When Morris Foster died in 1889 at the Blockley Hospital in West Philadelphia, his friends suspected that he had been poisoned. Foster's corpse was exhumed and a graveside post-mortem examination was performed. But as the two physicians prepared to remove portions of Foster's internal organs and bone for a chemical analysis, they made a shocking discovery-- a line of deftly-placed stitches over the abdomen of the deceased. Evidently, someone had already performed an autopsy. But who? And, more importantly, why?
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21:11
The Luzerne County Love Cult Murder
One of the more peculiar crimes in the history of Pennsylvania occurred in 1931 with the slaying of an elderly spinster from Forty Fort named Minnie Dilley. While most murders in our state's history have been carried out by heartless outlaws and seasoned criminals, Miss Dilley's slayer was a young female college graduate and the daughter of a minister. Stranger still, the unfortunate elderly victim was said to have belonged to a bizarre sex cult.
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20:37
Grandpa Goes Insane: The Gabert Family Murders
Sixty-year-old Elirio "Eli" Mantoni adored his family-- especially his grandchildren, who lived in Northampton County city of Easton with their mother, Lillian Mantoni Gabert. But when the county threatened to remove four-year-old Elaine, three-year-old Raymond, and 21-month-old Paul from their home and place them in foster care, Grandpa Eli took matters into his own hands. Those of us with our sanity intact simply don't know what it's like to have that last frayed thread holding our lives in the balance cut, sending us plummeting into an inescapable abyss. Few of us really know the depths of such despair; we can only imagine. But Elirio Mantoni lived that nightmare, though no one can really say if he knew, when he stumbled out of bed that morning, that it would be his last day on earth. In fact, no one can say for certain just what happened on the morning of November 23, 1959, since no one involved lived to tell about it.
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21:02
The Ghost of Hannah Shingle
In the mid-19th century, an old farmhouse stood along a quaint country road in North Coventry Township. This was the home of an eccentric spinster named Hannah Shingle, whose brutal murder in 1855 remains one of Chester County's most perplexing unsolved mysteries. Though no one was ever convicted of the crime, the evidence points to a killer who was closely known to the victim. And perhaps that is why Hannah's restless ghost was encountered by numerous witnesses in the years following her death, haunting the countryside near her former home.
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12:15
A Murder at City Hall: The Story of George Marion
This is the improbable, but true, tale of how Glinda the Good Witch helped save the life of a washed-up actor sentenced to death for murdering his estranged wife inside the Wilkes-Barre City Hall. This is the bizarre story of George L. Marion, a once-famous minstrel show performer with an addiction to pork and beans, and his wife, Frances Lee Brooks, who was raised in commune founded by a wacky faith-healing cult leader.
Author and "historian of the macabre" Marlin Bressi explores true crime, unsolved mysteries, haunted places, and strange history from around the Keystone State. Based on the Pennsylvania Oddities blog and book series by Sunbury Press. New episodes on the 1st and 15th of every month (Note: There will be no new episodes in August; new episodes will return September 1).
Be sure to visit the Pennsylvania Oddities blog for hundreds of astonishing true stories from every corner of the spookiest state in America!
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