{"podcast":{"title":"Foul Play: A Historical True Crime Podcast","slug":"foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278","podcast_index_feed_id":51278,"rss_url":"https://feeds.redcircle.com/4cf5f57c-0bea-454e-8dc3-f263c362d278","website_url":"https://redcircle.com/shows/foulplay","image_url":"https://media.redcircle.com/images/2026/2/16/21/cbfd1140-ea5b-4393-97e9-8f2f9ac2f953_00-main-artwork-original.jpg","author":"Shane L. Waters, Wendy Cee, Gemma Hoskins","episode_count":315,"summary":"Foggy gaslit streets. A quiet courtroom. And crimes that history tried to bury. Foul Play is a historical true crime podcast that investigates the most chilling murder cases from the 1800s and early 1900s across the United States and the United Kingdom. Hosted by investigative crime journalists Shane Waters — who pioneered crime podcasting in 2008 — and Wendy Cee, each season unravels one complete criminal case through original research, court records, and primary source material. This isn't sensationalized true crime. Every season of Foul Play puts victims first — their names, their stories, their humanity — before examining how murder investigations unfolded in an era before modern forensics, when justice was far from guaranteed. From Victorian poisoners in London to Gilded Age killers in America, Foul Play brings historical true crime to life with cinematic storytelling and relentless accuracy. Every fact is verified. Every claim is sourced. Every story is told with the gravity it deserves. New seasons of this historical true crime podcast release throughout the year, with episodes dropping weekly on Tuesdays. Hello, friend. Welcome to Foul Play.","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278"},"episode":{"title":"New Hampshire & Colorado: Two Forgotten Murders, 1886–1897","slug":"new-hampshire-colorado-two-forgotten-murders-1886-1897","published_at":"2026-05-26T09:00:45+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/new-hampshire-colorado-two-forgotten-murders-1886-1897","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278","url":"http://mythsandmalice.com","audio_url":"https://audio3.redcircle.com/episodes/d77b99f6-7923-4117-b625-c6c44110684e/stream.mp3","summary":"This episode contains discussions of murder, execution, racial violence, and a botched public hanging. If you need to skip any section, the chapter markers below will help you find your way around. Support resources are listed at the end of these notes. This Episode Season 40 of Foul Play covers America's forgotten crimes — fifty states, 250 years, and the stories that slipped out of the history books. Episode 8 closes out the season with a double portrait. One case from New Hampshire. One from Colorado. Eleven years apart. Two thousand miles between them. The same question at the center of both: when the law finally catches up with a killer, does it actually deliver justice? This is historical true crime at its most uncomfortable. Case A: The Great Falls National Bank Murder — New Hampshire , 1897 Joseph A. Stickney was sixty-eight years old when a man walked into his bank on Good Friday morning, April 16, 1897, and cut his throat. Stickney was the cashier of the Great Falls National Bank in Somersworth, New Hampshire — a mill city of seven thousand people where the Salmon Falls River dropped one hundred feet over a mile and powered seven textile mills. The bank had operated since 1865. On a holiday morning, with the mills closed and families walking to Mass, Stickney was alone at his desk with $150,000 in money and securities behind him. The man who killed him was Joseph E. Kelley, twenty-four years old, born in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Kelley had been convicted in Somersworth five years earlier for breaking and entering. He had studied the bank's routine. He walked in with a blackjack, knocked Stickney to the floor, cut his throat, and left with approximately $6,000 in cash — leaving $144,000 behind. The historical murder investigation moved fast. Kelley hired a hor…","meta_description":"This episode contains discussions of murder, execution, racial violence, and a botched public hanging. If you need to skip any section, the chapter marker…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2429,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/episodes/new-hampshire-colorado-two-forgotten-murders-1886-1897/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/foul-play-a-historical-true-crime-podcast-51278/new-hampshire-colorado-two-forgotten-murders-1886-1897.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}