True Crime Historian18 Nov 2025

Quintuple Executions

The Early Days Of The Electric Chair

This is a combination of two early episodes with a common theme.

The Shocking Death Of William Kemmler: The First Electric Execution

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Episode 19. Following the brutal murder of his common law wife Tillie Ziegler in Buffalo, New York, March, 1889, the rough character William Kemmler said he was glad he did it was was happy to hang for the crime. He did not quite get his wish, as a newly passed law in the state of New York allowed Kemmler to become the first man to die in the electric chair. His executioners knew that the execution would be an experiment of sorts, and it was not exactly the rousing success they had hoped for, but it did usher in a new era in America’s criminal justice system.

Quadruple Electrocutions: Four Murders, Four Executions

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Episode 39 is a follow-up to Episode 19, "The Shocking Death of William Kemmler," which I had published about two months prior. If you remember, that execution went so badly that many thought it was a failed experiment. Indeed, it took the state of New York nearly a year to perform a second electric chair execution, but it did so with a bang, putting four men to death on the same day, July 7, 1891. - Will it work out any better? Listen and find out…

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Episoder(446)

The House On Second Street

The Borden MurdersJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 499 revisits the most famous event in American crime history, a sweltering August day in 1892, when Andrew and Abby Borden were hacked t...

6 Sep 54min

The Devil on 63rd Street

H.H. Holmes and the Murder CastleJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 498. Chicago, 1893. Twenty-seven million people come for the World's Fair. A pleasant, well-dressed doctor named Holmes p...

31 Aug 59min

The Axeman Of New Orleans

A Spirit and a Demon from the Hottest HellJump to AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 497 takes place in New Orleans, 1918. A killer is working the back streets of the Italian immigrant neighborhoods — ...

24 Aug 56min

The Walk Of Death

A Diary Of RetributionJump to the Ad-Free Safe House EditionEpisode 496. September 6, 1949. A World War II veteran put on his best suit, loaded a German Luger, and walked out of his Camden apartment. ...

16 Aug 55min

The Footprints That Led In

The HinterKaifeck MurdersJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 495 takes place in the weeks before Easter 1922, when footprints appear in the snow outside a remote Bavarian farm. They lead in ...

10 Aug 47min

I Merely Shot Him

The Eighty Days Of President GarfieldJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 494. July 1881. Charles Guiteau waits in a Washington railroad station with a revolver picked for its ivory grip — he...

3 Aug 57min

Transatlantic Trunk Murders

Episode 246. Pulp Nonfiction: Remembering the Pioneers of True CrimeJump to AD-FREE Safe House Edition"The Lake Como Honeymoon Trunk Murder" by R.O. Scallan. When an American newlywed bride's body tur...

27 Jul 1h 8min

The Chair He Took

The Killing of Wild Bill Hickok and the Two Trials of Jack McCallJump to the AD-FREE Safe House EditionEpisode 493 begins in Deadwood, August 1876, six weeks after Custer dies at Little Bighorn. A sma...

19 Jul 57min