S5 Ep21: Gun on the Ferry: The Ruin of Laura Fair

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laura Fair wanted what many women in Gilded-Age San Francisco wanted: security, respectability, and a husband who told the truth. What she got instead was a years-long affair and a heap of public scorn. When a single gunshot rang out aboard a crowded ferry, it set off a national debate about morality, madness, and how far a woman could be pushed. Based on real letters, real lies, and a courtroom drama that captivated 19th century America.

"Crimes of the Centuries" is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes on the Grab Bag Patreon page.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking, they change laws, change society, or even
0:12.4	earn the label, Crime of the Century. But the stories that made headlines and decades past
0:18.9	aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:21.6	I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
0:32.6	This is Crimes of the Centuries.
0:52.5	Alexander Parker Crittenden was many things, but mostly he was a liar.
0:58.3	Born into the well-respected Kentucky CrKritenden clan, he'd left Lexington early on and seemed to be on the move ever since. He wasn't evil, or maybe he was, but he wasn't
1:05.1	like serial killer bad or child molester bad. He was just a liar, who lied not pathologically or to excess,
1:14.4	but almost exclusively to two women, both of whom he purportedly loved. One was his wife, Clara,
1:22.2	with whom he fathered 14 children, though sadly only eight would survive into adulthood.
1:29.7	The other was his mistress,
1:36.9	Laura Fair, with whom he shared seven years of intermittent cohabitation and a good helping of drama. The two women had a few things in common, beside the man most people knew as AP. They were both
1:44.1	deeply rooted in their southern
1:46.0	heritage, women who grew up with the rules, mores, and strictures that being female and
1:52.3	living in the heart of the 19th century required. Clara didn't chafe against those rules. Laura did.
2:00.4	Both believed that they knew AP's true nature.
2:03.9	Both believed he loved them with every fiber in his body,
2:07.6	and both were inordinately patient with him, all facts considered.
2:12.5	But like I said, he wasn't much for telling either of them the truth.
2:19.9	So it was that on September 3rd,
2:27.5	1870, AP met his beloved Laura privately to reassure her just moments before he was scheduled to rendezvous with his wife and four of their children in Oakland, just across the bay. They'd been
2:33.5	away from him in their California home in San
	...

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