Phantasmal Crime

A house is an inanimate object. People can fill a home with either positive energy or negative energy. But the house is still just a house. When a murder happens inside a house, the house is innocent. And that statement, The House is Innocent, is posted outside of 1426 F Street in Sacramento, California. This is the Dorothea Puente Murder House, a private home that was once a boarding house run by Puente who made the downtrodden of her community her victims, all while at the same time appearing to be a pillar of the community. She had a handful of victims that she buried in her backyard. Women don't tend to be serial killers, so when a female killer is found to have multiple victims, it gets more than the average amount of attention. The list is a fairly short one and female serial killers seem to be different from their male counterparts. Their crimes are usually not about hunting prey as is the case for many male serial killers. And many of these female killers prefer a hands o...

The murder of Mildred Ann Reynolds is a cold case that stretches back more then 60 years. The crime scene was horrific with blood and a burned out car. This young woman had come to a brutal end. Violent murders, especially those that remain unsolved, seem to spawn spirits. The supernatural occurrences that accompany this puzzling story serve to deepen the intrigue. Mildred Ann Newlin, or Annie as her family called her, was born on December 25, 1933 in Lambert, Oklahoma. Lambert started as a settlement that was named for Ambrose Lambert who obtained the land in the Cherokee Outlet Opening land run in 1893. This piece of Oklahoma was between two railroads and was part of wheat-growing country, so it prospered. But this was never a big town and today has less than 10 residents. Ernest and Marie Newlin had moved to Lambert and had a little farm. A photo of a young Annie pictures her in a dress and cowboy boots, bottle feeding a young lamb as she smiles for the camera. People all de...

Husband kills wife. This is the classic true crime tale. The spouses of murder victims are always the first to be scrutinized as suspects. And for good reason. The CDC did a study in 18 states of murdered women from the years 2003 to 2014 and more than half were murdered by a former or current partner or family or friend of that partner and 93% of those cases were current or former partners. Hawley Crippen was a successful homeopathic doctor in the early 1900s and his wife Cora went missing. All eyes focused on Dr. Crippen as the search for his wife began. The murder of Cora Crippen and the trial that followed became international news. The Chamber of Horrors closed in April of 2016 at Madame Tussauds in London. Part of that exhibit was a wax figure of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen. Hawley Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in September of 1862. He was a short man, standing only 5'3", and had what were described as very unusual buggy eyes. Crippen decided to pursue medici...

There are things out there that we can't explain. Serial killers have long fascinated true crime enthusiasts. We wonder what drives a human to hunt other humans. Is there really a compulsion there? A visceral need? Or do some serial killers just do it purely for the pleasure? Individuals who commit serial murder have been among us from the dawn of human history, but the actual term "serial killer" is fairly new. There are debates about who was the first to coin the phrase, but most people credit FBI agent Robert K. Ressler with popularizing the term in the late 1970s. The first serial killer is more than likely lost to history, being someone going back to ancient history. The first recorded serial killers in America seemed to have a real bloodlust and they were cousins. The Harpe Brothers. John and William Harpe were Scottish brothers who decided to immigrate to America in the mid-1700s. This was a peak period of immigration for the Scots-Irish and many were coming for ...

My goal is not to convince the listener, you, that ghosts are a thing. But if there is such a thing as ghosts, doesn't it make sense that a crime scene would be a prime occupational space for one or more spirits? Surely evil entities would find a tasty morsel or two lingering. Such manifestations seem to feed off of emotions like rage and fear. And for victims, a violent death or one that finds no justice in the end, it certainly makes sense that their spirits would be caught up in the ether, unable to cross beyond a veil between this world and the next. I'm here to feed your morbid fascination. We all crane our necks at the scene of an accident. True crime is arguably the most popular genre. Why is that? Are we just curious about the whole nurture or nature debate? Is it because we wonder about our own inner demons? Do these kinds of crimes offer us an escape from the mundane? Or is it that we seek the same feelings we experience when watching a horror movie or riding a roll...