Episodes
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E347: MYSTERY - We Have a Man, We Have a Wolf - We Have a Problem!
If your husband disappears for three days every week and claims he’s been a wolf, you should have questions. Spooky Fuckery Month continues with werewolf history, from ancient Greece and Rome to medieval folklore. werewolves, werewolf history, werewolf folklore, werewolf legends, lycanthropy,...
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E346: MURDER - The Trick or Treat Murder
On Halloween night in 1957, Peter Fabiano was shot and killed at his front door in North Hollywood, California, after answering what he thought was another late-night trick-or-treater. His lasts words: “Isn't it a little late for this?” The murder of Peter Fabiano would become known as the...
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E345: MYSTERY - Gef, the Extra, Extra Clever Mongoose (part II)
We are back on the Isle of Man for Part Two of Gef, the ridiculous little wall weasel. This week, people try to figure out what the hell is going on at Cashen's Gap. We have alleged Gef hair, footprints, photographs, zoologists, witnesses and investigators....spoiler alert: Gef is not impressed!...
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E344: MYSTERY - Gef, the Extra, Extra Clever Mongoose (part I)
Spooky Fuckery Month is officially here! And we're kicking things off on the Isle of Man, where, in 1931, the Irving family began hearing strange noises coming from inside the walls of their isolated farmhouse. Meet Gef, the talking, swearing, gossiping, possibly supernatural mongoose who lives...
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E343: The Day the Music Died (part IV)
The plane had crashed. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper had been laid to rest. But the story of The Day the Music Died is far from over. In the fourth and final part of our series, we look at everything that came after February 1959: the investigation into the crash, the questions...
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E342: The Day the Music Died (part III)
This week Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper finally come together for the Winter Dance Party...the infamous tour that was badly planned, brutally cold, and exhausting almost from the moment it began. We follow them as the ping-pong across the frozen Midwest in a bus that could…
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E341: The Day the Music Died (part II)
playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6weWg42qTGdvmbWZj5Rtfn?si=mRk2RXdpT7G7BJrMRCmbZw&utm_source=copy-link&pi=HYoBjLJpR8ywA February 3, 1959, would become known as “The Day the Music Died”In Part Two of The Day the Music Died, we continue with Buddy Holly’s story as his career takes off…
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E340: The Day the Music Died (part I)
Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6weWg42qTGdvmbWZj5Rtfn?si=mRk2RXdpT7G7BJrMRCmbZw&utm_source=copy-link&pi=HYoBjLJpR8ywA February 3, 1959, would become known as “The Day the Music Died” But before we get to that frozen field, we need to know the people who ended up on that plane. In…
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E339: MURDER - Rosemarie Nitribitt (part III)
Heinz Pohlmann has been acquitted, but Rosemarie Nitribitt’s murder is still unsolved. So in our final part, we look at Rosemarie’s famous notebook, the very real wealthy and powerful men in her life, the rumors of blackmail, missing files, a supposed murder tape, and theories ranging from…
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E338: MURDER - Rosemarie Nitribitt (part II)
When Rosemarie Nitribitt's body was discovered in her Frankfurt apartment, the investigation turned into one of the biggest murder mysteries in postwar Germany. In Part 2, we look at what investigators actually knew, what they only thought they knew, why Heinz Pohlmann became their prime suspect,...
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E337: MURDER - Rosemarie Nitribitt (part I)
Long before Rosemarie Nitribitt became front-page news, she was just a little girl growing up in poverty. In Part 1, we take a look at her childhood through orphanages, foster homes, and institutions, and follow her to Frankfurt, where she would soon become one of the most infamous women in 1950s...
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E336: MYSTERY - Dorothy Eady
Is reincarnation real, and is it possible that people remember a life that ended more than 3,000 years ago? From the time she was a small child, Dorothy Eady insisted that ancient Egypt was her home. As an adult, she left England behind, settled in Egypt, and became known as Omm Sety, earning the...
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E335: MACABRE - Typhoid Mary (part II)
In the second part we follow Mary through her years on North Brother Island, her legal fight against the city, her release, and the decision that would ultimately send her back into quarantine for the rest of her life.
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E334: MACABRE - Typhoid Mary (part I)
Mary Mallon was simply an Irish immigrant making a living as a cook for some of New York's wealthiest families. But wherever she worked, typhoid fever seemed to follow. In the first part of our two-part series, we head back to New York at the turn of the twentieth century, where crowded streets,...
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E333: MURDER - Starr Faithfull (part III)
In the final part of our series on Starr Faithfull, the investigation begins, and this is where the mystery begins! Why were parts of her clothing missing? Why did two autopsies reach different conclusions? What was in Starr's diary? And what role, if any, did the powerful former mayor Andrew J....
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E332: MURDER - Starr Faithfull (part II)
Starr Faithfull finally tells her family the secret she’s been carrying for nearly a decade: she has been sexually abused by a powerful and trusted relative since childhood. In Part 2, we talk about what happened after that revelation, as her family struggles to help her in an era when trauma was...
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E331: MURDER - Starr Faithfull (part I)
In 1931, the body of 25-year-old Starr Faithfull washed ashore on a Long Island beach. Newspapers and the public speculated whether her death was murder, suicide, or an accident. But before we can answer that question, we need to go back to the beginning: to old Boston money, political power, and...
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Special: Best of Fresh Hell (Vol. 6)
We're wrapping up our summer break series, and we're leaving murder, mystery, and historical villains behind and head into the strange world of UFO sightings, and things that definitely shouldn't have been lurking outside people's homes after dark. Or before dark. Pretty much at any time! First…
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Special: Best of Fresh Hell (Vol. 5)
While Johanna recovers from surgery and Annie does her best to prevent her from immediately returning to work, we're bringing you another trip into the Fresh Hell archives. This week features condensed versions of two of our most heartbreaking cases, both were originally released as two-part...
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Fresh Hell presents: Horrifying History - Baby Farming...Britain's Darkest Business
This week, we’re doing something a little different. We teamed up with Horrifying History for a feed swap, which means we’re sharing one of their episodes with you. And you know is: this one is absolute Victorian nightmare fuel. In this episode, host Brenda Ganske explores the horrifying world of...
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E330: Dear Diary (part IV)
The Hitler Diaries are finally exposed as fake, and the fallout is spectacular! In the fourth and final part of our series, we talk about the collapse of the biggest media scandal in postwar Germany. What did the BKA find? What was the so called “Folternacht” inside Stern headquarters? And what...
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E329: Dear Diary (part III)
Stern is now spending millions, historians are cautiously warning them, and Konrad Kujau is sitting at home frantically producing more and more volumes while simultaneously convincing everyone that this all makes perfect sense. What could possibly go wrong?
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E328: Dear Diary (part II)
Gerd Heidemann follows up on the supposed Hitler diaries and finally meets the man behind them. Money starts changing hands in ways that should probably raise a few questions.
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E327: Dear Diary (part I)
This week, we start a story that begins with a boat, takes a detour through a small village in East Germany, and ends up with one of the biggest media scandals in German history.
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E326: A Butcher, a Tailor & an Emperor walk into a Bar
In 1853, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria goes for one of his regular walks in Vienna. It’s something he does often enough that people know where to find him, and on that day, someone does. A young Hungarian tailor named János Libényi steps forward and tries to stab the emperor in the neck. The...
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E324: The Great Molasses Flood (part II)
This week we’re in January of 1919, in Boston’s North End. People are still recovering from the First World War and the 1918 flu, the area is packed with people, noise, and a molasses tank that never should have been there in the first place.
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E323: MACABRE - The Great Molasses Flood (part I)
When we first started Fresh Hell, people kept asking us to cover the Boston Molasses Flood. So…here we are. And because Annie researched this one, we’re not taking the direct route. Part 1 is less about the disaster itself and more about everything that led up to it, because as always...none of...
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E322: Friedrich Zawrel (part IV)
After everything he survived as a child at Spiegelgrund, Friedrich ends up back in prison in the 1970s, where he is sent for a psychiatric evaluation. It's hard to believe what would happen next! This is the part of the story where things don’t resolve neatly, and where the idea of justice…
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E321: Friedrich Zawrel (part III)
In Part 3 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we follow him through detention, sentencing, and a harrowing journey along the Danube as the Third Reich falls apart in its final weeks. After multiple escape attempts, Friedrich is arrested again...this time landing in the Nazi youth justice system.
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E320: Friedrich Zawrel (part II)
In Part 2 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we meet the doctors of Spiegelgrund. Dr. Ernst Illing and Dr. Heinrich Gross were psychiatrists working inside Vienna’s infamous children’s institution during the Nazi period. Under the banner of “racial hygiene,” they helped run a system that targeted...
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E319: Friedrich Zawrel (part I)
Friedrich Zawrel grew up in Vienna during the Third Reich. As a child, he was labeled “difficult” and “unmanageable” by the authorities. That was enough to place him inside the Nazi welfare and psychiatric system...a system that decided which children were worth keeping alive. In this episode, we...
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E318: The Children of Spiegelgrund
Vienna, 1940. On the hills above the city stood a children’s psychiatric institution called Am Spiegelgrund. Officially it was a place for treatment, observation, and care. In reality though, it became part of the Nazi system that classified vulnerable children as “unfit,” subjected them to…
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E317: The Campden Wonder
In 1660, a respected estate steward left the English market town of Chipping Campden to collect rent and never came home. His bloodstained belongings were soon found by the roadside, and suspicion quickly fell on his servant, John Perry. What followed was a chain of confessions, accusations,...
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E316: MACABRE - Say What?!
Why do we casually reference pillories, hunger, or medieval tally sticks while talking about our week? In this episode, we’re digging into the origins of everyday German and English sayings, specifically the ones we use without thinking about what we’re actually saying. From “spill the beans” to...
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E315: Friedrich II. - The Great Escape (part III)
In Part 3, we follow Friedrich after Küstrin. This episode looks at what Friedrich became once he held absolute power: the military strategist, the administrator, the enlightened absolutist who read philosophy while sending tens of thousands to their deaths. We talk about Sanssouci as a…
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E314: Friedrich II. - The Great Escape (part II)
After being arrested and imprisoned at Küstrin, Friedrich is stripped of rank, freedom, and is forced into isolation, surveillance, and humiliation, while the fate of his closest friend, Hans Hermann von Katte, hangs over everything. Friedrich knows exactly what’s at stake. He’s seen how this…
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E313: Friedrich II. - The Great Escape (part I)
Friedrich II of Prussia is remembered as “the Great.”But before he became the most famous Prussian king, he tried to run! In this first part of a two-episode series, we go back to the beginning: to Friedrich II von Preußen’s childhood under the rule of his father, the so-called Soldier King. We...
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E312: MACABRE - Edith Kadivez
In 1920s Vienna, a woman calling herself Baroness Cadvé ran what appeared to be a private language school for children. Behind the polite advertisements and the respectable address in the city center was something much darker. This episode tells the story of Edith Kadivec, the woman at the center...
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E311: MYSTERY - My Cousin Vanished
If you want to watch Henry's wonderful documentary, you can find the English version here: https://www.henryhauck.de/en-us and the German version here: https://www.henryhauck.de/de In this episode we speak with filmmaker Henry Hauck, a cousin of one of the "Missing Children of Pirmasens", a…
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Fresh Hell presents: Our True Crime Podcast -Murder of Michele MacNeill
Today we’re sharing an episode from our friends at Our True Crime Podcast, covering the deeply troubling murder of Michelle McNeill.
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Special: Best of Fresh Hell (Vol.4)
We’re back to bridge the space between the holidays and the return of brand-new episodes. This volume revisits the 1904 murder of Lucie Berlin in a rapidly modernizing Berlin, the still-unsolved killing of Peggy Andrews in Columbus, Ohio, and the controversial 1902 murder of Bertha Schippan in...
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Special: Best of Fresh Hell (Vol.3)
While we take a holiday break, we’re bringing you Best Of, Vol. 3: a condensed revisit to three cases from the Fresh Hell archives. This episode features the disappearance of the three lighthouse keepers on Eilean Mòr, the chilling crimes of Viennese con man and serial killer Hugo Schenk, and the...
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E310: The Minneapolis Christmas Bombing
On December 24th 1996, in Minneapolis, a series of escalating disturbances unfolded across the city, leading to an explosion during the city’s Christmas celebrations. What began as isolated incidents at shopping centers and local businesses quickly revealed themselves to be connected, linked by…
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E309: MYSTERY - Ruth Wilson
In November 1995, 16-year-old Ruth Wilson vanished after leaving her home in Surrey. She didn't go to school as planned though. Instead she ordered some flowers, and took a taxi to a quiet rural lane near Box Hill. Then...she disappeared without a trace. Thirty years later, her family and...
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E308: MURDER - Hawley Harvey Crippen (part IV)
In the final part of our Dr. Crippen series, we’re heading into the Old Bailey for one of the most sensational trials in Edwardian history. We’ll walk you through the courtroom, the personalities, the evidence, the theatrics, the “Saul Goodman–before-Saul-Goodman” defense strategy, and the moment...
About this show
Two women, from opposite sides of the Atlantic, talk about murder, mystery and the macabre. This is your award winning, international true crime podcast, hosted by Annie and Johanna.
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