Crimes of the Centuries
Crime is so commonplace that it takes something particularly shocking to be labelled the “crime of the century.” Even so, there are a lot of cases that have earned the distinction. In each episode of Crimes of the Centuries, award-winning journalist Amber Hunt will examine a case that’s lesser known today but was huge when it happened. The cases explored span the centuries and each left a mark. Some made history by changing laws. Others were so shocking they changed society.
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 39 minutes
- Episodes
- 223
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
S3 Ep28: Terror in the Big Top: The Hartford Circus Fire
On July 6, 1944, in Hartford, Connecticut, thousands of patrons were excited to escape the heat and attend the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus performance. While the Flying Wallendas b…
00:33:19 |
Mon 16 Oct 2023
Danny Rolling: The Gainesville Ripper
When five college students in Florida were brutally slain in a four-day span in 1990, it sent shockwaves across the nation as newscasters made comparisons to serial killer Ted Bundy. Police frantical…
00:42:21 |
Mon 02 Oct 2023
S3 Ep26: Elizabeth Báthory: The So-Called Blood Countess
Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory is known as the most prolific female serial killer of all time, accused of slaughtering over 600 young women in her luxurious castles. Legend says Báthory believe…
00:39:19 |
Mon 25 Sep 2023
S3 Ep25: The Eva Hamilton Scandal
At a brothel in New York in 1885, the great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton, Robert Ray Hamilton, met con artist Evangeline Steele. Steele was looking to make their part-time relationship permanent an…
00:34:44 |
Mon 18 Sep 2023
S3 Ep24: Inside Dr. Brinkley’s Operating Room: A Deadly Pursuit of Virility
In 1918 in Milford, Kansas, John R. Brinkley, a fake doctor with no properly accredited medical education, opened a 16-room clinic where he promoted goat glands as a cure for over 20 ailments. The sc…
00:42:39 |
Mon 11 Sep 2023
S3 Ep23: The Sultana Tragedy
On April 27th, 1865, the Sultana, a 260 foot-long wooden steamboat, exploded into flames and sank on the Mississippi River. While the ship was only designed to hold 376 people, more than 2,000 passen…
00:36:49 |
Mon 28 Aug 2023
S3 Ep22: Looking Back on Matthew Shepard: His Story and His Legacy
Matthew Shepard, born December 1, 1976, was a gay 21-year-old student attending the University of Wyoming. On October 6, 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming, Matthew was found horribly beaten, tortured and t…
00:37:39 |
Mon 21 Aug 2023
S3 Ep21: The Fall of the Everleigh Club
On November 22, 1905 at 5:30 p.m, Marshall Field, Jr. was discovered at his residence with a gunshot wound through his left side. While some thought this was an accidental, self-inflicted gunshot wou…
00:34:54 |
Mon 14 Aug 2023
S3 Ep20: The Young Murders: Mrs. Clem's Secret Dealings
On September 13, 1868 in Cold Springs, Indiana, the bodies of business-minded Jacob Young and Nancy Jane Young were found along White River. Both Jacob and Nancy were shot in the head and Nancy's bod…
00:38:44 |
Mon 07 Aug 2023
S3 Ep19: The Resurrectionists: Murder for Profit
In 18th- and 19th-century England, doctors employed grave robbers - or "resurrectionists" - to unearth bodies for anatomical research. Unwilling to wait for bodies to present themselves via natural c…
00:42:17 |
Mon 31 Jul 2023
S3 Ep18: The Texarkana Moonlight Murders
After seeing a movie together on February 22nd in 1946, Jimmy Hollis and his girlfriend Mary Jeanne Larey parked on a secluded road known as a lovers' lane. Just minutes later, a man in a white mask …
00:36:50 |
Mon 24 Jul 2023
S3 Ep17: The Double Indemnity Murder
When Ruth Snyder began having an affair with a married corset salesman, Henry Judd Gray, in Queens, New York, in 1925, things soon turned deadly. Ruth convinced Henry to assist her in killing her hus…
00:38:56 |
Mon 17 Jul 2023
S3 Ep16: Going to the Lordy: The Assassination of President James Garfield
At 9:30 am on July 2, 1881 in Washington, D.C., the 20th American president James Garfield was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Garfield's assassin: Charles J. Guiteau, a man descr…
00:38:32 |
Mon 10 Jul 2023
S3 Ep15: Murder in the Bahamas Part 2
As we explored in our first episode covering this case, Sir Harry Oakes was a member of the "elite" class of men who migrated to the Bahamas to avoid taxes and take part in business activities that w…
00:36:07 |
Mon 26 Jun 2023
S3 Ep14: Murder in the Bahamas - Part One
Harry Oakes was an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and gold miner. Sometime after midnight on July 8, 1943, Oakes was found dead inside his Bahamas house, struck four times behind the left ea…
00:36:20 |
Mon 19 Jun 2023
S3 Ep13: The Massie Affair
In 1931 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Thalia Massie claimed she was raped by a group of men, including Joseph Kahahawai, a well-known local prizefighter. Cracks in Thalia's story throughout the case led to de…
00:41:47 |
Mon 12 Jun 2023
S3 Ep12: Stolen Potential: The Murder of Alberta Jones
In 1959 in Louisville, Kentucky, Alberta Jones was named the first woman prosecutor. Only a few years later in 1965, she was found dead in the Ohio River. In today's episode we discuss Alberta's trai…
00:36:00 |
Mon 05 Jun 2023
From Strange and Unexplained: The Tragicomedy of Typhoid Mary
Hey, Crimes of the Centuries listeners!
We’re off for the Memorial Day holiday, but didn’t want to leave you with an empty feed, so we’re featuring an episode from another Obsessed Network show, “St…
We’re off for the Memorial Day holiday, but didn’t want to leave you with an empty feed, so we’re featuring an episode from another Obsessed Network show, “St…
00:31:36 |
Mon 29 May 2023
S3 Ep11: The Last Call Killings
Multiple murders, violent assaults, and a new forensic fingerprint technique. In today's episode we visit the killings, the acquittals, and eventually the conviction of Richard Rogers, a cold-blooded…
00:35:29 |
Mon 22 May 2023
S3 Ep10: Finding Her Voice: Sabella Nitti of Murderess Row
In the musical Chicago, the foreign woman held prisoner on Murderess Row has only one line in English: "Uh-uh, not guilty." In today's episode, we explore the real-life case that inspired that char…
00:38:08 |
Mon 15 May 2023
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