Local historians Geoffrey Fleming and Amy Folk uncover this gruesome 19th-century story of revenge and murder on Long Island.

In the mid-19th century, James Wickham was a wealthy farmer with a large estate in Cutchogue, Long Island. His extensive property included a mansion and eighty acres of farmland that were maintained by a staff of servants. In 1854, Wickham got into an argument with one of his workers, Nicholas Behan, after Behan harassed another employee who refused to marry him.

Several days after Behan's dismissal, he crept back into the house in the dead of night. With an axe, he butchered Wickham and his wife, Frances, and fled to a nearby swamp. Behan was captured, tried, convicted and, on December 15, became one of the last people to be hanged in Suffolk County.

Desire, Deceit and Debauchery

Tombstone was a wild place during Arizona's territorial era, with violence and criminal activity running rampant. It wasn't just the Earp brothers' iconic gunfight at the O.K. Corral that left behind a trail of death and destruction--lawlessness and vigilante justice reigned throughout the Old West era. Driven by tension between the sheriff's office and the local Deputy Marshal, daily life for infamous outlaws, corrupt civil servants, and even ordinary customers of the saloons and brothels was apt to devolve into chaos at any moment.

Join author Cody Polston as he brings to life the characters who walked the dusty streets and left their mark on Tombstone's bloody past.

Discover the dark corners of Norton, Ohio, history

For such a small city, Norton's past is rife with bloody deeds, tragic accidents, and destructive disasters. This community on the edge of Akron had its share of train wrecks, plane crashes, and devastating fires, but other events were decidedly more sinister in nature. In 1931, a young robber allowed his twelve-year-old brother to ride along on a bank heist--to little brother's great delight. A labor dispute in 1950 resulted in two bombings of a local farm in a single year. In the 1970s and 80s, serial killers Robert Buell and Edward Wayne Edwards left their evil mark on the city. Digging through two centuries of news coverage, local author Lisa Merrick uncovers Norton's most loathsome crimes and heartbreaking calamities.

Cold case files litter the desks of authorities all across Northeast Ohio. Louise Wolf and Mabel Foote, Parma teachers, were on their way to school one winter morning when a maniac sprang from the bushes and bludgeoned them to death. When young Melvin Horst went missing on his way home from playing with friends in 1928, many thought he was kidnapped or accidentally killed by a bootlegger's car. Charles Collins's death looked like suicide but was proved otherwise by two preeminent surgeons and has remained a mystery for more than one hundred years. Author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts eight unsolved murders and two chilling disappearances in Northeast Ohio's history.

Minneapolis has a bloody, unacknowledged heritage. On the shore of Lake Harriet, Ojibwe warriors killed a Dakota man, triggering two retaliatory massacres. Ten years later, pioneer settlers roved the land of Minneapolis in gangs for protection from other pioneer gangs. When a lynch mob hanged a violent criminal across the street from Central High School, they left his corpse dangling for hours. Rioting Riversiders toppled a streetcar and attacked the driver. A man murdered a kind stranger because he misunderstood his intentions. Separate industrial disasters shattered the St. Anthony Falls, causing one fatality, and nearly razed the Mill District, killing eighteen more and injuring countless others. Author Ron de Beaulieu uncovers the dark, sinister history beneath the city.