podcast episode – CRIMEandSTUFF

In our annual holiday tradition, we’re merging our podcasts Groovy Tube and Crime & Stuff, this year in an interactive Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer-watching extravaganza. Ok, it’s not an extravaganza, but break out the DVD and watch with us anyway.

We continue our in depth discussion, including our NNW rating, of both the Netflix documentary and the case it’s based on.

The Negative Nellies watch and rate the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. Both seasons! And this may be hard to believe, but we have so much to say, we’re splitting it into two episodes. We knew you’d like that.

Sometimes the whole thing’s just the Ouija board’s fault, as murders and other bad decisions from coast to coast and across the pond show.

In 2011, romance novelist Nancy Crampton Brophy wrote a blog post on “How to murder your husband.” It turned out to be an unfortunate topic: her husband, Dan Brophy, was murdered in June, shot dead at the Oregon Culinary Institute, were he worked. And in September, Nancy was arrested and charged with his murder.

Albert Flick was convicted of killing his wife in 1979. After he got out of prison, he continued to assault women, a knife his weapon of choice. After his third conviction, Flick got a relatively short prison sentence — the judge said Flick would “age out” of attacking women. Unfortunately for Kim Dobbie, he didn’t.

When two apparently loving moms and their six kids plunged off a California cliff to their deaths, the pattern of abuse and control that lead up to it made many wonder how the red flags weren’t seen earlier. A discussion with our special guest host, our sister Liz the college professor.

Carl Drega didn’t just have a beef with his northern New Hampshire town, he had a lot of beefs. He also had an AR-15 assault rifle and one August day in 1997 he decided to settle things once and for all.  

We’re back! Talking about the killer who brought the death penalty back into fashion in 1976, and inspired a slogan for a giant shoe company. What made Gary Gilmore so special? Listen and find out. Total other end of the spectrum, we apply our NNW rating to the documentary “Bobby Kennedy for President.”

For our very special 50th episode we get a little personal — one of is $1,300 poorer after she got scammed. We talk about what happened, how it happened and, geez, am I really THAT stupid? Uh huh. In our special NNW ratings we discuss the 1974 made for TV movie “Bad Ronald” and Michelle […]

Our long national nightmare is over! That’s right, we finally have another episode up. When a model, her mother and their British gentleman boarder are murdered the night before Easter in 1930’s New York, it’ s not what you think.

Love? Manipulation? Insanity? Whatever. One word that doesn’t apply in the thirty-three years since Derek and Nancy Haysom were murdered is justice. We discuss. And our NNW rating system takes on “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Wormwood.”  

Jeff Dolloff wanted to find a woman to marry who loved his family’s land in Standish, Maine, as much as he did. And he found her. But did Linda Dolloff love it too much to give up without a fight? We discuss. And in our NNW rating discussion of the documentary “Killing for Love,” can […]

David and Louise Turpin are charged with multiple counts for allegedly abusing their 13 children over the past 30 years. What happened between the time the two became a couple — she 15, he 22 — and the moment 30 years later, when their 17-year-old daughter escaped their “house of horrors” in California in January, alerting […]

The silicon chip inside her head had definitely switched to overload, but how she really felt about Mondays is still up for debate. We discuss the 1979 crime that spurred a song and a lengthy prison sentence. Also, in a very special recommendations segment, we unveil our Negative Nellies Watching rating system. Now you can […]

From 1987 to 2003 nurse Charlie Cullen worked at nine hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He wasn’t particularly smart or sneaky, he wasn’t a master criminal. But he killed and killed and killed. And every time a hospital became suspicious and let him go, he’d go down the road to another one, get a […]

On February 10, 1999, at about 4 a.m., the body of Ashley Ouellette, 15, was found on the center line of the Pine Point Road in Scarborough, Maine. She’d been neatly placed there after being murdered. Some 19 years later, police are still looking for her killer. Join us for Episode 43.

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two thieves dressed as police officers talked their way into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, tied up the two guards on duty and walked off with art that’s now valued at $500 million. Nearly 28 years after what is considered the biggest art heist in history, […]

On a November Sunday in 1965, the extended Francis family’s home was invaded by five hunters from Massachusetts. By the end of the day, one member of the family would be dead. Join us for a story that still resonates in Maine more than 50 years later.

What’s the true meaning of Christmas? No, really, what is it? In this very special Christmas episode, in partnership with our sister podcast, Groovy Tube, we find out through That Girl, Mary Tyler Moore, Adam 12 and Starsky & Hutch. Sure, Santa gets arrested. But it’s warmer than eggnog by the fire.

One of them went outside to shoo hunters away from her property as her year-old twins played in the house; another was removing a log that blocked his family’s camp road, anxious for a weekend away with his fiancee; another was hunting for gems on her country property; another was splitting wood, careful to wear […]

Something different this episode! We interviewed four Maine Crime Writers at the annual New England Crime Bake mystery writers conference. Writers Dick Cass, Brenda Buchanan, Barbara Ross and Bruce Robert Coffin — all who write different subgenres of crime and mystery fiction — talk about their books, writing, crime and Maine.

Nichole Cable, 15, told her mother she was going down to the end of their street in a small Maine town to “get some smokes” from an acquaintance. It was the last conversation they’d have. Cable was murdered, her body found weeks later. But not by a stranger, but by a young man who lured […]

Swedish journalist Kim Wall was doing what she did best when she climbed aboard Denmark inventor Peter Madsen’s homemade submarine August 10: chasing a great story. But Wall never got off the sub alive, her dismembered remains later found in the strait between Sweden and Denmark, and Madsen charged in her death.  

More than 2,100 miles, 14 states and, since 1974, 11 murders. The Appalachian Trail is a pretty safe place to be, unless you run into the wrong crazed killer. All of the 11 people who were killed on the trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine were killed by a stranger. At least those whose […]

Carol Jenkins was 21 and on the first day on the job selling encyclopedias when she made the mistake of agreeing to go to Martinsville, Indiana. She didn’t make it out of town alive. That was 1968, and her racially motivated murder is still considered partially unsolved in a town that seems more concerned about […]

In the summer of 1977, New York City was terrorized by a killer who shot his victims at close range, eventually killing six people and wounding seven. He was eventually called the Son of Sam. While not history’s most prolific killer — or even 1977’s — his brazen attacks, which police determined began in July […]

The relationship between Massachusetts teens Conrad Roy and Michelle Carter was one that only could have happened in the 21st century. They lived less than an hour from each other, but rarely met in person. But they communicated nonstop by social media, and in the weeks leading up to Roy’s July 12, 2014, suicide, they […]

In 1912, the state of Maine bought Malaga Island and evicted its mixed-race residents, placing eight of them — an entire family — in the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded and casting the rest adrift, some with tragic results. The move came after a several years of denigration of the people of the island by […]

Soooo… it’s been 31 episodes. And it’s July in Maine. And we have day jobs (kind of). So we’re taking a break for a few weeks from Crime & Stuff. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to say… We discuss what we’re reading, watching, doing (Maureen’s reading 75 self-published books as a contest […]

  In the ongoing Maine case of Anthony Sanborn, the man who served 27 years for a 1989 murder he may not have committed, the most recent twist is that a profiler has linked that murder, of Jessica Briggs, to another in 1987 in Vermont. That murder, of Barbara Agnew, was the last in a […]

On June 4, 2010, Kyron Horman’s stepmother took him to school in Portland, Oregon. There was a science fair that morning and Kyron, 7, was excited about his tree frog exhibit. His stepmother, Terri Moulton Horman, snapped a picture of him to post on Facebook later. It would be the last photo of the little […]

Annie Dookhan, a chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory in Boston, was loved by prosecutors — she was a whiz, testing more drug evidence than everyone else in the lab, and she always got them the results they wanted. Although some of her coworkers wondered just how she got it done, no one else was […]

  Joyce Carol Vincent was pretty, bubbly, smart and talented. She also didn’t talk about her past and had parts of her life even those closest to her knew nothing about. Still, when the remains of a woman were found in a London bedsit in January 2006, about three years after the woman died, none […]

You might remember Phil Hartman from Saturday Live, where in the 1980s he was uproariously funny as Frankenstein in the ongoing Frankenstein, Tarzan and Tonto bit, or as the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (“Your world frightens and confuses me…” Trust us, it was funny). Or maybe you loved him on The Simpsons, where he did another […]

When Blanche Kimball was stabbed to death in her home in Augusta, Maine, in 1976, police were stymied. She’d been stabbed 44 times and left to die, only found by police after neighbors became concerned at least a week after she was killed. Gary Raub — then Gary Wilson — was at the time tearing […]

So, what do you do with a musical genius who loves guns and scares the hell out of people? Well, since he’s rich, more famous than famous and influential, nothing. Until someone gets hurt. Phil Spector, whose “wall of sound” production transformed the music of the 60s, spent decades bending people to his will with crazy […]

In April, Richard Dabate was arrested on charges he murdered his wife in December 2015. The evidence against Dabate is a cyber-crumb track of electronic device information, the biggest ones provided by the Fitbit his wife was wearing when she was shot in their Connecticut home. Investigators said it’s the first time a Fitbit has […]

Updates on Logan Marr (episode 18) and Anthony Sanborn (episode 22). Find out how Logan Marr’s sister, Bailey, turned out. Some good news for a change. On the other hand, in the ongoing saga of Anthony Sanborn, the Portland, Maine, man recently freed on bail after 27 years in prison, find out what a case […]

Frances Schreuder wanted desperately to be a member of high society, but she just didn’t have enough money to bankroll it. So she did what a lot of women would do — got her teenage son to kill her incredibly wealthy but tight-fisted father. You may not recognize the names now, but the murder of Franklin […]

  When 16-year-old Jessica Briggs was found dead under the Maine State Pier in Portland in May 1989 — stabbed, beaten and eviscerated — police quickly narrowed their focus to her fellow street kids. They arrested her sometime boyfriend Tony Sanborn in 1990, he was convicted of her murder in 1992 and an appeal failed in […]

Today’s quiz: After 9/11, what was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil? You know, the one that killed more people than any other? That’s right, Oklahoma City. Don’t you feel people have kind of forgotten about that one? In any case, we talk about Tim McVeigh the twisted white supremacist whose bomb killed […]

Ah, bucolic small-town life, where everything is wonderful. NOT. More like, where everything can be a real cluster f***. Take Franconia, New Hampshire, in 2007 for instance. Mix in a messed-up kid, a hard-ass cop and a vigilante gun-nut bystander and the only outcome there’s going to be is trouble. On May 11, 2007, Like […]

In a VERY SPECIAL episode, we feature the April 2 Noir at the Bar event, in which a dozen members of the Maine Crime Writers blog and some guest speakers read (brief!) passages from their work. The Maine Crime Writers blog is a loose group of published mystery and crime writers who live in, and […]

  Logan Marr was too young to understand why the state of Maine kept taking her away from her mother. Her mother, Christy Baker, didn’t really understand either. Baker did everything she was asked, but a tangle of poverty, culture and, most importantly, a bureaucracy that valued its own prejudices over the well-being of a […]

  Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death, then stabbed through the neck with the broken end of a golf club when she was 15. If it had happened in 2015, an arrest probably would have been made almost immediately. But it happened in 1975 in an exclusive gated neighborhood in Connecticut and the man finally […]

It was the best of times, then the worst of times, for two con men — and their marks — as they separately traveled America using one of the country’s most famous and powerful names to wheedle their way into the hearts and minds of the rich. And ultimately, for one, to commit murder. What […]

Everyone makes stalking jokes. Everyone. But from the time it first came into modern public perception as a thing, to the recent murder of singer Christina Grimmie, and for millions of regular people who aren’t celebrities and have to live with it every day, it’s not a joke at all. What’s happened since the vicious […]

We don’t mail it in when we discuss the spate of US Postal Service-related shootings over a 20-year period that spurred the phrase “going postal,” particularly one in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1986 that changed the way we look at mass shootings. Patrick Shirrell wasn’t the first disgruntled worker to shoot up his workplace, but when […]

  Nearly 16 years after Washington intern Chandra Levy disappeared and nearly 15 after her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., police are no closer to convicting someone of her murder. That’s despite one trial and conviction, a scheduled then dumped retrial and the extremely unhelpful “goofiness” of Gary Condit, the […]