Serious crime conversations with the people who wrote the books.
Jim Harold interviews authors about crimes and the legends around them, from mob money in Key West to Bonnie and Clyde to a socialite spy. He treats the material soberly and says so on air, setting the show apart from blood-and-guts true crime.
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Jim Harold's Crime Scene runs on a simple setup. Jim Harold, who introduces himself at the top of the program, talks with a guest, and the guest has often written a book. The opening lines name what the show is after: the crimes, the criminals, why they did it, who got hurt, and whether they met justice or pulled off the perfect crime. What follows is conversation. The first thing to notice is the range. A run of episode titles takes in 'The Man Who Shot JP Morgan', 'How Key West Killed JFK', 'True Crime Stories of the South', 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment' and 'Flirting With Danger', which puts a Morgan family story, assassination, outlaws, prison and espionage side by side. In the Morgan conversation, a guest describes reading letters at the Morgan Library that Jack wrote to his mother from the time he was sent away to school, and sketches a quiet son beside a boisterous, bigger-than-life father. Key West goes somewhere else entirely. Harold asks about a chapter called 'Hoffa and Heroin in Key West', and the guest traces Teamsters pension fund money into island property, including the La Concha and Casa Marina hotels, suggesting the mob hoped to turn them into casinos after losing Cuba. Harold makes no secret of his own position. He counts himself in the camp that believes the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. Other conversations test popular images. A guest discussing Bonnie and Clyde grants that they were seen as Robin Hoods but calls them hard-up cases, then corrects the legend of John Dillinger's soap gun: it was carved from wood and blackened with boot black. In 'Cruel and Unusual Punishment', Harold raises the 'Camp Cupcake' picture of minimum security, and a guest who has been on the inside calls it wrong, adding that the wildest prison stories tend to come from inmates themselves. Janet Wallach brings in espionage with her book on Marguerite Harrison, the socialite spy, a subject Harold welcomes as something different. In 'Out of the Woods', Greg Olson talks about the book he made with Shasta, who suffered trauma as a child, and about why victims need someone willing to listen. Most of these conversations end the same way, with Harold telling listeners to be careful out there. He is also candid about what the show is not. It is not blood and guts, he says, and it may draw a smaller crowd for treating crime as something that affects real lives. That trade is the clearest reason to choose it.
Made for: Suits a listener who likes hearing a case talked through with the author who researched it, and who prefers crime handled soberly over gore.
What sets it apart: The host openly sets the show against blood-and-guts true crime, and the subject range reaches well past murder, into a Morgan family story, Key West mob money, espionage and the realities of prison.
Jim Harold interviews authors and experts on true crime. Past guests have included Pulitzer Prize winners, best selling authors and popular true crime podcasters.
Bonnie and Clyde's Robin Hood halo looks shakier when you hear Jim Harold question it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A measured historical mystery about family letters, inherited power, and the scholar tied to the shooting of J.P. Morgan.
The episode sits in the uneasy space between public power and private inheritance, using J.P. Morgan's towering reputation as the backdrop for a more intimate look at his son Jack.
A Key West-focused JFK theory ties organized crime, Teamsters money, Cuba, and control of routes into the United States.
Key West sits at the center of a JFK assassination theory that links organized crime, the Teamsters Union pension fund, Cuba, and control of routes into the United States. David L.
A grave, survivor-centered Crime Scene episode about Shasta Graney's trauma, listening, and the long work of healing.
Jim Harreld's Crime Scene turns on Shasta Graney's account of childhood trauma and the hard question of what victims need from the people around them.
Kathy Pickens calmly separates Southern crime legends from the damage and history beneath them.
Kathy Pickens brings a steady hand to Southern crime folklore, using True Crime Stories of the South to sort the shine of legend from the record underneath.
A measured prison memoir discussion weighs prison myths against violence, isolation, and psychological strain.
Prison is framed here through the stories people inherit from television, movies, and rumor, then brought back to the quieter psychological costs those stories often miss.
ABC Audio's Theranos fraud series that also introduces its other true-crime podcasts.
LA Times reporter Christopher Goffard traces con man John Meehan's fraud, abuse, and its Bravo TV adaptation.
Jim Harold interviews a former NCIS agent about cold cases, discussing the crimes and seeking justice.
Jim Harold interviews Maureen Callahan about her book on serial killer Israel Keyes.
Jim Harold interviews author Kevin about his new book on Ted Bundy's many victims and the serial killer's crimes.
Jim Harold interviews author Amanda Rumer about her book 'Killer Moms' and discusses true crime cases involving mothers who kill.
Jim Harold's Crime Scene turns to Mary Inouye's The Man Who Shot J.P.
Jim Harreld interviews David L.
Jim Harreld's Crime Scene centers on Out of the Woods, Greg Olson's book about Shasta Groney's 2005 kidnapping, the deaths of Brenda Groney, Mark McKenzie, and Slade Groney, and the seven-week captivity in Montana.
Jim Harreld and Kathy Pickens center True Crime Stories of the South on Robert Lane's claim that the South shaped America's homicide rate.
Paul Smith, Ph.D., says he turned nearly 800 pages of prison notes into Cruel and Unusual Punishment after serving 28 months in federal prison on a 2018 health care fraud case.
Greg Owen, a former keyboardist who became a Cook County assistant state's attorney, tells Jim Harold how he left a rock career after hearing a voice say 'you better do this or you're gonna kill yourself.' He describes the March 3, 1976 stabbing deaths of a 24-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman at 2970 North Sheridan in Chicago, a case he later prosecuted at age 31.
Mark Shaw, author of "Abuse of Power," tells Jim Harold that Robert Kennedy's 1968 assassination fits a pattern with the deaths of JFK in 1963 and Dorothy Kilgallen in 1965.
Historian John Kerner tells Jim Harold that Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and JFK were each killed before a second term, and he uses The Four Guns to ask what might have changed had they lived.
Jim Harold interviews author Janet Wallach about her book on socialite spy Marguerite Harrison.