Last year, 2019, I was approached by former Broadway actor and audiobook narrator Charles Huddeston, who offered to narrate my two books in the Famous Crimes the World Forgot series. I’ve been approached before by other narrators, but passed on their offers for one reason or another. I’m so, so thankful that I did not […]

  Lemuel Hawkins, Auto Theft (Federal), 1931 Lemuel Hawkins (October 2, 1895 – August 10, 1934) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago Giants and Chicago American Giants from 1921 to 1928. He was 5’10” and weighed 185 pounds. In 1931 he was arrested for […]

Story by Jason Lucky Morrow Posted: December 9, 2015 On November 9, 1927, twenty-year-old Howard Hitchens of Georgetown, Delaware, was growing concerned for his uncle, Robert, whom he had not seen in several days. When he went to the man’s home in nearby Frankford, he found him “beaten to death in a blood splattered room,” […]

Since this is the week of thanksgiving, I wanted to work in a thanksgiving type crime. The best I could do was this poultry pilferer from 1931. Credit: Nebraska State Historical Society   In 1931, during the depths of the Great Depression, Jake Vohland attempted to steal chickens from Mr. and Mrs. Dale E. Stubblefield […]

On August 19, 1928, Atlanta Police Department Patrolman John McDaniel responded to a disturbance between two acquaintances. When Officer McDaniel attempted to arrest Frederick D. Fair, the principal instigator, Fair shot the forty-nine-year-old lawman in the chest. McDaniel was transported to the hospital, but died three days later of his wound. Fair was later apprehended, […]

  Sunday, October 22, 1933, 8:30 p.m. Goldsboro, North Carolina Herbert Grice was in the middle of untying his shoes when he was stopped by the frantic barking of his dogs. They often barked at everything and anything they didn’t approve of, and Grice quickly dismissed their clamor as insignificant. But before he could get […]

Anna Marie Hahn was a female serial killer who became the first woman ever to be executed in Ohio after it was confirmed that she poisoned five old men to death in order to gain their estates through fraudulently produced wills or by raiding their bank accounts. In 1927, Anna emigrated from Germany and settled […]

Joe Crowe’s Prison Mug Shot Oklahoma State Penitentiary convict Joe Crowe is a great example of the laxness with which prisons once guarded their inmates. In 1938, Crowe was a prison trustee on a dam project near Fort Towson, Oklahoma, where state convicts provided a large portion of the labor force. That November, Crowe left […]

When railroad section hand George Darnell was fired from his job on August 17, 1929, he set his mind on revenge. The following day, Darnell tampered with a track switch near Henryetta, Oklahoma, which later caused a passenger train to jump the track. Thirteen people, eleven of them passengers, were killed and ten more were […]

: Wesley Leroy Sischo was a former maritime customs agent who decided it was more profitable to work on the other side of the law. During World War I, he began working with a Seattle Chinese gang to smuggle opium into Washington State. As the captain of a small coastal vessel, it was his job […]