Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

(Orig pub date: 3/28/23) In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recogniz­able. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping— a crime then punishable by death.

But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South.

My guest, Tal McThenia, first introduced listeners of NPR's This American Life to this case in 2008. A few years later he co-wrote, along with Margaret Dunbar Cutright (the granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar) the definitive book about this historical whodunnit, called "A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation".

The author's website: https://www.talmcthenia.com/

Listen to This American Life's "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/352/transcript

The author's Audubon article: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fall-2021/the-strange-true-story-john-williams-and-charles

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On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane.

Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case.

My guest is Robert Fitzgibbon, author of the new book "Murder in Salem, Massachusetts: The Death of Frances Cochran".

The author's blog: https://medium.com/@chebacco.parish

The author's publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/murder-in-salem-massachusetts-9781467171298

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On October 7, 1964, Debra Miller’s life turns upside down when her mother is arrested for the murder of her father. At only fourteen years old, Debra becomes a ward of the court, grappling with the unfathomable trauma of watching her mother’s trial and conviction—a devastation that is only amplified when her family’s tragedy is splashed across headlines nationwide and featured in Joan Didion’s "Slouching Towards Bethlehem".

Debra is the author of the new book "The Most Wonderful, Terrible Person: A Memoir of Murder in the Golden State". She joins me to share intimate details about her family and the murder case that has so deeply shaped her life — and to wonder whether her mother really killed her father that autumn night so long ago.

The author's publisher page: https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/debra-miller/

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In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloon proprietor Erastus Wallace Scott of Des Moines―with his cousins in the infamous Carter Gang―operated a campaign of murder, fraud, corruption, and prostitution from his bar on East Court Avenue. In 1908, the local paper denounced the neighborhood as “given up almost entirely to houses of prostitution. At one end stands a notorious saloon, the scene of many crimes, even murders, and for years a harbor for criminals and a plotting place for the evil minded."

That reviled enterprise was none other than Scott’s seedy shack of sin. Initially, Scott gained the most notoriety, due to a slaying, numerous assaults, and sex trade associated with his establishment. But a subsequent murder brought cousin Will to the forefront. A land fraud scheme involving all three Carter brothers followed, including grand theft and even more deaths.

Authors David and Rose Donovan, authors of  The Nastiest Saloon in Iowa: Murder, Prostitution, and Corruption in the Heartland, recount the long-forgotten story of a crime family’s nefarious reach beyond the red-light district.

The authors' Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574329629177

The authors' publisher page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/products/the-nastiest-saloon-in-iowa-9781467170826

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The night before Easter 1905, Miranda Bricker left her sister’s house and made her way through the darkness. Her destination was her living quarters and place of employment, the Maplehurst mansion, the home of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s leading industrialist. Within sight of her destination, an attacker emerged from the darkness, rushing her from behind. Their battle cut across the Maplehurst lawn, ending in Bricker’s death before witnesses could be sure what was happening. The killer melted away into the night.

My guest is Mark Sebastian Jordan, author of "The Maplehurst Murder: Mount Vernon’s Most Infamous Unsolved Crime". He walks us through Miranda's horrific murder, the bloodhound hunt that led to the sheriff's prime suspect, and the suspect's eventual death.

The author's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/marksebastianjordan/

The author's publisher's page: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/vendors?q=Mark%20S%20Jordan&contributorID=18602

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