Tag: Crime

The Execution that Almost Killed the Death Penalty in Massachusetts (Ep68)

In 1848, a murder case nearly brought an end to the death penalty in Massachusetts.  When a young black man named Washington Goode was convicted of first degree murder that year, there hadn’t been an execution in Boston for 13 years.  White men who had been convicted of the same crime had their sentences commuted to a life in prison, and tens of thousands of petitions poured in asking the governor to do the same thing for Goode.  Yet even so, he was sent to the gallows.  Why?

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Episode 66: Cotton Mather REALLY Hated Pirates

This week, we’re talking about the conflict between Puritans and pirates in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Cotton Mather is remembered for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was the childhood minister to Ben Franklin, ultimate symbol of the American Enlightenment, and he died less than fifty years before our Declaration of Independence was signed. In a way, Mather was one of the last Puritans, and some of his most famous sermons are the ones he wrote for mass executions of pirates.  Times were changing, setting up a conflict between rigidly hierarchical Puritan societies and fledgling democracies that could be found on board pirate ships.

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Episode 65: The Boston Strangler

For almost two years in the early 1960s, women in Boston lived in fear of a killer who became known as the Boston Strangler. Thirteen women were killed, and the murders were eventually attributed to Albert DeSalvo, based on his confession, details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the last murder victim. It’s been over fifty years since DeSalvo was imprisoned on unrelated charges, leaving many people to question whether he was really the lone killer.

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Classics: Boston’s Unknown Serial Killers (Episode 56)

got us thinking about serial killers in Boston.  In this week’s show, we’re revisiting two classic episodes about Boston’s lesser known serial killers.  Meet The Nightmare Nurse and a chilling figure who called himself The Giggler.

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Episode 55: The Boy Fiend, Boston’s Youngest Serial Killer

Jesse Pomeroy was a Victorian era serial killer who stalked the streets of Boston. He predated Jack the Ripper by a decade, and the Boston Strangler by almost a century. At only 14 years old, he was known as the Boy Fiend, a child who tortured and killed his fellow children, becoming Boston’s youngest serial killer.

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Episode 49: The Tong Wars and the Great Chinatown Raid

This week’s episode takes on the early history of Boston’s Chinatown, two murders that took place there at the turn of the twentieth century, and a terrifying crackdown on Chinese Americans in Boston that sparked an international incident and has parallels in today’s headlines.  

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Episode 45: The Skin Book

The Skin Book was written by highwayman George Walton and dedicated to the only man to best him in combat.  While he was a prisoner at Charlestown Penitentiary, Walton wrote a memoir.  According to his wishes, after his death, the book was bound in Walton’s own skin and given to the man who defeated him.  Today, this example of anthropodermic bibliopegy is a prized possession of the Boston Athenaeum.

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Episode 43: The Case of the Somnambulist

When young Albert Tirrell killed his lover Maria Bickford on Beacon Hill, it sparked a scandal that rocked Victorian Boston in the 1840s.  It was a tale of seduction, murder, and the unlikeliest of defenses.  In the end, he would be found not guilty, in the first successful use of sleepwalking as a defense against murder.

We apologize for Nikki’s head cold, some rough cuts that resulted from editing out her sniffles, and the couple of sniffles that made it into the final cut.

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Episode 38: The Reign of Charles “King” Solomon

This week’s show is about Charles “King” Solomon, also known as Boston Charlie, whose criminal enterprise placed him at the head of organized crime in Boston throughout the prohibition era.  He reached influence at the national level, set policies in play that led to tragedy at the Cocoanut Grove, and in death, left a wake that may have led to the rise of Whitey Bulger.

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Episode 32: The Gruesome Tale of the Giggler

Everyone knows the story of the Boston Strangler. Fewer people know the tale of The Giggler, Boston’s lesser known serial killer. The victims fit no pattern, they were a young boy and girl, a grown man, and an old lady.  The Giggler would simply feel what he described as an irresistible urge to kill.

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