This is

adult content and language.

This story contains adult content and language.

Listener discretion is advised.

Eventually there was this conspiracy against him, one that almost certainly involved the cooperation of the US government. In 1856 strang was murdered by some of his own followers.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a non-fiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas.

I'm also the host of the Historical True Crime Podcast, Tenfold War Wicked on Exactly Right.

I've traveled around the world interviewing people for the show. I've

interviewed some people in person and some from my home studio over Zoom and they are

all excellent writers. They've had so many great true crime stories and now we want to tell you those

stories with details that have never been published. Wicked Words is about

the choices that writers make good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories behind the stories.

My name is Miles Harvey and I'm an author and a professor of English at DePaul University in Chicago where I am the director of the

the DePaul Publishing Institute.

Miles Harvey wrote a book called The King of Confidence and it's about a 19th century con artist and false prophet named Joseph Strang.

While Brigham Young was organizing the Mormon Mass Exodus to Utah, Strang convinced some of the

devout to follow him to a new colony in Michigan.

This is an unconventional true crime tale.

In the landscape of criminals, the ones who are closest to my heart are the 19th century

grifter, con man, Charlton, the 90,000 different names for them and you have

really honed in on one that I find fascinating.

So in one way this book is just about a fascinating guy who tried to start his own kingdom

...