Voices for Justice
Criminal Broads is a true crime + history podcast about wild women who’ve ended up on the wrong side of the law, whether for leading a cult, serially murdering their husbands, swindling billionaires, or faking ectoplasm. The podcast is hosted by Tori Telfer, author of “Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History.”
91 most recent episodes
Visit website →In a tiny Native American rancheria in California, one family ruled the roost, and fought bitterly with each other for scraps of power. Cherie was particularly scary; everyone thought she was a bully. But her brother wasn't afraid of her. Maybe he sh
Everyone who knew Belle Starr called her BOLD and DARK with FLASHING eyes. Myth swirled around her like smoke! But what can we really say about this infamous outlaw lady? Here, we get into her childhood, her Civil War stint, and the first husband who
It wasn't easy being the daughter of a famous movie star. It was even harder when Mommy kept bringing around bad men. When teenage Cheryl witnessed a particularly bad fight between her famous mother and the latest man, she decided to do something abo
Antoinette Frank always dreamed of being a police officer. She thought of herself as a real good cop. But then she started riding around with a mysterious guy she called her "nephew." And the "good cop" facade dropped, fast.
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In a small town in early 20th century Hungary, the women are desperate. Their husbands are PTSD-riddled WW1 vets. They have no money to feed their children. They have only Auntie Suzy, who walks around with vials of something she calls her "solution"
A lover's quarrel, the sound of a bang!—and suddenly our girl's in court. She tells the story one way. Her neighbors tell it another. And her expensive lawyer is really, really good at his job...
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Elvira spent her days dining out, drinking champagne, and waving pistols around at the various men who hurt her feelings. And then she met a new lover...
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Dionne Baugh had it all: money (from her millionaire boyfriend), nice clothes (from her millionaire boyfriend), a silver Mercedes-Benz (from her millionaire boyfriend). But when the boyfriend tried to become an ex, Dionne had a major problem with tha
A teenage girl with daddy issues meets a dad with monogamy issues. There's a pair of sharp sewing scissors on the telephone table. Oh, and it's the Apartheid era. Mix all this up, and what could possibly go wrong?
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As a kid, she investigated a neighbor's death. As a grown-up, she solves murders...and nastier cases. Meet India's very own Sherlock Holmes—Rajani, girl (and now grown lady) detective.
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What has two PhDs, a huge smile, and an unshakeable belief in aliens? Brigitte Boisselier, who gave up a rather normal life in France to become the second-in-command to a cult leader, and who rose to infamy when she announced to the world that she wa
There was something off about the little mom-and-pop doctor’s office in the Los Angeles strip mall. The wait was too long. The patients were too…antsy. And the doctor? She was making millions of dollars. What in the world was going on in Dr. Lisa Tse
Life was hard for Toni Jo Henry in 1940s Louisiana. She was in the forced-to-grow-up-too-fast, creepy-men-all-around, dead mom, and alcoholic father club. So when she finally met a man who loved her for who she was, she was all in. But then her new h
Julius Caesar is dead, and Cleopatra has a new powerful man hanging around. When she and Mark Antony party a little too hard and public opinion begins to turn against them, how will they maintain their golden image? And what happens when Rome declare
When a queen dabbles in both fratricide and sororicide, is she on the wrong side of the law? Or is she the law itself? When you’re Cleopatra, the richest woman in the entire world, the legality of your actions is…irrelevant. More pressing matters inc
When bank after bank kept getting robbed in 1990s Dallas, the feds were convinced they had a male criminal on their hands. I mean, the guy wore a cowboy hat! His mustache was so…manly! And most importantly, he was damn good at what he did. Surely the
What’s a young married showgirl to do in 1920s Los Angeles when her husband gets a wandering eye? Buy a hammer, of course. Criminal Broads kicks off a new season with a roaring twenties tale of gore, featuring Clara Phillips, a dancer with a bad temp
The ugly: Nazis. The bad: a husband killed in battle. The good: one spunky, silly, kinda-loopy, very brave young woman. Meet Violette Szabo, the secret agent who packed a machine gun…just in case she ran into any Nazis on her mission.
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Sharon Wiggins killed a man in a bank robbery gone wrong when she was seventeen. Her state locked her up for life, no chance of parole. Then the Supreme Court stepped in, and Sharon started dreaming. This is the story of a woman with a dubious superl
In 1978, a man left Mary Vincent for dead. Ten years later, she told a journalist she’d never get over it. This is a story about surviving and about the narrative of the survivor—what we want from her, what she can’t always give us.
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In the 1950s, two lonely, imaginative teenage girls became best friends. Before long they had convinced themselves that they were the most mad, genius girls in the world. And then they began to dream of murder.
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“Imagine at the age of 16 being sex-trafficked by a pimp named Kutthroat.” That was how the meme about Cyntoia Brown started. Cyntoia herself couldn’t believe it when she heard Kim Kardashian was tweeting about her. After a lifetime of being thought
One night in September, a white lady in a long green dress reported that she’d been the victim of a horrific crime. Her story transformed Hawaii—some people were outraged, some were sure she was lying. And then her mother got involved.
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Hannah Overton loved kids. Everyone who knew her thought she was a wonderful mother. But then she found herself in court, with the media calling her a baby-killer and people on the witness stand saying she was a psychopath.
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Poor Pam Hupp and her bad luck. First her best friend Betsy gets stabbed 55 times. Then her mother falls off a balcony. Then she gets KIDNAPPED. And now Pam, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, is in prison for life?! Some people just can’t catch a break, no ma
Catherine Pileggi went from a flight attendant to a multimillionaire’s girlfriend. But after eighteen years, her relationship was on the rocks. Then one night—someone cracked. Was it him? Or was it her?
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When Blanche Wright was captured in 1980, police said they’d found a vicious killer. And for decades, no one dug any further to find out who the real Blanche was. Michael Wilson of the New York Times comes on the podcast to tell us her story.
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Faithful friends, how could I conclude sister month without interviewing MY OWN SISTER? Enjoy this mini just-for-fun interview with the iconic Anna Telfer, actress, little sis, and—controversially—someone who once identified with Kitty in Pride and P
June and Jennifer Gibbons made a pact with each other when they were eight: they weren’t going to speak to anyone but each other. Decades later, they found themselves in a high-security psychiatric hospital, putting the final touches on their pact th
Hi, my loves! I'm super excited to introduce you all to Sinisterhood, a true crime comedy podcast that covers all things creepy and gives you the deep dives and thorough research you want. Best friends and long time comedians Christie Wallace and Hea
Welcome to week three of SISTER MONTH. The three Khachaturyan sisters liked to take selfies and go to the movies. They looked like typical teenage girls from the outside—but behind the scenes, they were locked in a house of horrors with their cruel f
Welcome to week two of SISTER MONTH. Today we’re traveling to the midcentury Dominican Republic, where three of the four Mirabal sisters are facing off against notorious dictator Rafael Trujillo. Who wins? That depends on whether or not you take the
Welcome to SISTER MONTH. We’re starting in 1930s France, where Christine and Lea Papin do everything together. They work together. They live together. They ignore everyone else together. They kill together.
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Your faithful correspondent is on vacation, so please enjoy this re-release (with brand new introduction) about one of the most iconic broads we’ve ever covered. In 2018, I described it as follows: “A surreal story of abuse and revenge, one that star
We’ve covered over fifty broads on this podcast, from serial killers and cult leaders to lady lawyers and forensic artists. But their stories don’t end when the episode does. Today we’re taking a look at what some of our most infamous broads—Amy Bish
One of the most powerful offices in the country is up for grabs this year, and it’s never been held by a woman. It’s the office of Manhattan District Attorney. And Eliza Orlins wants the job. She’s a public defender who’s represented over 3000 New Yo
Last time we encountered Marie Hilley, she was running from the FBI. Now, she’s changed her name and her backstory and (eventually) even her hair color. Meet Robbi. No, meet Teri. You’ll like her. She’ll MAKE you like her.
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Marie Hilley grew up thinking she was special. Marie Hilley spent a lot of money. Marie Hilley said she had a twin in Texas. Marie Hilley started carrying around hypodermic syringes. MEET MARIE. PART ONE OF TWO.
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She came to New York to make a name for herself, and despite a little, um, detour on Rikers Island, Anna Delvey succeeded. Netflix and HBO dueled over her life story; people dressed up as the scammer for Halloween. But behind the bravado and the $400
It was a crime made for the headlines: GOOD TWIN VS. EVIL TWIN. The twins themselves, Sunny and Gina Han, disagreed with the headlines. But you couldn’t deny that something had gone wrong between them, because now one of them was in shackles, and one
Nobody conquered crime quite like Sophie Lyons, who grew from a childhood pickpocket to a career criminal with a talent for disguises, netting husbands, and talking her way out of sticky situations. Author Shayne Davidson comes on the podcast to tell
Somewhere on the icy sidewalks of New York in 1910, an heiress vanished into thin air. Her family waited six weeks to call the police. This is the tale of Dorothy Arnold, one of America’s original front-page missing person stories.
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On January 17, 2014, Sister Eli decided not to go to a party because she was too pregnant. Three years later, she was taking a plea deal for something she hadn't done that night—to avoid a three-to-ten year prison sentence. This is the story of how t
Casey Anthony is a woman whose face launched a thousand death threats, because most Americans believe she killed her daughter. After her high-profile trial and shocking acquittal, she became an odd sort of celebrity: a famous recluse. What’s she been
In 1992, the body of a young nun named Sister Abhaya was pulled from a well with fingernail marks on her neck. Why did it take thirty years for anyone to be charged for her murder?
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Rebekah Sebastian has interviewed pretty much everyone in the true crime universe on her podcast Die-Alogue. Now, for our second ever Crime-Obsessed Broad episode, I’m interviewing HER! She talks about the most emotional moments she’s heard during he
The story of a fortune teller, a romance novelist, and millions and millions of missing dollars. From CONFIDENT WOMEN: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion.
—Preorder my new book, Confident Women, at Pilsen Community Book
Amy Bishop was obsessed with her Harvard degree, but the rest of the world failed to bow down to her, and she couldn’t take it. “These people are against me,” she ranted to a coworker. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.
—Preorder my n
In 2007, Jennifer Mee got her fifteen minutes of fame when she couldn’t stop hiccuping. In 2016, she was once again on TV—this time on a show called “Killer Women.” Fame is a curse, and it had cursed her.
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Marie Dean Arrington looked out her window, saw a car parked outside, and knew it was the FBI. She’d been running from the law her entire life. And for this last crime—a vanished woman, a ransom note, blood in the trunk of a car—she knew she was goin
Defending murderers and professional jail-breakers isn't for the faint of heart, but thankfully, 1930s defense lawyer Jessie Levy was anything but fainthearted. In a world where women were almost never seen in criminal defense, Jessie and her fabulou
Something unbelievably awful was about to happen to Bobbie Jo Stinnett. She was about to live a nightmare. But the nightmare was already with Lisa Montgomery, swirling around her, never letting up. The nightmare had molded her, turning her into the s
FIRST EPISODE OF 2021 IS HERE. Meet Juana Barraza, who loved wrestling and her children, who hated elderly women and her mother. Our expert for this episode is Susana Vargas Cervantes, author of THE LITTLE OLD LADY KILLER: The Sensationalized Crimes
A quick state of the Criminal Broads union. This is not goodbye forever, but it is goodbye for now. PLUS, some fun (basic? obvious?) quarantine escapism suggestions. And a bit of rambling. LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLLLL.
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Midnight. A hospital ward. A young woman writhes in her bed in pain. But wait—here comes the night nurse, Jane Toppan, with a cool glass of water, promising to make it all…go…away…
The story of Jane Toppan will chill you to your core, shake you to yo
On Halloween night, a young woman sneaks her boyfriend into her house…to kill her parents. Meet Suzane Von Richthofen, Brazil’s biggest teen girl psychopath.
Mega-thanks to Luiz Alberto Moura for the research assistance! Read his work on serial kill
When a young black woman named Joan Little ran from her jail cell, leaving her white male guard dead on the floor—without his pants—the country couldn’t decide who, exactly, Joan Little was. The prosecution said she was a vicious seductress who’d lur
Why do women love true crime? Wait, no—why do people love true crime? Author Rachel Monroe comes on the podcast to deconstruct our appetite for horrifying true stories. Also covered: relating to the Manson girls, why true crime is not the same as a b
On the night of January 15, 1978, Kathy Kleiner opened her eyes to see the serial killer Ted Bundy standing over her bed. One year later, she stared him down in the courtroom, thinking, “I’m standing, now, and you’re in the bed.” This is her story, i
Fifty years ago, a wild-eyed maniac named Charles Manson sent a gaggle of his girls into the night to murder seven people. But his most loyal girl, his second-in-command, a teenager named Squeaky Fromme, didn’t head out with the group. Since she didn
Tanya Nelson believed everything her fortuneteller, Ha Jade Smith, told her—until Tanya’s life spiraled out of control, and Ha couldn’t seem to help her. With that, Tanya decided that someone was going to have to pay for the wreckage that was her lif
There were plenty of jobs for women in WW2: nurse, ambulance driver, factory worker. But then there were the other jobs, the ones no one really talked about. Spy. Resistance fighter. Killer. These are the stories of five women—Nadezhda Popova, Vitka
Meet Irma Grese. She likes boys, girls, movies, makeup, and sadistic torture. She hates her dad, but loves Adolf Hitler. This is horrific story of the story of how propaganda—and a large dose of teenage boredom—transformed an unskilled peasant girl i
History remembers them as beautiful booze-hounds. Hollywood turned them into fame-hungry starlets. But who were these murderesses, really? With Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, author of UGLY PREY: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Ja
The story behind New York’s first-ever female detective! In 1896, Isabella Goodwin was a quiet, hard-working police matron who wrangled murderesses, made up the prison beds, and earned about half of what her male coworkers did. As far as she knew, sh
Juanita Spinelli ran a gang of embarrassingly awful Northern Californian crooks who could barely rob enough gas stations to stay afloat. And yet three years after forming her gang, she was walking toward the gas chamber, while citizens across the cou
In 1982, Kazuko Fukuda strangled her coworker, changed her name, and went on the run—for fifteen years. She was playing a game of chicken with the law, trying to stay free until the statute of limitations for her crime ran out. To do this, she had to
The victims of Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer in the world, are known to us mostly by their autopsy photos. On the conclusion to our WOMEN OF JACK THE RIPPER series, historian Hallie Rubenhold comes on the podcast to illuminate the ro
We remember Jack the Ripper as a man who did the brutal work of a typical male serial killer, de-feminizing his victims by hacking up their bodies. But in this two-part series, let’s take a look at the women who circle around the Ripper legend. First
Victorian women were expected to be wives and mothers—not killers. Enter Adelaide Bartlett. In her middle-class Victorian world of green wallpaper, taxidermy, and submissive wifehood, the beautiful Adelaide was an enigma. Was she telling the truth ab
In 1930s New York, a single man ruled the entire city with extortion, racketeering, and a healthy dose of murder. Nobody could take him down—until a black girl from Atlanta decided to try her hand at it. It was the match of the century: the lawyer, E
Once upon a time, in 1930s Texas, a girl named Blanche fell desperately in love with a boy named Buck. She thought they had a shot at a good life together, but everything went off the rails one night when Buck’s brother and his brother’s girlfriend—C
In 1960s Melbourne, a lot of very wealthy people found themselves wondering if there was more to life, and wouldn’t you know, a gorgeous yoga teacher was there to tell them: yes, yes there is. But this yoga teacher with her warm, appealing aphorisms
At the end of the 1970s, body after dead body began appearing on the streets and sidewalks and parking lots of Miami. Many of those bodies were linked to the Colombian cocaine trade, which was in turn linked to one incredibly powerful woman with a lo
At eight years old, Lois Gibson begged God to give her a job where she could draw faces. As a young woman, a man with an evil face burst through her door, leaving her broken, despairing, and consumed with the desire for justice. At thirty-nine, she b
Beneath the soft green grass of the Last Supper cemetery, most regular, God-fearing residents of Mobile, Alabama had one family member resting. Maybe two. Rhonda Belle Martin had eight. This is the story of a woman who the tabloids labeled a “redhead
Falicia Blakely was only 16 when she met the man who would change the course of her life. At first, Mike Berry was the perfect boyfriend—bringing her flowers, treating her little boy as his own son. But then came the brainwashing, the manipulation, a
While many remember the 1978 Jonestown massacre as a dark monument to the power of a single man’s paranoia and fanaticism, the tale of Jim Jones’ lover, Carolyn Layton, reveals a more complicated narrative—and a more frightening truth. Carolyn was a
Do female vampires exist? Are they bloodier than their male counterparts? And if the answer to those first two questions is yes: should we race to the grocery store RIGHT NOW to stock up on garlic?! Join me as we travel through the long, dark, decomp
If you were looking for vice, Sydney in the 1920s-1940s was the place to be. Duck into the back alleys of Surry Hills and Woolloomooloo and you’d find all the cocaine, “sly grog” (booze!), brawling, and brothels your dark little heart desired, all of
How much abuse can a woman endure before she breaks? That seemed to be the horrible challenge that the wealthy men who abused Phoolan Devi had set for themselves. It was as though they were mad scientists, experimenting on the human spirit. But their
We all know the story: Lizzie Borden may or may not have taken an ax (okay, a hatchet) and given her mother (okay, stepmother) forty whacks (okay, nineteen). We know for sure that there were two deaths, and a lot of blood. But something sprung to lif
As the 19th century loomed, China experienced a huge boom in piracy—and the largest, most terrifyingly organized fleet that menaced the South China Sea was led by…a woman. Madame Cheng (remembered as Cheng I Sao or Ching Shih) had a meteoric rise fro
In 1958, Nebraska was terrified by a spree killing so brutal, so atrocious that it seemed impossible to believe it was pulled off by...teenagers. When Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate were apprehended, she ran screaming to the cops, telling
Bestselling true crime author Harold Schechter comes on the podcast to tell us the story of Belle Gunness, a Norwegian-American serial dater who had a thing for butcher’s tools. Or perhaps you know her as the author of the best dating profile line ev
In 1998, Beatrice Munyenyezi came from Rwanda to New Hampshire, claiming that she needed sanctuary from the horrific genocide that had recently happened in her home country. On her immigration forms, she swore that she’d had nothing to do with the vi
Bestselling true crime author M. William Phelps comes onto the podcast to tell us the story of Amy Archer Gilligan, a turn-of-the-century serial killer who disguised her sociopathic tendencies beneath a kind, neighborly facade. Her lemonade was laced
Jasmuheen, an Australian guru who became media catnip in the 90s, seemed kind of spacey and silly. Sure, her belief system was totally wild—she told the world that she lived off energy alone, and hadn’t eaten actual food in years—but her teachings di
The Gonzalez Valenzuela sisters did not have an easy childhood, but when they grew up, they proceeded to steadily destroy the childhoods of other young women. When their “horror ranch” was discovered, the people of Mexico were appalled at the secrets
Kate Bender knew how to get along with people. She could converse, dance, ride horses, flirt, and generally blend into society like a pro. So when society found out that she and her creepy family been serially killing travelers all along, they wanted
In 1819, Lavinia and John Fisher were arrested in Charleston, SC after beating up a couple of travelers. Their case ballooned from accusations of assault to a charge of highway robbery—and a double death sentence. Today, Lavinia is remembered as Amer