Retro Crime researches obscure crimes and travels to locations to discover new insights. With updated information, and volumes of research, we reveal injustices and solve old mysteries. We're the third side to every story.
Ella Zane was young, talented, and beautiful. In September of 1903, she was found in the Ohio River, not far from her family’s mansion on Wheeling Island. There was no water in her lungs, and murder was suspected. Before the investigation could begin, her influential family had the case closed as a suicide by drowning.
There was a rumor of hereditary insanity in Ella’s family. When her distant cousin Lila Zane killed a friend, her lawyers used it for an insanity defense.
The mystery of Ella’s death was never solved. If it had been, it would have exposed the impossibility of Lila’s defense.
14 Jul 2026
Mrs. Mary Dandridge
Labor Day week of 1899, a mysterious young woman named Mrs. Ed Palmer was found dead in a hotel in Washington, Pennsylvania. It seemed like a simple locked-door suicide, but the body had been manipulated after death, and there was no sign of her husband. There was no sign that Ed Palmer even existed.
4 Apr 2026
Stuck In Trafficking
We visited the former Ma's Tea House in Key West, Florida for this episode. It used to be a brothel owned by longtime local madam Alice Reid. Almost exactly 85 years before we arrived, resident Cecelia Thompson Tunks had been murdered with her own undergarments. The exact same incident happened again 6 months later in Philadelphia. Yet one case went cold, and the other didn't. We explore the crimes of human trafficking, prostitution, vagrancy, and murder.
Who has been a guest on Retro Crime Story Time
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Goldie Adams
John Adams
Ross Adams
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5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100
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46
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
60
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