S6 Ep5: LIVE Episode: Cincinnati's "Seamstress Slayer"
Crimes of the Centuries
Amber Hunt and Audioboom
4.7 • 4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In November 1958, duck hunters at Cowan Lake State Park stumbled upon a burned body so badly damaged it was nearly unrecognizable. It belonged to Louise Bergen, a 32-year-old Cincinnati mother whose disappearance had already set off whispers of secret relationships and divided loyalties. What followed became one of the most notorious murder cases in the city's history—featuring a shocking confession, a death sentence, and a prosecutor who refused to look at evidence that might have told a different story. (Note: This episode was recorded live at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio.)
Additional note: A regular listener and relative of the prosecutor mentioned in this story, C. Watson Hover, reached out to correct my pronunciation of his surname. I said "hover," as in "hoverboard." The correct pronunciation is the word "over" with an H. Thank you, Lisa, for letting me know!
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 and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com
Order the Crimes of the Centuries book at your favorite bookstore or at www.centuriespod.com/book!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before we begin, just a note that this episode was recorded live at the Fitton Center for Creative |
| 0:05.9 | Arts in Hamilton, Ohio. |
| 0:16.4 | Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even |
| 0:24.7 | earn the label Crime of the Century. |
| 0:28.7 | But the stories that made headlines and decades past aren't necessarily remembered today. |
| 0:35.3 | I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, |
| 0:40.0 | I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened. This is |
| 0:47.7 | Crimes of the Centuries. On November 1st, 1958, a Saturday, a young man named Cecil Mains spent all morning with two of his friends |
| 1:06.0 | freezing their tails off in a boat on Cowan Lake about an hour north of Cincinnati. |
| 1:11.6 | They were duck hunting. They weren't having any luck. |
| 1:15.6 | Cecil, Albert Walker, and Dean Jackson had launched before sunrise into a cold drizzle that came and went all day. |
| 1:23.6 | The ducks were scarce, as in they were outnumbered by the hunters scattered around the |
| 1:29.3 | 700-acre reservoir in their blinds. By mid-morning, the young men had given up on Cowan Lake |
| 1:35.5 | and decided to try Stone Lick, a smaller reservoir about half an hour away on the other side of |
| 1:41.5 | Blanchester. Maybe the ducks were flying there. |
| 1:45.6 | Well, they weren't. |
| 1:47.2 | In fact, it was clear before they even put their boats into Stone Lake that this place |
| 1:52.5 | was dead or duckwise than Cowan had been. |
| 1:55.7 | So they goofed around in Blanchester for a while, had lunch, and then headed back to Cowan Lake in the early |
| 2:02.2 | afternoon. And these guys were nothing, if not persistent. Then it started to drizzle. By 4 o'clock, |
| 2:10.7 | Cecil and his friends had had enough. They decided to call it a day. But things just weren't going their way. |
| 2:18.4 | The boat's motor wouldn't start. |
... |
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