Many people know Nashville for the bright lights and nonstop music, but it also has a history that doesn't make it into the guidebooks. The first public hanging in the city took place in 1802 when Hen
Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Over
Days before the tumultuous presidential election of 1868, St. Bernard Parish descended into chaos. As African American men gained the right to vote, white Democrats of the parish feared losing their m
California was a wild and lawless place in the 1850s, and San Luis Obispo County was no exception. Outlaws and bandits passed along the El Camino Real, now Highway 101, leaving a trail of victims. Des
The Kurim Case: A Terrifying True Story of Child Abuse, Cults & CannibalismIn May of 2007, in a small, quiet town in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic, a technical glitch – a simple, acci
In 1932, a black man was found hanging on Rattlesnake Mountain in Fauquier County. A mob set fire to his body. Officials identified the remains as Shedrick Thompson, wanted for the abduction and rape
Are inscriptions on lead crosses found on the banks of the Santa Cruz River remnants of Freemasons or a hoax? How did famous evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson arrive in Douglas weeks after she went mi
On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families during a spree lasting more than two hours. The violence erupted due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane pla
After Monroe Edwards died in Sing Sing prison in 1847, penny dreadfuls memorialized him as the most celebrated American forger until the turn of the century. With a bizarre biography too complicated f
At seventeen, Floyd Burton Loveless became the youngest person ever executed by the state of Nevada. What led him to that end was just as tragic. Following a series of family catastrophes, Loveless wa
Tommy Osborn's star was rising. The young Nashville lawyer led a band of Tennessee reformers to victory in a landmark Supreme Court case. Hailed by Chief Justice Earl Warren as the most important of h
Though detectives denied it, the Italian mafia was operating in Detroit as early as 1900, and the city was forever changed. Bootleggers controlled the Detroit River and created a national distributio
In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built
Adam “Pump” Arnold was both feared and regaled in Victorian- era Battle Creek. He was a bootlegger and a pimp, a robber and a con artist, an arsonist and a loan shark and even an assassin. Arnold face
