S3 Ep10: Finding Her Voice: Sabella Nitti of Murderess Row

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the musical Chicago, the foreign woman held prisoner on Murderess Row has only one line in English: "Uh-uh, not guilty." In today's episode, we explore the real-life case that inspired that character, Sabella Nitti, who was accused of murdering her husband, and her fight to speak for herself and prove her innocence.

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from the Obsessed Network exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter: @centuriespod

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even
0:14.5	earn the label crime of the century.
0:18.5	But the stories that made headlines and decades passed aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:25.1	I remember hunt, a journalist, and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine
0:30.2	a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
0:36.7	This is crimes of the centuries.
0:49.6	Hiserships skirted the statue of liberty and headed toward Ellis Island.
0:54.2	Isabella Needy hadn't seen her husband and oldest son in three years.
0:59.4	It was 1916 and she had escaped Europe at war to finally reunite with her family in America.
1:06.7	But what awaited Isabella, as she was usually called, was not the American dream she
1:12.2	likely envisioned.
1:14.1	Like millions of other immigrants in the decades following the American Civil War, the
1:19.2	Needy's hoped for a better life than the one they had left behind in southern Italy.
1:24.2	But Isabella's new life looked shockingly like her old one.
1:28.6	Once she and the younger children traveling with her joined her husband Francesco and oldest
1:33.8	son James in Chicago.
1:36.0	They traveled to their farm outside the city.
1:39.2	Technically in the town of Stickney, the next six years saw Isabella so isolated that
1:45.0	there was no need for her to learn English.
1:48.0	She had two more children and worked alongside her sons in the hired hands on their struggling
1:53.1	farm.
1:55.0	Then her husband Francesco disappeared in 1923.
	...

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