Crime&stuff

So, what do you do with a musical genius who loves guns and scares the hell out of people? Well, since he’s rich, more famous than famous and influential, nothing. Until someone gets hurt. Phil Spector, whose “wall of sound” production transformed the music of the 60s, spent decades bending people to his will with crazy […]

In April, Richard Dabate was arrested on charges he murdered his wife in December 2015. The evidence against Dabate is a cyber-crumb track of electronic device information, the biggest ones provided by the Fitbit his wife was wearing when she was shot in their Connecticut home. Investigators said it’s the first time a Fitbit has […]

Updates on Logan Marr (episode 18) and Anthony Sanborn (episode 22). Find out how Logan Marr’s sister, Bailey, turned out. Some good news for a change. On the other hand, in the ongoing saga of Anthony Sanborn, the Portland, Maine, man recently freed on bail after 27 years in prison, find out what a case […]

Frances Schreuder wanted desperately to be a member of high society, but she just didn’t have enough money to bankroll it. So she did what a lot of women would do — got her teenage son to kill her incredibly wealthy but tight-fisted father. You may not recognize the names now, but the murder of Franklin […]

  When 16-year-old Jessica Briggs was found dead under the Maine State Pier in Portland in May 1989 — stabbed, beaten and eviscerated — police quickly narrowed their focus to her fellow street kids. They arrested her sometime boyfriend Tony Sanborn in 1990, he was convicted of her murder in 1992 and an appeal failed in […]

Today’s quiz: After 9/11, what was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil? You know, the one that killed more people than any other? That’s right, Oklahoma City. Don’t you feel people have kind of forgotten about that one? In any case, we talk about Tim McVeigh the twisted white supremacist whose bomb killed […]

Ah, bucolic small-town life, where everything is wonderful. NOT. More like, where everything can be a real cluster f***. Take Franconia, New Hampshire, in 2007 for instance. Mix in a messed-up kid, a hard-ass cop and a vigilante gun-nut bystander and the only outcome there’s going to be is trouble. On May 11, 2007, Like […]

In a VERY SPECIAL episode, we feature the April 2 Noir at the Bar event, in which a dozen members of the Maine Crime Writers blog and some guest speakers read (brief!) passages from their work. The Maine Crime Writers blog is a loose group of published mystery and crime writers who live in, and […]

  Logan Marr was too young to understand why the state of Maine kept taking her away from her mother. Her mother, Christy Baker, didn’t really understand either. Baker did everything she was asked, but a tangle of poverty, culture and, most importantly, a bureaucracy that valued its  own prejudices over the well-being of a […]

  Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death, then stabbed through the neck with the broken end of a golf club when she was 15. If it had happened in 2015, an arrest probably would have been made almost immediately. But it happened in 1975 in an exclusive gated neighborhood in Connecticut and the man finally […]

It was the best of times, then the worst of times, for two con men — and their marks — as they separately traveled America using one of the country’s most famous and powerful names to wheedle their way into the hearts and minds of the rich. And ultimately, for one, to commit murder. What […]

Everyone makes stalking jokes. Everyone. But from the time it first came into modern public perception as a thing, to the recent murder of singer Christina Grimmie, and for millions of regular people who aren’t celebrities and have to live with it every day, it’s not a joke at all. What’s happened since the vicious […]

We don’t mail it in when we discuss the spate of US Postal Service-related shootings over a 20-year period that spurred the phrase “going postal,” particularly one in Edmond, Oklahoma, in 1986 that changed the way we look at mass shootings. Patrick Shirrell wasn’t the first disgruntled worker to shoot up his workplace, but when […]

  Nearly 16 years after Washington intern Chandra Levy disappeared and nearly 15 after her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., police are no closer to convicting someone of her murder. That’s despite one trial and conviction, a scheduled then dumped retrial and the extremely unhelpful “goofiness” of Gary Condit, the […]

  From drunken assaults to sex trafficking to an Uber app in which Satan told the driver to kill, the ride-share business has had plenty of crime during its short life. Drivers, passengers, bystanders — everyone joins the party. We discuss some of the highlights from our special perspective of being Uber drivers ourselves. Buckle […]

One of New Hampshire’s longest-standing mysteries — the discovery of the remains of a woman and three children in Bear Brook State Park — was solved (kind of) when a young woman searching for her birth parents with DNA set off a series of events that revealed a cross-country serial killer. Bob Evans — or Gordon […]

What seemed like a good thing for people on the margins when it started out turned into one of the most horrific tragedies of the late 20th century, thanks to a narcissistic megalomaniac who had just enough charisma to convince politicians he was a godsend and to leave him alone, get a thousand people to […]

A special road trip episode as we talk in the car ride home from Washington DC about the Women’s March and other stuff. Fun fun fun with one million others! What’s the deal with the crowd count? The guys who were there? What was the deal with the boy in the tree? What DID he see? […]

What happens when the details of a tragedy become the foundation of internet legend? We discuss the Massachusetts nursing student’s disappearance  on a dark New Hampshire road as the 12-year mark approaches, it’s connection with the Vermont disappearance of 17-year-old Brianna Maitland a month later, as well as the possible Boston serial killer of young mostly […]

Maine has one of the lowest murder rates in the country. For the past couple of decades, there have been between 20 to 25 homicides a year in the state. In 2016, there were 16. Yet, the types of murders Maine has are telling — murder victims are most likely to be killed by someone […]