Fifty States of Crime

In 2018, police announced that they had finally arrested the "Golden State Killer," a man responsible for over 140 burglaries, fifty rapes, and at least thirteen murders committed in California throughout the 1970s and '80s. That man turned out to be a former California police officer, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. Just two months earlier, the publication of I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara had rocked the world of true crime. Published two years after her death, the book charts McNamara's obsessive search for the prolific criminal who had been known over the years as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Visalia Ransacker, among other epithets. McNamara is credited with coining the "Golden State Killer" moniker and heightening public awareness of the-at the time-still unsolved case. William Thorp dives into the investigation, exploring the dark side of sunny California, the advances in forensic innovation that made solving this case possible, and the story inside the story-one of an amateur sleuth who dedicated the last years of her life to understanding how one of the country's worst criminals could have spent so many decades undetected.

New York, Summer of 1965. One hot summer, two young children disappeared from their first-floor apartment in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. Their mother, Alice Crimmins, reported them missing to the police. Later that day, the body of four-year-old Missy was found in a vacant lot, showing signs of having been strangled. The body of five-year-old Eddie, Jr., was found several days later. Police were immediately suspicious of the mother. Recently divorced, with teased red hair and heavy makeup, Alice Crimmins did not fit the maternal ideal held by the predominantly Catholic police detectives on the case. Her every action was scrutinized: Was she behaving like a grief-stricken mother or like a coldhearted killer? After three years of police surveillance, Alice was charged with the murder of her children in 1968 in a highly publicized trial. Ultimately found guilty of manslaughter, Alice spent a decade in prison before being released on parole in 1977. But was she truly guilty, or just the victim of police bias and misogynistic judgment? Journalist Anaïs Renevier revisits the case, exploring one of the most famous and divisive trials in recent American history.

Ohio. A suicide, no fingerprints, no identity. In July 2002, the Eastlake police discovered a decomposed body in a modest studio apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. It appeared to be a suicide by firearm. The man was Joseph Newton Chandler III, a retiree whom neighbors and former colleagues described as quiet, secretive, and strange. But as the investigation progressed, less and less about Joseph's life and identity made sense. In 2018, thanks to scientific advances in DNA, the man's true identity was finally discovered: Robert Ivan Nichols. A veteran with a wife and three sons, Nichols eventually left his family, telling his wife "One day you will know why." A few years later, in 1965, his family reported him missing. By 1978, he had stolen the identity of Joseph Newton Chandler III, who had been killed in a car accident at eight years old. But who was this man and why did he change his name? What secret was he trying to hide? Thibault Raisse examines the case, exploring the many theories that have emerged, from the craziest to the most credible. Among these theories is a possible connection to the Zodiac Killer, whose murders date back to 1968 and 1969 in California.