True Crime Historian presents Sunday Magazine Number 4, a collection of true crime short stories.

This episode delivers a trio of pernicious characters from history, a murderer, a bigamist, and a bank robber.

First up, a frightful scream in the night leads police to a gruesome torch

sling and a scandalous love triangle in Murder by Fire by Brandon Wright from the pages of the

classic Pulp Magazine Master Detective. After that, at the 39-minute mark, the abominable Mr. Yelverton, a cheeky

tale by Edmund Pearson, one of my favorite early true crime writers who tells a story

of a British aristocrat caught in a salacious scandal. And finally, at just about exactly the hour mark, the American

Exchange Bank robbery by Cleveland Moffat, another of our pulp nonfiction favorites, comes

from the files of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. In today's money, it would have been

a heist of over a million dollars, and it was all in cash, mostly fives.

They got the money back, and they know who did it, but mysteries still abound.

I'm true crime historian Richard O. Jones, and I give you murder by fire.

A woman's cry, shrill and terrifying, came from within the kiln.

Murder by fire by Brandon Wright.

Thick fog shrouded New York Harbor that chilly night in late September,

as patrolman George Herrick walked his beat near the East River in lower Manhattan.

At the corner of East Fifth and Lewis Streets,

he paused under a street lamp to check his watch

and saw that it was 305 a.m.

Just then, a piercing scream cut the night air.

It was the cry of a woman, shrill and rising in crescendo, agonized and horrible.

Herrick dashed down Lewis Street toward the spot from which the scream had come.

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