277-The Mad Trapper of Rat River
In the winter of 1931, a dramatic manhunt unfolded in northern Canada when a reclusive trapper shot a constable and fled across the frigid landscape. In the chase that followed the mysterious fugitive...
16 Dec 201933min
276-An Unlikely Confederate Spy
As the Civil War fractured Washington D.C., socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow coordinated a vital spy ring to funnel information to the Confederates. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast...
9 Dec 201930min
275-A Kidnapped Painting
In 1961, Goya's famous portrait of the Duke of Wellington went missing from London's National Gallery. The case went unsolved for four years before someone unexpectedly came forward to confess to the ...
2 Dec 201930min
274-Death in a Nutshell
In the 1940s, Frances Glessner Lee brought new rigor to crime scene analysis with a curiously quaint tool: She designed 20 miniature scenes of puzzling deaths and challenged her students to investigat...
25 Nov 201929min
273-Alice Ramsey's Historic Drive
In 1909, 22-year-old Alice Huyler Ramsey set out to become the first woman to drive across the United States. In an era of imperfect cars and atrocious roads, she would have to find her own way and un...
18 Nov 201932min
272-The Cannibal Convict
In 1822, Irish thief Alexander Pearce joined seven convicts fleeing a penal colony in western Tasmania. As they struggled eastward through some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, starvation pr...
11 Nov 201931min
271-The Fraudulent Life of Cassie Chadwick
In 1902, scam artist Cassie Chadwick convinced an Ohio lawyer that she was the illegitimate daughter of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. She parlayed this reputation into a life of unthinkable extravaga...
4 Nov 201932min
270-Kidnapped by North Korea
In 1978, two luminaries of South Korean cinema were abducted by Kim Jong-Il and forced to make films in North Korea in an outlandish plan to improve his country's fortunes. In this week's episode of t...
28 Okt 201934min
