Murder Most Foul

In 1990, Jens Soering, a German honors student at the University of Virginia, was sentenced to life after a spectacular televised trial for the 1985 murders of his lover’s Elizabeth’s parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom. In a classic example of “he said/she said,” at their trials the star-crossed lovers each pointed the finger at the other as the actual murderer. Were Jens and Elizabeth Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? From his Virginia prison cell,Soering deployed his charm to create his own personal innocence project, recruiting celebrities such as Martin Sheen, John Grisham, Amanda Knox and even Angela Merkel.

Soering was paroled and deported to Germany in 2019. Soering sold the rights to his story and launched a media campaign which portrayed him as a victim of America’s cruel and arbitrary courts. Yet skeptics have questioned Soering’s claims, and he is now locked in a pitched battle to define his place in history.

A chief skeptic in the matter is Andrew Hammel, a bilingual German/English criminal lawyer and investigative journalist. Mr. Hammel traces the entire story, beginning with the bizarre romance which led to two gruesome killings. Drawing on five years of research and confidential sources with fresh revelations, Hammel takes the reader behind the scenes of one of the most extraordinary true-crime cases in modern history – and its equally gripping aftermath.

Crime movies, documentaries and literature come in several genres: True Crime (just the facts, Ma’am), “Non-Fiction Novel,” (made famous by Truman Capote with his masterpiece, In Cold Blood) and pure fiction. But even with fictitious crime novels, there are hybrid approaches. Some are “based on a true story,” or “inspired by a true story,” or “drawn from today’s headlines.”

Mapping the Night by David Bethel, falls comfortably into that last category. Drawn from an actual murder case that took place in New York City, it is meticulously researched, authentic, with just the right amount of humor, arising from the interaction of the participants.

It is my pleasure to welcome author David Bethel to Murder Most Foul.

To all who knew him, Robert Hansen was a typical hardworking businessman, husband, and father. But hidden beneath the veneer of mild respectability was a monster whose depraved appetites could not be sated. From 1971 to 1983, Hansen was a human predator, stalking women on the edges of Anchorage society—women whose disappearances would cause scant outcry, but whose gruesome fates would shock the nation. After his arrest, Hansen confessed to seventeen brutal murders, though authorities suspect there were more than thirty victims.

There are countless books, documentaries and movies about the monster who came to be known as the “Butcher Baker.” But the book, by late Alaska State Trooper Walter Gilmour and author Leland E. Hale, is arguably the most complete and most compelling work to date. “Butcher Baker” tells the story of the most prolific serial killer in Alaskan history, from the dark urges that drove his madness, to the women who died at his hand, and finally, to the authorities who captured and convicted him.

My guest today is Leland E. Hale author of "Butcher Baker."

“A Murder in Hollywood” - the dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown.

Before there was Jodie Foster and Brooke Sheilds, there was Judy Turner. You may know her by her stage name, Lana Turner. Discovered at a malt shop in LA in her early teens and thrust before the cameras, she seemed to have it all―a thriving film career and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But she was soon physically abused by directors and studio honchos and sexually preyed upon by the matinee idols of the era, including Errol Flynn, Fernando Lamas and even Ronald Reagan. But that wasn’t enough.

When Lana began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous west coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny―with disastrous consequences - Stompanato ending up dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with her young daughter, Cheryl, claiming to have plunged a knife into him in an attempt to protect her mother. The subsequent murder trial made for the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every Hollywood movie.

New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman pulls back Tinseltown's velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women which took place in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s, long before modern day’s MeToo Movement.

A Murder in Hollywood transports us back to the golden age of film and illuminates one of the 20th century's most notorious true crime tales. Return guest, Casey Sherman, joins me now on Murder Most Foul.

In the fall of 1966, Eduardo Tirella, close confidant of billionaire Doris Duke, informed the possessive and vindictive heiress that he was leaving her employ as chief designer and art curator to return to Hollywood where his career as a set designer was just catching fire.
Minutes later, she crushed him to death under the wheels of a two-ton station wagon as they were leaving Rough Point, her Bellevue Avenue estate in Newport, RI, the storied resort.
In a murderous quid-pro-quo, the local police quickly ruled the incident "an unfortunate accident" and Doris began giving a fortune to Newport, restoring 70 colonial-era homes that quickly turned it into a tourist Mecca.

In 2018, Lance, who started his career as a cub reporter for The Newport Daily News eight months after Tirella's death, began a re-examination of the case and proved that the mercurial tobacco heiress got away with murder.
In a riveting, doggedly researched book with 105 illustrations -- including never-before seen forensic files -- Lance, a five-time Emmy winner, rewrites history and finally restores the reputation of Eduardo Tirella, a Renaissance man and war hero whom Duke went to great lengths to erase from the history of her troubled life.

Book available at AMAZON at: https://www.amazon.com/Homicide-Rough-Point-Peter-Lance/dp/0996285598/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&asc_campaign=2b5a785186b501c352c95398a3440b1b&asc_source=01G8XG0GEG1CT4D3C07B4FAY7P&tag=namespacebran131-20