Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

In November of 1971 a man who would come to be known as D.B. Cooper hijacked Northwest Orient Flight 305, ultimately parachuting out of the Boeing 727 in spectacular fashion, along with $200,000 in ransom money, presumably somewhere in Washington State. Who he was and what happened to him after he jumped is one of the most enduring true crime mysteries in American history.

My guests are Darren Schaefer, creator and host of "The Cooper Vortex" podcast, and George McKeon, author of "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper: A True Crime Adult Coloring Book". They tell the story of the hijacking, discuss some of the tantalizing clues left behind, and ruminate about possible suspects.

Subscribe to The Cooper Vortex on Apple Podcasts here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-cooper-vortex/id1439712498

and Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/5YRiVfMZX7hfVDSezq1aNo

George McKeon's book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-D-B-Cooper-Crime-Coloring/dp/1737712709

Become a Most Notorious patron: https://www.patreon.com/mostnotorious

Most Notorious website: https://www.mostnotorious.com/

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Just after midnight on July 6, 1932, twenty-year-old Zachary Smith Reynolds, a renowned aviator and an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, was shot in the family's summer home in what is now Winston-Salem, North Carolina. While some believed the moody young man had committed suicide, evidence suggested someone else had pulled the trigger, and eventually Reynolds' wife, Broadway actress Libby Holman, and his best friend, A.B. Walker, would be indicted for murder.

I'm joined by Phil Archer, the Betsy Main Babcock Deputy Director at Reynolda House Museum of American Art. He helped create Reynolda's popular exhibition, called "Smith & Libby: Two Rings, Seven Months, One Bullet", which can now be experienced in a condensed form on the very porch where Smith died.

More about the Reynolda Museum here: https://reynolda.org/

Watch the original exhibition trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bVYrVhMK7M&t=5s

Libby Holman sings the traditional folk song "House of the Rising Sun": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4ZGrlO7JU4

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Best-selling author Margalit Fox returns to the show to talk about Marm Mandelbaum, an extraordinary woman who lived the classic rags to riches story, rising out of immigrant poverty and into wealth and power, but also extreme notoriety. She built her mid-19th century criminal empire by assembling some of the best shoplifters and burglars in the country and putting them to work. They stole millions of dollars worth of silk, jewelry and other valuables for her, which she would fence and sell at incredible profits.

Her new book is called "The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: The Rise and Fall of an American Organized-Crime Boss".

More about the author and her work can be found here at her website: https://margalitfox.com/

Watch her book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ynn5koWzaA

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Eric Jay Dolin, returns to the show to share details from his new book, "Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World". It's the true story of a wild and fateful encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig, and a British warship in the Falkland archipelago during the War of 1812.

Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, the incident left three British sailors and two Americans, including the captain of the sealer, Charles H. Barnard, abandoned in the barren, windswept, and inhospitable Falklands for a year and a half.

More about the author and all of his books can be found here at his website: https://www.ericjaydolin.com/

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On the morning of May 16, 1922, a young man’s body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of “shadow men,” blackmailers who extorted their victims’ moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the investigation: What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder?

My guest is author and historian James Polchin, whose latest book, "Shadow Men: The Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege That Scandalized Jazz Age America", is available to purchase in bookstores and online now.

Visit the author's publisher page here: https://www.counterpointpress.com/books/shadow-men/

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