Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast - 341: The Mysterious Death of Zachary Smith Reynolds w/ Phil Archer

341: The Mysterious Death of Zachary Smith Reynolds w/ Phil Archer

05/03/24 • 68 min

2 Listeners

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

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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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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

MoNo Encore: The Murder of Sister Janina w/ Mardi Link

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This week we revisit one of my favorite Most Notorious episodes. In the small town of Isadore Michigan in 1907, a young nun named Janina disappeared. Ten years later, her body is discovered by a priest intent on building a new church on the foundation of the old one. Mardi Link, author of "Isadore's Secret", chats with me about the terrible circumstances surrounding the death of Sister Janina.

The author's website: https://www.mardilink.com/

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Next Episode

342: The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Nanina w/ Eric Jay Dolin

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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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