Afleveringen
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In the final part of our series on Starr Faithfull, the investigation begins, and this is where the mystery begins!
Why were parts of her clothing missing? Why did two autopsies reach different conclusions? What was in Starr's diary? And what role, if any, did the powerful former mayor Andrew J. Peters play after years of abusing her?
In this final episode, we walk through the investigation, the evidence, and the theories that have been debated for more than 90 years. We also talk about how the press turned Starr into a "party girl," and why we think that completely misses the point.
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Starr Faithfull finally tells her family the secret she’s been carrying for nearly a decade: she has been sexually abused by a powerful and trusted relative since childhood.
In Part 2, we talk about what happened after that revelation, as her family struggles to help her in an era when trauma was poorly understood and the modern ideas of treatment were more than questionable.
This is Part 2 of our 3-part series on Starr Faithfull.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In 1931, the body of 25-year-old Starr Faithfull washed ashore on a Long Island beach. Newspapers and the public speculated whether her death was murder, suicide, or an accident. But before we can answer that question, we need to go back to the beginning: to old Boston money, political power, and the man Starr knew as "Uncle Andrew."
Content note: This episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse, grooming, eating disorders, addiction, suicidal ideation, and mental health struggles.
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We're wrapping up our summer break series, and we're leaving murder, mystery, and historical villains behind and head into the strange world of UFO sightings, and things that definitely shouldn't have been lurking outside people's homes after dark. Or before dark. Pretty much at any time!
First, we travel to Scotland in 1979 for the Dechmont Woods Incident, where a respected groundskeeper named Robert Taylor claimed he encountered a bizarre metallic craft and strange spiked objects in the woods near Livingston. To this day, it's the only UFO case in British history to result in a police investigation.
Then we head to rural Illinois in 1973, where the tiny town of Enfield found itself at the center of a monster panic after a local man reported an encounter with a strange three-legged creature with glowing eyes. Was it an escaped animal, a case of social contagion, or something far stranger?
Finally, we visit a farmhouse near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where an extended family spent an unforgettable August night defending their home from mysterious glowing creatures now known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins. Nearly seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous UFO encounters in American history.
As always, these are condensed versions of our original episodes. If you'd like the full stories, you'll find the complete episodes waiting in our archive.
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While Johanna recovers from surgery and Annie does her best to prevent her from immediately returning to work, we're bringing you another trip into the Fresh Hell archives.
This week features condensed versions of two of our most heartbreaking cases, both were originally released as two-part episodes.
First, we travel to Ashland, Kentucky in 1881, where a horrific crime on Christmas Eve left an entire community grieving and searching for answers. The Ashland Tragedy became one of the most sensational cases of its era, complete with false accusations, mob justice, and many questions, that remain debated and unanswered nearly 150 years later.
Then we move to California in 2000 for the murder of fifteen-year-old Nicholas Markowitz. What begins as a petty dispute over a drug debt turns into a senseless tragedy that shocked the nation and inspired the film Alpha Dog.
As always, these are streamlined versions of the original stories. If you'd like all the details, historical context, side tangents, and moments where Annie and Johanna become increasingly frustrated with humanity, the full episodes are waiting for you in our archive.
Content Warning: This episode includes discussion of sexual assault of minors, child murder, kidnapping, and violence against children.
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This week, we’re doing something a little different. We teamed up with Horrifying History for a feed swap, which means we’re sharing one of their episodes with you. And you know is: this one is absolute Victorian nightmare fuel.
In this episode, host Brenda Ganske explores the horrifying world of Britain’s baby farming industry, a system that preyed on vulnerable women and led to neglect, abuse, and murder on a shocking scale. It’s a dark and heartbreaking story.
We know you all enjoy the darker historical side of Fresh Hell, so there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Horrifying History as well.
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The Hitler Diaries are finally exposed as fake, and the fallout is spectacular!
In the fourth and final part of our series, we talk about the collapse of the biggest media scandal in postwar Germany. What did the BKA find? What was the so called “Folternacht” inside Stern headquarters? And what happened to the Carin II.?
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Stern is now spending millions, historians are cautiously warning them, and Konrad Kujau is sitting at home frantically producing more and more volumes while simultaneously convincing everyone that this all makes perfect sense.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Gerd Heidemann follows up on the supposed Hitler diaries and finally meets the man behind them. Money starts changing hands in ways that should probably raise a few questions.
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This week, we start a story that begins with a boat, takes a detour through a small village in East Germany, and ends up with one of the biggest media scandals in German history.
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In 1853, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria goes for one of his regular walks in Vienna. It’s something he does often enough that people know where to find him, and on that day, someone does.
A young Hungarian tailor named János Libényi steps forward and tries to stab the emperor in the neck. The attack doesn’t go as planned, the emperor survives, and within seconds, two men step in and stop it.
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This week we’re in January of 1919, in Boston’s North End. People are still recovering from the First World War and the 1918 flu, the area is packed with people, noise, and a molasses tank that never should have been there in the first place.
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When we first started Fresh Hell, people kept asking us to cover the Boston Molasses Flood. So…here we are. And because Annie researched this one, we’re not taking the direct route.
Part 1 is less about the disaster itself and more about everything that led up to it, because as always...none of this happened in a vacuum. We’re in Boston’s North End, one of the oldest and most crowded neighborhoods in the city, and we’re going way back. Fires, smallpox, the Salem witch trials, rum, slavery, baseball...it’s all in here!
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After everything he survived as a child at Spiegelgrund, Friedrich ends up back in prison in the 1970s, where he is sent for a psychiatric evaluation. It's hard to believe what would happen next!
This is the part of the story where things don’t resolve neatly, and where the idea of justice becomes complicated, delayed, and in many ways incomplete.
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In Part 3 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we follow him through detention, sentencing, and a harrowing journey along the Danube as the Third Reich falls apart in its final weeks.
After multiple escape attempts, Friedrich is arrested again...this time landing in the Nazi youth justice system.
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In Part 2 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we meet the doctors of Spiegelgrund.
Dr. Ernst Illing and Dr. Heinrich Gross were psychiatrists working inside Vienna’s infamous children’s institution during the Nazi period. Under the banner of “racial hygiene,” they helped run a system that targeted children considered disabled, difficult, or socially undesirable.
In this episode we look at their backgrounds, their roles within the Nazi medical system, and how ordinary medical careers became intertwined with one of the regime’s most disturbing programs.
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Friedrich Zawrel grew up in Vienna during the Third Reich. As a child, he was labeled “difficult” and “unmanageable” by the authorities. That was enough to place him inside the Nazi welfare and psychiatric system...a system that decided which children were worth keeping alive.
In this episode, we look at Friedrich’s early life and how he ended up at Spiegelgrund, the children’s ward in Vienna where hundreds of young patients were imprisoned, abused, and murdered as part of the Nazi “child euthanasia program".
Friedrich was one of the few who survived. This is his story!
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Vienna, 1940. On the hills above the city stood a children’s psychiatric institution called Am Spiegelgrund. Officially it was a place for treatment, observation, and care. In reality though, it became part of the Nazi system that classified vulnerable children as “unfit,” subjected them to medical abuse, and in hundreds of cases sent them to their deaths.
This episode focuses on the historical background: how a modern medical system was abused as mechanism for sorting, controlling, and ultimately killing the most vulnerable children in society.
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In 1660, a respected estate steward left the English market town of Chipping Campden to collect rent and never came home. His bloodstained belongings were soon found by the roadside, and suspicion quickly fell on his servant, John Perry. What followed was a chain of confessions, accusations, arrests, and a trial that ended in execution.
There was only one problem....Nearly two years later, the supposedly murdered man walked back into town alive.
BUT...where had he been?!
ampden Wonder, William Harrison disappearance, John Perry Campden, Chipping Campden murder case, 1660 England true crime, historical miscarriage of justice, Nicholas Overbury account, early modern English crime, false confession history, 17th century criminal trial, murder without a body case, English Assizes trial history, Restoration England crime, man executed for murder victim returned alive, famous historical wrongful execution case, strangest true crime cases in English history
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