Criminal

One Sunday afternoon, a man named William Mumler decided to take a self portrait. He said he was alone in the photography studio, but as the photograph developed, he saw something very strange—the image of someone else, sitting beside him.

“What I recall most is the way that she grabbed my wrist and, shaking a bit, she said over and over again, 'If it happens, run. Don't let that happen to you. Run. If it ever happens, run.'” It was years before Cynthia Brown understood what her great-grandmother, Athalia Howe, was talking about.

Qandeel Baloch grew up in a conservative village in Pakistan, a place where it was shocking to see a woman swimming outdoors. She ran away from home, changed her name, and eventually became "Pakistan's first social media star." By 2015, she was reported to be one of the 10 most Googled people in Pakistan. The next year, she was dead.

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, "I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber." She's now 81, and has been present at the executions of six men.

A day in the life of the town of Kalispell, Montana.

With Covid-19 shutdowns, people have been taking advantage of quiet highways to drive as fast as they can from New York City to Redondo Beach, California. They’re trying to break records set in an unofficial and secretive race called the “Cannonball.” In today’s episode, the history of the illegal cross country race, how it has evolved since 1971, and why fans say it will never go away.

When Nathan Myers and Clifford Williams were charged with murder, neither of them were worried they would be convicted. They had dozens of witnesses that could confirm that they had been at a party when the shots were fired. But during their trial, not a single one of those witnesses was asked to testify.

One Sunday night in November 1987, something very odd happened in the middle of the nine o’clock news in Chicago. As one television viewer said, it felt like someone threw "a brick through your window." A television engineer said it felt like "a home invasion." And a little boy said it was "very, very funny."

Early one morning in 1948, a phone call woke up the police chief in the small town of Clearwater, Florida. The caller said he’d seen something strange at the beach. Residents woke up that morning to find an odd set of footprints in the sand, and a rumor began circulating that Clearwater Beach had a sea monster.

In 1932, a group of men in a speakeasy in New York City hatched a plan — to take out life insurance on a loner named Michael Malloy, and make his death look like an accident. They thought it would be easy money. But Michael Malloy would become known as the man who just wouldn’t die.