Hidden Histories & Hidden Gems

Violent bank heists, bold train robberies and hardened gangs all tear across the history of the wild west--western Pennsylvania, that is.

The region played reluctant host to the likes of the infamous Biddle Boys, who escaped Allegheny County Jail by romancing the warden's wife, and the Cooley Gang, which held Fayette County in its violent grip at the close of the nineteenth century. Then there was Pennsylvania's own Bonnie and Clyde--Irene and Glenn--whose murderous misadventures earned the trigger blonde and her beau the electric chair in 1931. From the perilous train tracks of Erie to the gritty streets of Pittsburgh, authors Thomas White and Michael Hassett trace the dark history of the crooks, murderers and outlaws who both terrorized and fascinated the citizenry of western Pennsylvania.

From Mesoamerican mysteries to local legends, history waits to be unearthed on Colorado’s western slope.

Revelations include discovering new evidence in the infamous Alferd Packer case and old Spanish colonial relics near Kannah Creek. Investigators follow the trail of lost Spanish explorers searching for the Seven Cities of Gold and pursue archaeological signs of a prehistoric civilization north of Collbran. Expeditions search for the legend of the Utes’ Cave of the Ancients and the fabled location of Aztlán, the Aztecs’ original homeland.

A crew of historians, archaeologists and scientists, the Western Investigations Team uses ground-penetrating radar, electron microscopy, innovative metallurgic research and newly discovered documents to reexamine fascinating historical questions and contribute new chapters to history.

From a hot springs attraction to a central location for gangsters, gambling, moonshine and organized crime, trace the evolution of this loose buckle in the Bible belt, now a resort and major tourist destination.

In the late 1800s, Hot Springs, Arkansas, was a small town with a big attraction: hot thermal water. The federal government took possession of the downtown-area springs, and bathhouse row was born, along with the first property that would be considered a national park. Following not too far behind were great entrepreneurs who brought in gambling and prostitution to go with the area's leading industry: moonshining. By the time the 20th century rolled in, Hot Springs was booming with tourists and became America's first resort. In the early 1930s, former New York gangster Owen Madden took up residence in the spa city, and things became very organized. Gangland luminaries from Al Capone to Frank Costello made regular pilgrimages over the next few decades to what was referred to as the loose buckle in the Bible Belt.   

Controlled by the heavy hand of the mob and fueled by government corruption, Newport evolved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into a notoriously robust center of criminal activity.

With top political and law enforcement officials often on the take, the seedy status quo became so excessive that a May 1961 issue of Time magazine declared, "Newport has developed such a gaudy brand of gambling and prostitution that it stands today as one of the nation's most blatant sin centers." Eastern Kentucky University Professors Gary Potter and Thomas Barker, both experts on organized crime, along with Jenna Meglen, offer up a captivating chronicle of Newport's criminal development, complete with thought-provoking assessments of the possible advantages that organized crime brought to the city commonly considered to be Las Vegas's predecessor.

Detailing the salacious history of Baltimore and its denizens from the city's earliest history up to and through Prohibition.

With nicknames such as ""Mob Town"" and ""Syphilis City,"" no one would deny that Baltimore has its dark side. Before shows such as ""The Wire"" and ""Homicide: Life on the Streets"" brought the city's crime rate to national attention, locals entertained themselves with rumors surrounding the mysterious death of writer Edgar Allan Poe and stories about Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who spent time in a Baltimore area sanitarium in the 1930s.

Tourists make the Inner Harbor one of the most traveled areas in the country, but if they would venture a few streets north to The Block on Baltimore Street they would see an area once famous for its burlesque shows. It is only the locals who would know to continue north on St. Paul to the Owl Bar, a former speakeasy that still proudly displays some of its Prohibition era paraphernalia.

Local historian Yance Marti uncovers the rough and rowdy blackguards who once made Milwaukee infamous.

The Cream City of yesteryear was a dingy haven for scofflaws and villains. Red-light districts peppered downtown's landscape, but none had the enduring allure of River Street, where Kitty Williams and Mary Kingsley operated high-class brothels. Chinese opium dens flourished in the backrooms of laundries. The demise of the Whiskey Ring brought down local distillers in a nationwide scandal that nearly reached the Oval Office. As a result, Police Chief John Janssen and the Committee to Investigate White Slavery and Kindred Vice waged a protracted battle to contain the most brazen offenses.

Explore the notorious and unusual side of Muncie's history.

Muncie is the classic small American city. But for much of the past two centuries, the city fell victim to murder, corruption and the bizarre. Mayor Rollin Bunch went to prison for mail fraud, while his police commissioner faced a murder rap. Viola Babe Swartz ran a brothel out of a truck stop that was raided by police at least a dozen times but ran for sheriff in the 1974 primary election. June Holland, of the locally famous Holland triplets, killed her neighbor for refusing to sell her house.

Many of the North Jersey Shore towns we know today began as quiet retreats for pious New Yorkers wishing to escape the vice and crime of the city.

Towns such as Long Branch, Ocean Grove, Red Bank, and Atlantic Highlands all got their start like this, but with the passage of Prohibition in 1919, the region became a haven for criminals who began smuggling liquor through the serene seaside. Speakeasies sprang up on virtually every corner, as gangsters like Vito Genovese, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and Meyer Lansky ruled this brutal underworld, while civilians were caught in the crossfire of gun battles between rival syndicates. Discover the true drama that captured the Jersey Shore during Prohibition.

Uncover Ulster County's hidden history of unsavory characters and stories of its wicked past.

Situated in the scenic Hudson Valley, Ulster County is a lovely location to make a home and raise a family, but it wasn't always so pleasant. Unsavory characters and immoral events have sullied its name. In the 1870s, the Shawangunk Mountains inspired fear rather than awe, as groups like the Lyman Freer and Shawangunk gangs robbed and terrorized locals, descending from the protection of the wooded peaks. Kingston was torched, arson blazed in Kerhonkson and even the Mohonk Mountain House was threatened by flames. In 1909, the Ashokan Slasher's bloody crimes and sensational trial captured headlines across the country. Discover these and other salacious stories buried in Ulster County's history.

Author Thea Lewis takes a revealing ride through the unique and colorful history of the Green Mountain State.

Vermont is a picturesque landscape, but the idyllic setting hides a sometimes dark and desperate past. H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer, may have been the University of Vermont's deadliest student. A Burlington resident made an empire partly by carrying contraband goods to and from Canada. The first United States president subject to a birther movement wasn't 44, but a much lower number. A Burlington schoolboy ran away with the circus and became an international sensation under the big top.

Even in paradise, evil sometimes creeps in.

Thoughts of Alabama invite images of Confederate jasmine and fertile cotton fields, sweet iced tea and Southern hospitality, but there's a darker side to the state's history. Some of the stories captured within the pages of this book are well known to the good folks of North Alabama; others are less familiar. The scandals of Lincoln's brother-in-law, the reign of terror created by Huntsville's Southwest Molester, the Decatur man who buried his wife's dismembered body under the fish pond and the beautiful Black Widow of Hazel Green--all of these stories are well researched and masterfully written by Huntsville author Jacquelyn Procter Reeves. True-crime fans will appreciate this treasury of stories spanning nearly two hundred years of North Alabama history.

Join local historian Tim Crumrin as he reveals the blackguards, rogues and swindlers of Terre Haute’s rough and rowdy past.

For more than a century, Terre Haute earned its reputation as a sin city. One of the most notorious red-light districts in the Midwest, the West End, housed sixty brothels and nearly one thousand prostitutes at its height in the 1920s. Across this sordid scene strode the stylish and indomitable Edith Brown, the city’s most famous madam. When Prohibition made the city bootlegger central, violence erupted as rival gangs vied for turf. Gamblers flooded in from all corners of the country, making Terre Haute’s Wire Room second only to Las Vegas. Through it all, corrupt politicians like Mayor Donn Roberts profited handsomely from grift and deception.

Historian Thomas Keels tells many ribald stories in his book, Wicked Philadelphia: Sin in the City of Brotherly Love, including various methods of body snatching and murder. --Marty Moss-Coane, WHYY-FM

Prim and proper Philadelphia has been rocked by the clash between excessive vice and social virtue since its citizens burned the city's biggest brothel in 1800. With tales of grave robbers in South Philadelphia and harlots in Franklin Square, Wicked Philadelphia reveals the shocking underbelly of the City of Brotherly Love. In one notorious scam, a washerwoman masqueraded as the fictional Spanish countess Anita de Bettencourt for two decades, bilking millions from victims and even fooling the government of Spain. From the 1843 media frenzy that ensued after an aristocrat abducted a young girl to a churchyard transformed into a brothel (complete with a carousel), local author Thomas H. Keels unearths Philadelphia's most scintillating scandals and corrupt characters in this rollicking history.

A look back at New Orleans's early wicked days and historic crimes

Since as early as the 1700s, New Orleans has been a city filled with sin and vice. Those first pioneering citizens of the Big Easy were thieves, vagabonds and criminals of all kinds. By the time Louisiana fell under American control, New Orleans had become a city of debauchery and corruption camouflaged by decadence. It was also considered one of the country's most dangerous cities, with a reputation of crime and loose morals. Rampant gambling and prostitution were the norm in nineteenth-century New Orleans, and over one-third of today's French Quarter was considered a hotbed of sin. Tales in this volume include that of the notorious Axeman who plagued the streets of the Crescent City in the early 1900s and Kate Townsend, a prostitute who was murdered by her own lover, a man who later was awarded her inheritance.

Wicked Akron, Ohio takes the reader on a journey through the seedy underbelly of the city's history.

Akron is known as "the rubber capital of the world'? and home to Goodyear. But look beneath those tires and you will find dirt…a lot of dirt! Explore Akron's darkest days, when citizens burned city hall to the ground and members of the Ku Klux Klan called the shots from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Meet a grave robber who became a political leader, a mobster who ordered police murders and a beloved bootlegger turned bail bondsman. Say hello to Frank Hurn, a flashy, frenetic, fast-talking con man who was looking for suckers to invest in the Vulcans, an NFL team he promised to bring to Akron. From city saloon to suburban hideout, this is an alternative history lesson of the sometimes dicey coexistence of the well-heeled and the workers, men and women who lived big lives during Akron's fledgling days as a canal port, its pre-Depression heyday and zenith as a Midwestern industrial success story.

Author Kymberli Hagelberg, an award-winning journalist and native Northeast Ohioan, takes the reader on a morbidly-entertaining tour of the shadowy corners of Akron's history. With stories including mobsters and body snatchers, con men and Klansmen, plagues and fires, there is truly something for fans of local history and true crime stories.

Filled with tales of infamous duels, cheating congressmen, and much more, Wicked Lexington, Kentucky offers the first collection the city's rowdy and ruckus history .

Despite its illustrious beginnings as the "Athens of the west," Lexington has always had a darker side lurking just beneath its glossy sheen. It didn't take long for the first intellectual hub west of the Alleghenies to quickly morph into a city with the same scandalous inclinations as neighboring Louisville and Cincinnati. From Belle Brezing's infamous brothel of the late 1800s, frequented by some of the city's most prominent businessmen, and once pardoned by the governor, to historic sports scandals of the 1900s, local author Fiona Young-Brown tracks Lexington's penchant for misdeeds from founding to modern times.

“An entertaining and well-illustrated anecdotal survey of ‘vice’ and efforts to control it in mid- and late 19th century Boston” The Boston Guardian.

Victorian Boston was more than just stately brownstones and elite society that graced neighborhoods like Beacon Hill. As the population grew, the city developed a seedy underbelly just below its surface.

Illegal saloons, prostitution, and sports gambling challenged the image of the Puritan City. Daughters of the Boston Brahmins posed for nude photographs. The grandson of President John Adams was roped into an elaborate confidence game. Reverend William Downs, a local Baptist pastor, was caught in bed with a married parishioner.

Author Robert Wilhelm reveals the sinful history behind Boston’s Victorian grandeur.

Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever and misunderstood female criminals.

Queen of the Underworld Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders in city history. Mother Elinor L. Mason, High Priestess of the Flying Roller Colony, was no holy roller but a criminal chameleon who changed personas as easily as some people change clothes. And a feud between Delray madams Julia Toth and Annie Smith exposed widespread graft in the thriving red-light industry and led to one of the worst police scandals in Motor City history. These stories and more await in this deliciously entertaining collection.

Take a trip with Larry Stanford through 350 years of Newport's hidden, dark history.

Founded by a small band of religious freedom seekers in 1639, Newport, Rhode Island, subsequently became a bustling colonial seaport teeming with artists, sailors, prosperous merchants and, perhaps most distinctively, the ultra-rich families of the Gilded Age. Clinging to the lavish coattails of these newly minted millionaires and robber barons was a stream of con artists and hangers-on who attempted to leech off their well-to-do neighbors. From the Vanderbilts to the Dukes, the Astors to the Kennedys, the City by the Sea has served as a sanctuary for the elite, and a hotbed of corruption. Local historian Larry Stanford pulls back the curtain on over 350 years of history, uncovering the real stories behind many of Newport's most enduring mysteries, controversial characters and scintillating scandals.

Join Bielawa as he navigates a precarious path through the unforgettably macabre and scandalous misdeeds of Bridgeport.

Beneath the smokestacks of the gritty cityscape of Bridgeport, Connecticut is the shocking criminal underbelly of this New England community. Sin and vice have long had a home on the shores of the Long Island Sound, and Bridgeport's sinister past is littered with tales of pirates, mobsters, bizarre Victorian murders, and even rumors of a doctor's attempts to reanimate the dead. Historian Michael J. Bielawa investigates such bizarre crimes as the unsolved murder of philanthropist James Beardsley, and the grisly discovery in Yellow Mill Pond during the 19th century, which helped legitimize forensic science. Join Bielawa as he navigates a precarious path through the unforgettably macabre and scandalous misdeeds of Bridgeport.