seen time and again, with both killer husbands and lethal wives, most often driven by greed. That, at least, is something comprehensible—there are some killers driven by urges so cold and petty that it’s hard to even recognize them as human.

Join us for the chilling true story of a serial husband whose entire life was a lie.

Sources:

The Stranger in My Bed, Michael Fleeman

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