Most notorious contains adult themes. It is not suitable for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

Welcome to Most notorious. I'm Eric Rivenis and I appreciate you for joining us.

Welcome to Most notorious. I'm Eric Rivenis and I appreciate you taking a little chunk of your precious time to spend with me here.

Incredible wealth, a scoundrel with no morals, arsenic. Words that we use together never end well.

But it is our subject on this week's episode. We're talking about one of these high society stories where pure unchecked greed is taken to extraordinary heights.

It's with great pleasure that I introduced my guest this week, Tobin T. Boek. Tobin is one of the premier historical crime writers in Michigan and is a special talent for digging up absolutely fascinating true crime stories many lost in time.

We're discussing today poisoning the pecs, the scandalous 1916 murder plot. Really good stuff.

Thank you, Tobin Boek for your time today. Your historical true crime writer from Michigan for those who aren't familiar with Michigan crime. Can you give us some of the states more notorious history?

Michigan has a kind of an anglerious past as far as true crime is concerned. We're typical midwestern state as far as crime is concerned.

You're going to have your burgers and things like that. But the one thing that does make Michigan a little bit different than other places is its geographic location.

We're so close Detroit so close to Canada that during prohibition era it became probably the nation's number one in order of a legal whooch.

The stuff came in and I understand Kapone wanted to take over Detroit because it was such an illegal pipeline of booze coming into the United States.

You're just a river away basically but he was so terrified of the purple gang that he did business with him instead.

And I think I think his log cabin brand of whiskey was whiskey that was imported through the purple gang in Detroit.

So there's that and we've had some real notables back in Fernandez, the lonely hearts, killers were caught in Michigan.

We were ultimately tried and executed for a New York crime. So it's an interesting case in that they were caught for a crime that they committed but they were never tried for.

That happened in Michigan. So yeah we've had our share of serial killers and all kinds of fun stuff.

So one of the main victims in your book John Peck is from Grand Rapids Michigan. Can you talk a little bit about John Peck who he was?

Yeah John Peck was a native New Yorker and he and his second wife relocated the Grand Rapids. I think they were looking for a quiet place to settle.

When they came to when they came to grant mid-Michigan the city of Grand Rapids was undergoing a population boom because there was the furniture industry had gone into full swing.

And what Peck's business was as he was a manufacturer of medicines which is a he learned from his pharmacist father in New York.

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