Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they earn the label crime of the century.

But the stories that made headlines in decades past are necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author.

In each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe less known today, but

was huge when it happened.

This is crimes of the centuries.

No one had noticed the small framed woman digging a hole in the backyard of her Massachusetts

home night after night for almost a week.

She made a point to do the work after the sun had set, so her neighbors wouldn't see her

when asked questions.

It was slow work at first, digging through the first layers of earth because it was winter

and the ground was frozen.

But once her shovel got a little deeper, the digging got easier, and after a few days,

she had dug a hole that was four feet long and four feet deep.

The hardest part was over, but the woman wasn't done.

Next she had to drag the body to the hole, which wasn't easy either.

And she was in her 60s, a grandmother, and corpses aren't easy to move.

There's a reason they're called dead weight.

She moved it the way one might haul a heavy load of autumn leaves to the curb, by piling

it atop a sheet of plastic to glide across the lawn.

The method worked, and after she heaved the corpse into the hole, she added some finishing

touches to the day's long effort.

...