Today in True Crime

On this day in 1957, “Mad Bomber” George Metesky confessed to planting over 30 explosives around New York City. Guest hosted by Sam Dingman from Family Ghosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1793, the 38-year-old former King of France, Louis XVI, was executed by guillotine in Paris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1981, 52 American hostages were released from Iran after being held captive for 444 days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1919, gangster Arnold Rothstein held a high stakes dice game in a New York City apartment. Authorities interrupted the game and, in the ensuing chaos, three policemen were grazed with gunfire, and Rothstein was charged with the shooting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1967, Albert DeSalvo was sentenced to life in prison for armed robbery and the sexual assault of four women. DeSalvo is most notorious, however, for confessing to the brutal Boston Strangler murders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1977, 36-year-old Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad. He was the first person executed by the state after capital punishment was reinstated in the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1935, the FBI killed outlaw Ma Barker, and her son Fred, in a 4-hour shootout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1976, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Guest hosted by Tyler Allen from The Minds of Madness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1975, 17-year-old heiress Lesley Whittle was abducted from her home in the village of Highley, England. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted from a supermarket parking lot in Arlington, Texas, and murdered. While her killer has never been found, the tragedy of her disappearance sparked the creation of the Amber Alert system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1995, 34-year-old Qubilah Shabazz was arrested for plotting to assassinate Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. She was allegedly seeking revenge for the 1965 assassination of her father, Malcolm X. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1965, 15-year-olds Christine Sharrock and Marianne Schmidt were murdered on the sand dunes off Wanda Beach, in south Sydney, Australia. Their case remains one of the most infamous unsolved murders in the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1983, New York mobster Roy DeMeo was shot seven times and left dead in the trunk of his own car. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1905, a calvary of armed Russian soldiers fired into a crowd of peaceful protestors outside the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1937, the mutilated body of 19-year-old Pamela Werner was found outside the walls of old Peking, China. Her murder was never solved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1973, 23-year-old Mark Essex shot 19 people in New Orleans, Louisiana—many of them police officers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1994, Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted after a practice session in Detroit, Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1996, Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was assassinated by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1990, Charles Stuart, a Boston man suspected of killing his pregnant wife, committed suicide by jumping off the Tobin Bridge into the piercing cold of the Mystic River. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1980, Joy Adamson, famed Austrian wildlife conservationist, was found dead by her assistant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1800, the body of 22-year-old Elma Sands was discovered in the Manhattan Well. Elma’s death captured the attention of the city, and led to the first murder trial with a recorded transcript in the USA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1934, Alcatraz Island began its formal transformation from a benign military brig into one of the most notorious federal prisons in the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1964, 27-year-old Peter Egan, his 24-year-old wife Barbara Egan, and his 19-year-old brother Gerald Egan were murdered at a rest stop. Each family member was shot twice in the head, in what was described by investigators as a Gangland revenge killing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in the year 2000, the Miyazawa family was slaughtered inside their home in the Setagaya Ward of Tokyo. Despite a large collection of available evidence, the murders have not been solved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1888, 7-year-old John Gill was found murdered about 200 miles north of London. The brutality of the killing led the police and the press to link the crime to Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel murders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1956, 12-year-old Patricia Grimes and her 15-year-old sister Barbara left the movies and never returned home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1985, primatologist Dian Fossey was found murdered at her research camp in Rwanda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1976, police in Michigan received a tip about a body lying on the side of the road. Upon investigation, they identified it as 12-year-old Jill Robinson. She would come to be known as the second victim in the mysterious case of the “Oakland County Child Killer.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1996, JonBenet Ramsey was murdered. The death of the 6-year-old beauty queen captivated the nation and dominated headlines; it’s one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1945, George and Jennie Sodder’s West Virginia home caught on fire. Five of their nine children were trapped inside the house as it burned to the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1996, the body of 39-year-old French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found at her vacation home in County Cork, Ireland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot and wounded four young Black men in a subway car in New York City. The incident launched a national debate about race, crime, and vigilantism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1978, police obtained a second search warrant to enter the home of suspected serial killer John Wayne Gacy. What they found in a crawl space underneath Gacy’s house remains one of the grisliest crime scenes in American history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1973, Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, the heir apparent to dictator Francisco Franco, was killed by a terrorist group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1983, the Jules Rimet FIFA World Cup Trophy was stolen from the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1987, Ivan Boesky was sentenced to three years in prison. When he was found guilty of insider trading. Guest Host: Hannah, co-creator & co-host, RedHanded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1938, Margaret Martin went to meet a mysterious man for a job interview. It was the last time she was seen alive. Her body turned up 4 days later—her killer never found. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1989, Federal Judge Robert Vance opened a mail bomb delivered to his house; the explosion killed him instantly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1946, Robert Manley decided to cheat on his wife—setting off a chain of events that led directly to Manley’s arrest as a suspect in one of the most gruesome murders in American history: The Black Dahlia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 835 CE, a plot hatched by China’s Emperor Wenzong to kill the court eunuchs backfired. Instead, the eunuchs used their own army to slaughter more than 1,000 government officials and their families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1961, the widely publicized trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann reached its conclusion in Jerusalem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1982, 56-year-old Dr. Charles Scudder and his partner, 44-year-old Joseph Odom, were murdered in their house in rural Georgia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1978, over $5.8 million in cash and jewelry were stolen from the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Guest Host: Suruthi Bala, co-creator & co-host, RedHanded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1934, Tony Mancini began his trial for the Brighton Trunk murders. But the crime itself was bound to another, eerily similar murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1963, the FBI released a five-volume report on the JFK assassination to the Warren Commission: the agency’s first official investigative statement on President Kennedy’s death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1982, nuclear disarmament activist Norman D. Mayer brought Washington D.C. to a stand-still when he claimed to have a truck full of explosives at the Washington Monument. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1992, a Grand Jury indicted Lyle and Erik Menendez for murdering their parents in Beverly Hills over 3 years earlier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1967, 24-year-old Barbara Ann Taylor was murdered. For 30 years, her body remained unidentified, and she was simply referred to as “Tent Girl” — due to the material covering her corpse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1873, Bridget Landregan was found beaten and strangled to death in Boston. Witnesses described a figure wearing a black cape standing menacingly over her body, but he fled before they could see his face. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this day in 1997, Moses Sithole was found guilty of 38 counts of murder and 40 counts of sexual assault, making him one of the most notorious serial killers in South African history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices