Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast
by Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins · 325 episodes
HistorySocietyCulture
Foggy gaslit streets. A quiet courtroom. And crimes that history tried to bury. Foul Play is a historical true crime podcast that investigates the most chilling murder cases from the 1800s and early 1900s across the United States and the United Kingdom. Hosted by investigative crime journalists Shane Waters — who pioneered crime podcasting in 2008 — and Wendy Cee, each season unravels one complete criminal case through original research, court records, and primary source material. This isn't sensationalized true crime. Every season of Foul Play puts victims first — their names, their stories, their humanity — before examining how murder investigations unfolded in an era befo...
Latest episodes
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32 min
New Jersey & Kentucky: Industry and Ambition
October 1900, Paterson, New Jersey. A seventeen-year-old silk mill worker named Jennie Bosschieter walks toa drugstore on a Thursday evening. She never comes home. Four men from th…
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2 min
Start Here: Welcome to Foul Play
Foul Play is historical true crime, built from the records that survive. Every week Shane Waters goes back to a real crime that history tried to bury and tells it plainly, with res…
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35 min
Noah Benson and the Kurtz and Biggs Families: Delaware & Montana
In 1891 Noah Benson, a Black farmhand and a father, was murdered, and his body was pulled from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. His head was never found. In 1889 in Montana Terri…
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35 min
Ella Barham and Albert Molitor: Arkansas & Michigan
In 1912 in the Arkansas Ozarks, 18-year-old Ella Barham was murdered, and Boone County hanged her neighbor Odus Davidson on circumstantial evidence. In 1875 in Rogers City, Michiga…
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35 min
The Bloody Benders and the Lunenburg Women: Kansas & Virginia
The Bloody Benders killed travelers at their Kansas inn and vanished in 1873. In 1895 in Lunenburg County, Virginia, Mary Abernathy, Pokey Barnes and Mary Barnes were convicted of…
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35 min
The Hamburg Massacre and Cherokee Bill: South Carolina & Indian Territory
In 1876 an armed white mob killed six Black men in Hamburg, South Carolina, and not one of 94 men indicted was tried. That year Crawford Goldsby, later Cherokee Bill, was born; aft…
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34 min
Mollie Korbel and John Gordon: North Dakota & Rhode Island
In 1888 in Wahpeton, Dakota Territory, 19-year-old Mollie Korbel was shot in a kitchen after refusing a deputy, and a mob hanged him. In Rhode Island, John Gordon was hanged in 184…
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35 min
Hawaii and Louisiana: The Plantation's Shadow, 1887-1889
This episode is part of Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodesexploring the cases that shaped American history from every corner of the cou…
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35 min
William Freeman and Ella Watson: New York & Wyoming
William Freeman, a deaf Black man broken by Auburn State Prison, killed four people near Owasco Lake in 1846, and Seward defended him. In 1889 in Wyoming, six men lynched Ella Wats…
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35 min
Paula Angel and Adolphus Monroe: New Mexico & Illinois
Paula Angel was hanged twice from a cottonwood tree in New Mexico in 1861. Five years earlier in Charleston, Illinois, a mob hanged Adolphus Monroe after the governor reprieved him…
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47 min
The Keepers, Where Are They Now
Shane Waters and Gemma Hoskins close out their reunion by going down the list of the people who appeared in the Netflix documentary The Keepers, where they are today, who is still…
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51 min
The Suspects and the Silence
Shane Waters and Gemma Hoskins continue their first sit-down in over a year, working through the second half of the questions listeners submitted through the show's Facebook commun…
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37 min
California & Alabama: When the Mob Decided to Be the Law
This episode contains descriptions of murder, mob violence, historical racial violence, and the execution of a convicted killer. If you need to skip this content, advance past the…
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40 min
New Hampshire & Colorado: Two Forgotten Murders, 1886-1897
This episode contains discussions of murder, execution, racial violence, and a botched public hanging. If you need to skip any section, the chapter markers below will help you find…
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1 h 22
Who Killed Sister Cathy, The Mary Statue and Unanswered Questions
Shane Waters and Gemma Hoskins sit down together for the first time in over a year for a wide-ranging conversation about the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in…
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37 min
Massachusetts & Tennessee: Two Axe Murders, 1893 & 1897
This episode contains detailed descriptions of violent death, including axe murders and decapitation. If you need to skip this content, advance to the chapter markers below. Suppor…
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32 min
Texas & Philadelphia: When Justice Wore a Price Tag
This episode contains discussions of murder, arsenic poisoning, the deaths of children, and historical criminal trials. Ifyou need to skip any portion, advance past that segment us…
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28 min
Nevada & Georgia: Women on the Gallows, 1873-1890
Historical SignificanceIn Georgia, a Webster County posse pursued Susan and Enoch one hundred twenty-five miles to Coffee County, Alabama. The grand jury indicted both on May 27, 1…
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35 min
Missouri & North Carolina: Love Songs and Death
July 1877. A dirt road in rural Missouri. A fifty-eight-year-old woman named Martha Parrish is shot dead by her own son-in-law while trying to rescue her daughter from an abusive m…
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29 min
Ohio & Washington: Justice Buried for a Century
Content Warning: This episode contains descriptions of gun violence, intimate partner violence, poisoning, and discussions of coercive control in same-sex and heterosexual relation…