Wicked Words - A True Crime Talk Show with Kate Winkler Dawson

A 24-year-old woman went on a Tinder date in Nebraska and never came back home. Days later, her dismembered body was found and investigators homed in on a couple who had a long history of crime. The discoveries that the police made about them are disturbing. Author Chet Hardin tells me about his book, The Vampire’s Cult.

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Arthur Conan Doyle created one of literature's great characters, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was analytical, methodical, and brilliant. Doyle modeled Holmes not after a real detective but after a surgeon he admired: Joseph Bell. In her new book, Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes, New York Times bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris tells me about the cases Bell solved.

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This is a fascinating case. In 1969, police found the body of a young woman, tossed over the edge of Mulholland Drive in LA. She went unidentified for decades and her murderer was on the loose. Author Catherine Fogarty launched her own investigation and uncovered some secrets and some people that might help crack the case. She tells me about her book The Girl with No Name.

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Rene Denfeld is not only a novelist; she’s also an investigator who works on wrongful conviction cases. In her thriller, The Talking Bone, Denfeld uses her background and some of her cases to tell the story of a female investigator looking into the case of a man on death row in Georgia. And boy, did I learn a lot about what investigators can and can’t do.

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In the 1930s, a Indigenous man was targeted by prosecutors in the murder of his wife. He claimed he was innocent. And a high-profile author who created an iconic detective series believed him. Jack El-Hai tells me the story at the center of his book: The Case of the Autographed Corpse.

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In 2010, Joseph and Summer McStay were living in California with their two young sons when they vanished from their California home. They were missing for three years before their skeletal remains were found in an unmarked grave in the Mojave Desert. But who killed them? My guest is ABC News correspondent Ashan Singh. He’s talking about his podcast, What Happened to the McStays?

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James T. Bartlett has been with us before. He wrote a book called The Alaskan Blonde, about a woman who was accused of murdering her husband in 1953. Now James and I are traveling from Alaska down to Burbank, California with his new book, True Crime Burbank. He covers some of the city’s most infamous murders—and some I’ve never heard of.

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When crime journalist Maria DiLorenzo began writing to Gary Ridgway, she had no idea where it would go. He began calling her—hundreds of times. Their conversations were supposed to lead to big revelations and to clues about women who might have been victims of the Green River Killer. But Ridgway played games and DiLorenzo soon felt very uncomfortable. She tells me about her book Confessions of the Green River Killer.

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In the 1990s, a bank robber known as “Hollywood” robbed at least 19 banks in the northwest. He was pursued for years until one final robbery ended in violence. My guests are an interesting duo: one is the FBI agent who chased him and his crew. The other was Hollywood’s accomplice. Shawn Johnson and Steve Meyers tell me their story from the Netflix documentary How to Rob a Bank.

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My next guest is an author who began writing a biography and then turned it into a novel. And I don’t blame her. The story of Earnest Pletch may be largely unknown now, but in 1939, he became famous. He took a flying lesson, he brought a gun, and soon, he was flying solo. Kim Sheeter tells me about the killer at the center of her story: Air-Minded.

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This is the third time I’ve had Dawson Fearnow on the show—he writes about Arizona and some of the bad things that happened there. He’s talking to me about a piece he wrote for Phoenix Magazine called "Incognito, Inc.: Arizona’s Secret, Starring Role in the Federal Witness Protection Program.” Dawson tells me about several cases about mob informants in the state who couldn’t stay out of trouble.

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Alright, I have a great podcast for you. It’s called Criminal Broads and it’s hosted by Tori Telfer. The stories focus on women as criminals. She tells me about a bank robber and a dirty doctor, as well as some others.

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I’ve had my buddy, Maurice Chammah, on the show before. He’s a journalist with the Marshall Project, and a leading authority on the death penalty. He has a podcast out called: The Last Twelve Weeks. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the attorneys for a man on death row in Texas are racing to stop his execution. It’s a complicated story about a very bad man…who might have been wrongly convicted for murders he didn’t commit.

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The 1975 murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley made national headlines because of its brutality, but also because the main suspect was a cousin of the Kennedys. Michael Skakel was tried, convicted and then released from prison. Many felt like he might have gotten away with murder. But some people who have reinvestigated the case aren’t so sure. And that includes true crime podcaster Kate Casey who has a show called Reality Life with Kate Casey. She wrote about the case in an article for Vanity Fair.

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My next guest has done something extraordinary: she traveled across America collecting stories of criminalized survival. Shocked to find how many women were convicted for protecting themselves against abuse. Author Justine van der Leun tells me the stories in her book Unreasonable Women: Three Stories of Self-Defense, Wrongful Imprisonment, and Extraordinary Survival.

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If you followed the so-called Black Swan murder case, you probably saw a teenage girl, trying to get justice for her father. In 2020, Ashley Benefield shot and killed her estranged husband, Doug, in Florida. Eva Benefield had already gone through so much trauma in her life and then she had to watch her stepmother go on trial for murdering her father. Eva tells me the story from her memoir: Ghost Girl: Surviving the Black Swan Murder.

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Author Emily Winslow is a fabulous crime novelist and she’s also a sexual assault survivor. In 1992, she was a young drama student at an elite conservatory in Pittsburgh. One January night, she was brutally raped by a stranger. More than 20 years later, Emily found out that the attacker had finally been arrested. In her memoir, Jane Doe January, Emily digs into her own case to find out what went wrong.

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Journalist Pam Colloff is one of my favorite people. She’s an outstanding criminal justice reporter who is now publishing her first book. And it’s a doozy. It’s about a serial criminal, a so-called informant who conned the courts and the DAs. He sent dozens of people to prison who were wrongly convicted. But did he get away with it? Pam tells me the story at the center of her book: Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast.

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A man was convicted of capital murder in Texas in 1999 and much of the case depends on eyewitness testimony. But there’s a twist: one of the witnesses was hypnotized. Should Charles Flores still be on death row? Michelle Pitcher from the Texas Observer tells me the story from season five of The Unforgiven podcast. It’s called Riding Shotgun.

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Millions of us have had our identities stolen—the thief can be a stranger, or someone very close to you. Author Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in fear in rural Indiana because her family was being targeted. Her father even had to sell his family’s farm. As an adult, Axton became an expert in identity theft. And then she found out who had almost destroyed their lives. She tells me the story from her book The Less People Know About Us.

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