Crimes of the Centuries

In 1884 Cincinnati, a string of brutal murders and a verdict that outraged the public set off a chain of events that would end in one of the darkest moments in American history — the largest massacre of unarmed civilians by National Guard troops on U.S. soil. In Truth Deferred, historians Mike and Amy Morgan investigate what actually happened — and present the truth that was deliberately buried for over 140 years. While Amber's on vacation, we share Episode 1 of Truth Deferred: The story starts on Monday, March 31, 1884. The streets are covered in blood. Over 50 people are dead, and some are dying in the hallways of the hospital. Every window has been smashed out of the jail, and the county courthouse is a smoldering ruin. To find out how we got here, we travel back to an imperfect love story ending in a public murder, and how the case of William McHugh illustrates a growing distrust of the criminal justice system. (Truth Deferred began as a Grab Bag Collab podcast available only at GrabBagCollab.com. After its initial run, it was released wherever you get podcasts, so subscribe today.)

When a 22-year-old woman living with relatives in a boarding house disappeared on Dec. 22, 1799, her loved ones didn't immediately worry. But when she still hadn't returned days later, all eyes turned to her lover, whom she'd supposedly been set to marry the last time she was seen alive. Levi Weeks came from a family with money, so his rich brother did something that was unheard of at this point in American history: He hired fancy lawyers. And that's how Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr ended up on the same side defending a man against murder charges in 1800. The case, referenced in Lin Manuel Miranda's award-winning musical "Hamilton," marks two firsts: The defense panel was America's first legal Dream Team, and the Weeks' case was the first recorded murder trial in the country's history.

Amber's on vacation, so she's yanking an episode of The Catalyst from behind the paywall over at Grab Bag Collab. Dive deep into the upbringing and backstories of individuals who committed history's most notorious crimes, shedding light on the psychological factors that shaped their paths. With a suspenseful twist, the identities of these individuals won’t be unveiled until the end of each episode. ‘The Catalyst’ will unravel the complex narratives behind these disturbing cases and try to understand what triggered them. This episode is called "The Traveler."
To get our back catalog of Catalyst episodes, plus all of our other shows, subscribe at www.grabbagcollab.com.

In September 2012, a 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student was found beaten to death in her off-campus apartment. She was a biology major, a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe, and weeks away from her twentieth birthday. Despite DNA evidence collected from the scene on day one, her case went cold for nine agonizing years — generating hundreds of DNA tests, thousands of interviews, and an internet's worth of amateur theories that muddied the waters and targeted people who had never been charged. An arrest has since been made, and trial is set for September. But questions about what was preserved, what was lost, and whether the systems around her worked the way they should have are only beginning to surface. This is a case worth watching.

In 1859, a wealthy Alabama landowner made a bet that he could do the unthinkable. The next spring, he did just that — trafficking human beings from West Africa to the United States a half-century after it had been made a federal crime punishable by death. The Clotilda brought back 110 men, women and children. For more than 150 years, the ship sat buried in the mud of a Mobile Bay bayou, as if the whole thing had never happened.
Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com

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