The Golden Age of Murder: A True Crime Podcast

Robert Hansen was a successful baker and prize winning hunter who murdered 17 women between 1971and 1983 and raped an additional estimated 30 in Anchorage, Alaska. He largely targeted sex workers who he would lure or abduct, hold in a room for several days then fly out on a private miniplane to the wilderness where they would be killed and dumped, sometimes after having been shot by a hunting rifle like game. Hansen was born in 1939 in Estherville, Iowa and grew up in the town of Pocahontas. His childhood was rife with hardship. His father was strict and demanding, making his left handed son train to be right handed. He had a pronounced stutter and developed pock marks which caused him to be bullied at school and mocked and rejected by the girls at his school, one of the antecedents it is believed of his later rapes and murders. It is possible that if he came around today he might have become a mass shooter rather than a serial killer.

In 1983 two ragged drifters, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, were arrested for what was at the time unlawful firearm possession and arson. This would grow into an escalating series of claims on the part of both law enforcement and the men themselves that Lucas and Toole had, while traversing the country by car,  committed hundreds if not thousands of murders. Lucas had served time for killing his mother in 1960 but this is the only murder either has been credited with that can be authenticated for certain. While no one knows for sure what Lucas or Toole actually did or didn't do what became clear over time is that they were encouraged by law enforcement especially sheriff Jim Boutwell and the Texas Rangers to confess to murders that had not been solved in order to clear their books and fit an image of a killer they were looking for. In so doing they helped develop and entrench the popular image of the serial killer in the national consciousness, though they if anything muddied the picture of what actually happened

This episode features comedian Jake Flores (@feraljokes) the host of popular podcast Pod Damn America to discuss his state's most frightening killer the Night Stalker. Few figures loom as menacingly in the modern American imagination as The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez a murderous predatory loner who, modeling himself after his war criminal cousin and dedicating his war against society to the devil, conducted a one man terror campaign against the people of Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1984 and 1985, invading homes and brutalizing those inside. Ramirez would be convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries though his crimes went beyond even this. Ramirez trial would become as much a public spectacle as that of Charles Manson and Ted Bundy and Ramirez has become every bit as infamous in the annals of violent crime as they

On this episode we are joined by comedian Sean P McCarthy to discuss a 1970s podophile group encompassing several significant serial killers and covered up by the government. Sean P McCarthy is a comedian and podcaster whose interests include current affairs, inequality and government conspiracies. In the 70's and 80's huge numbers of boys and young men went missing in the US. Some of them were caught in an interconnected web of trafficking operations which provided victims to plugged in and well connected buyers, some or all of  which were connected either directly or indirectly with a man who went by many names including John D Norman who was the most amongst the most prolific sex traffickers in recorded history. At different times Normans operation was being run in the backyards of serial killers Dean Corll and John Wayne Gacy and in the latter case his personal assistant was also employed by Gacy. The degree to which these men were all connected is not fully known but where there's smoke there's fire.

In late Dec 1978 the bodies of 26 boys were excavated from under the house of local businessman and democratic precinct captain John Wayne Gacy. Gacy would go on to be convicted of 33 murders of young men and boys, the most prolific case of serial murder the US had seen to that point and a bookend to a decade of escalating serial murder inducted by Houston's Dean Corll who had murdered at least 28 boys and young men in the early 70s, though each are suspected of more. By the time the bodies had been unearthed from underneath the Gacy dwelling it had become clear how many victims had been ignored next door and that serial murder could be ignored or banished to the margins no longer

Throughout the 70's and early 80's a mysterious and elusive counterfeiter known as "The Mall Passer" was sought by the US secret service for distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of counterfeit bills across 38 states. The culprit ended up being James Mitchell "Mike" Debardeleben, a lifetime menace who beyond printing and passing counterfeit money (among other frauds and petty crimes) it turned out was a prolific and sadistic kidnapper, serial rapist and likely serial murderer who was in possession of records of victimization of women both voluminous and graphic. Most chillingly he had written a missive the FBI refers to as a "Manifesto of Sadism" in which he lucidly describes the "essence of the sadistic drive"

In the late 1970’s as the post-war wave of violent crime headed towards its peak, dead bodies mostly of young men and boys began to litter the sides of the California freeway in droves. The police knew two distinct killers at least were responsible. One of them, William Bonin, drove a van and had accomplices the other, Randy Kraft, often jettisoned bodies while traveling at high speeds, hundreds of miles on the coast sometimes inland. This was but the forming crest of the deadly wave. As the wave began to crest the killer duo template pioneered by the Hillside Stranglers became imitated by even worse duos, most infamously Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris

The Golden Age of Murder podcast returns with the Dating Game Killer.  A contestant on the Dating Game Show 13 September 1978 in which he won the date. Rodney Alcala (born Rodrigo Jacques Alcala Buquor) on August 23, 1943. Alcala's grew up in a normal immigrant family, was popular and well liked, possessed an IQ of 170 and attended film school under director Roman Polanski. That however was his public life, his private life and the impulse that drove his life was to stalk and kill young women. 

In the late 1970's a pair of cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono together raped and murdered 10 women in Los Angeles. While Bianchi would kill two more himself in Bellingham, Washington the spree he went on with his cousin would usher in a new and terrifying trend: the serial killer team

We cover Ted Bundy joined by Washington native and comedian Yogi Paliwal. Ted Bundy, the boy next door who would bring serial killing to the home of every unsuspecting American family and shatter an age of innocence which had resigned serial murder to mad men and loners. Bundy was born out of wedlock Theodore Robert Cowell and raised by his grandparents under mysterious circumstances. He would develop an antisocial personality but would steadily cultivate a refined air through university, learning psychology and working in politics. Hiding his true, invisible self under a successful mask in the sea of masks that would become American interpersonal relationships in the 1970s. This allowed him to gain the understanding of women and to exploit their instincts in a way that would contribute to perhaps the most prolific record of female victims. Bundy is considered to have 30 victims but it could be 100.