Albert Anastasia ruled through fear. Known as “The Mad Hatter,” he built power in 1930s New York through extreme, unpredictable violence—both personally and through organized enforcement killings. But fear has a shelf life.

In this episode of The Mob Is Dead, we strip away mob mythology and examine how Anastasia used terror as a leadership tool, how many deaths he was actually responsible for, and why the very reputation that protected him ultimately made him expendable. From documented murders to his assassination in a Manhattan barber chair, this is the real story of fear as governance—and why it always collapses.

This episode focuses on historical records, adult victims only, and evidence-based analysis. No glamor. No legends. Just power, violence, and consequences.

If this episode added context instead of myth, follow Deadly Truths with Becca, leave a rating, and share it with someone who still thinks mob power was about loyalty instead of fear. Your support keeps this work independent and evidence-driven.

This episode is based on historical records, court documents, and contemporaneous reporting. Some details surrounding organized crime violence are disputed or unknowable by design; where that’s the case, it is stated clearly. This episode does not glorify violence or criminal behavior.

Sources and reference materials include:

• FBI summaries and historical files on organized crime enforcement

• Court records and trial transcripts related to Murder, Inc.

• Contemporary reporting from The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Brooklyn Eagle (1930s–1950s)

• Scholarly works on American organized crime history and leadership psychology

Who Was Andrew Jackson really—hero of the people or architect of state-sanctioned violence?

This episode strips away the mythology and examines the documented record behind one of the most defended and dangerous figures in American history. We look at Andrew Jackson not as folklore, but as a man who fused personal rage, political ambition, and unchecked executive power into national policy.

From the Trail of Tears to the normalization of political violence, this is a fact-driven breakdown of how Jackson’s legacy was constructed—and who paid the price for it. No euphemisms. No patriotic varnish. Just history as it actually happened.

This is The Frontier Is Dead.

🎧 CALL TO ACTION

If you’re tired of American history told as bedtime stories, follow and subscribe to Deadly Truths.
Rate the show, share this episode, and help push real history back into the conversation—where it belongs.

⚠️ DISCLAIMER

This episode discusses historical violence, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement. Content may be disturbing for some listeners.
All analysis is based on documented historical sources. Where historians disagree, those disputes are clearly noted. No claims are made beyond the available evidence.

📚 RESOURCES & SOURCES

National Archives — Indian Removal Act (1830)

Library of Congress — Andrew Jackson Papers

U.S. Senate Historical Office — Indian Removal policy records

American Lion — Jon Meacham

What Hath God Wrought — Daniel Walker Howe

The Native American Holocaust — David E. Stannard

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian — Trail of Tears resources

Yale Law School — Avalon Project: Indian Removal documents

Billy the Kid wasn’t a folk hero — and he wasn’t a psychopath. He was a poor, orphaned teenager caught inside a rigged frontier economy that rewarded violence, protected power, and erased the people it used up.

In this episode of The Frontier Is Dead, we dismantle the mythology around Billy the Kid and examine what historians actually know versus what newspapers, dime novels, and Hollywood sold to the public. From inflated kill counts to the media machine that turned a frightened young man into a national symbol, this episode asks a harder question: why did America need Billy to be a monster?

This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s an autopsy.

📣 Call to Action

If this episode changed how you see the frontier, follow Deadly Truths with Becca for more stories that cut through myth and expose the systems underneath the violence.

Rate, review, and share this episode — especially with someone who still thinks the Old West was about honor and justice.

New episodes weekly. No legends. Just truth.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This episode discusses historical violence and death. While based on documented sources, some quotations and events are paraphrased from historical accounts where primary records are limited or contested. This podcast does not glorify violence or criminal behavior and aims to present a critical, contextual analysis of historical events and power structures.

📚 Resources & Sources

• Pat Garrett, The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid (1882)

• Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life

• Frederick Nolan, The West of Billy the Kid

• New Mexico Territorial court records and contemporary newspaper archives

• Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Frontier & Outlaw Collections)

Jesse James is one of the most mythologized figures in American history — but the legend hides more than it reveals.

In this episode of Frontier Is Dead, we dismantle the mythology surrounding Jesse James and examine who he really was, how his image was manufactured, and why America needed him to be something he wasn’t.

This is not a story about his death.
It’s a forensic look at radicalization, post–Civil War violence, media myth-making, and selective outrage — and how the frontier narrative trained Americans to excuse brutality when it aligns with grievance.

We explore:

• How teenage indoctrination during the Civil War shaped postwar violence

• The role of newspapers and propaganda in creating outlaw legends

• Why railroads and banks became symbolic targets — and who was never allowed that sympathy

• How frontier mythology migrated into modern grievance culture

• Why myths don’t disappear — they adapt

This episode connects 19th-century America to the present without sensationalism or nostalgia — and asks what these stories are still doing for us today.

This episode discusses historical violence, extremism, and civilian harm.
It is presented for educational and analytical purposes only.

Deadly Truths does not glorify violence, endorse extremist ideology, or promote harm. The intent of this episode is to examine historical patterns, media narratives, and cultural psychology through a factual, research-based lens.

Listener discretion advised.

If this episode made you rethink what you thought you knew, follow Deadly Truths with Becca for more historically grounded deep dives into the stories America romanticized — and the truths it avoided.

Leave a rating or review to help others find the show.
Share this episode with someone who still thinks outlaw myths are harmless.

New episodes drop regularly — because the past isn’t dead.
It’s just been edited.

• Stiles, T.J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War

• Settle, William A. Jesse James Was His Name

• Fellman, Michael. Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War

• Edwards, John Newman. Noted Guerrillas (primary source, propaganda context)

• Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits (comparative outlaw mythology)

• Smithsonian Magazine archives on Reconstruction-era violence

• Library of Congress — Civil War guerrilla warfare collections

Marilyn Monroe didn’t die because she was weak, unstable, or doomed by fame — and she wasn’t killed by a political conspiracy either.

In this episode of Hollywood Is Dead, we dismantle the myths surrounding Marilyn Monroe and examine what the evidence actually supports: a woman who was intelligent, disciplined, deeply talented, and systematically mismanaged by the systems that profited from her.

We start at the night of her death, walk through how the media shaped public perception, and trace the real story — from Hollywood’s response when she stopped playing along, to medication used as control, isolation by design, and why “probable suicide” was the most convenient conclusion for everyone who survived her.

We also address the Kennedy rumors with facts, not fantasy, compare Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller side by side, and explain why negligence — not murder, not myth — best fits the record.

This isn’t nostalgia.
It’s an indictment.

And it’s long overdue.

This episode is based on historical records, contemporaneous reporting, medical scholarship, and credible secondary sources. Interpretations are offered for analysis and discussion, not as legal conclusions. Listener discretion is advised.

If you’re done with sanitized Hollywood history and victim-blaming narratives, follow Deadly Truths with Becca wherever you listen.

Subscribe.
Rate the show.
Share this episode with someone who still thinks Marilyn Monroe was “just tragic.”

Your support keeps these stories honest — and alive.

• Marilyn Monroe: The Biography — Donald Spoto

• Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe — Anthony Summers

• Marilyn: Norma Jeane — Gloria Steinem

• Contemporary reporting from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Associated Press (1962)

• Medical literature on barbiturate dependence and iatrogenic harm (mid-20th-century prescribing practices)

• Archival interviews and correspondence housed at the Marilyn Monroe Collection, University of Southern California

Before she was a red-haired sex symbol, she was Margarita Cansino — a multilingual dancer, singer, and serious actress reshaped by Hollywood because her identity didn’t fit the brand. This episode of Hollywood Is Dead breaks down how studios erased Rita Hayworth’s ethnicity, how controlling men defined her relationships, how alcoholism became a coping mechanism, and how early Alzheimer’s was mocked as moral failure by the press. This is not nostalgia. This is an indictment.

This episode discusses documented historical abuse, addiction, and neurodegenerative illness. Interpretations are presented for historical and cultural analysis, not diagnosis or speculation. Listener discretion is advised.If you’re still listening, you’re the reason this work matters.
Follow Deadly Truths with Becca for fact-driven history without the mythmaking.
Subscribe on your podcast platform, watch the full episode on YouTube, and share this story — because Hollywood only stays silent when we let it.

SHOW NOTES / RESOURCES

• Rita Hayworth — biographies and studio-era records

• If This Was Happiness — Barbara Leaming

• Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess — Darwin Porter

• Columbia Pictures production archives (1930s–1940s)

• Contemporary reporting from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Photoplay

• Alzheimer’s Association: historical overview of early-onset Alzheimer’s recognition

(Note: Early Alzheimer’s was poorly understood during Hayworth’s lifetime; modern context is applied for clarity.)

The Battle of Alcatraz was not a riot, not a legend, and not an escape story. It was a system failure.

In this episode of Deadly Truths with Becca, we break down the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz step by step — how a prison designed for silence and control lost containment, took hostages, and required U.S. Marines to retake a federal penitentiary.

This episode examines:

• Why Alcatraz was built for containment, not punishment

• How planning and desperation exploited institutional blind spots

• The siege inside Cellhouse D and the deaths that followed

• The trials, executions, and the quiet fallout that started Alcatraz’s countdown to closure

No mythology.
No Hollywood framing.
Just records, consequences, and what happens when isolation fails loudly.

This episode is part of Dead Bolts, a series examining prisons as systems of power — from Alcatraz to Leavenworth and beyond.

This episode is based on historical records, court documents, contemporaneous reporting, and credible secondary sources. Interpretations are offered for historical analysis and discussion, not as legal conclusions. Listener discretion is advised.

If this episode challenged something you thought you knew, follow or subscribe to Deadly Truths with Becca.
You’ll find more episodes like this under Dead Bolts, The Mob Is Dead, Hollywood Is Dead, Dead City, Dead State, and The Frontier Is Dead — all built on facts, not nostalgia.

• Federal Bureau of Prisons
  Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary – History & Inmate Records

• FBI Records: The Battle of Alcatraz (1946)
  Contemporary investigative summaries and aftermath reporting

• National Park Service (NPS)
  Alcatraz Island — official historical overview, prison operations, and closure analysis

• U.S. Department of Justice Archives
  Trial records related to Joseph Cretzer and Marvin Hubbard

• Burton, Jeffrey F.
  Alcatraz: History and Design of a Maximum Security Prison (historical analysis)

• California State Archives
  San Quentin execution records (1948)

Al Capone didn’t lose his power in a shootout or a courtroom — he lost it on Alcatraz Island.
In this Mob Is Dead edition of Deadly Truths, Becca breaks down how the federal government used isolation, absolute control, and silence to dismantle America’s most famous mob boss. This episode separates myth from reality, explores Capone’s psychological and medical decline, examines why Alcatraz was designed to erase influence rather than punish violence, and explains how the Rock exposed the limits — and dangers — of total institutional control.

Based on historical records, court documents, and credible sources, this episode reveals why Alcatraz didn’t just contain Al Capone — it ended him.

Follow Deadly Truths with Becca for more episodes under The Mob Is Dead, The Frontier Is Dead, Dead City, Dead State, and Hollywood Is Dead.

How Deadly Truths Is Organized

Deadly Truths isn’t one kind of story—it’s a framework.
Each playlist groups episodes by theme and lens, not just time or location, so listeners can go straight to what pulls them in.

The Mob Is DeadOrganized crime without the romance.
Bootlegging, bank robbers, Public Enemies, mob bosses, and the systems that eventually dismantled them.
This playlist focuses on power, corruption, decline, and myth-busting—what really happened when criminal empires ran into federal authority.

The Frontier Is DeadThe American frontier without the legend.
Outlaws, vigilante violence, erased victims, frontier justice, and the myths that still shape American identity.
This series dismantles the idea of the “Wild West” and replaces it with documented violence and forgotten truths.

Hollywood Is DeadOld Hollywood stripped of polish.
Suspicious deaths, institutional cover-ups, exploitation, scandals, and the cost of fame.
This playlist looks at how studios, contracts, and image control buried stories that didn’t fit the brand.

Dead City

Murders and crimes tied to specific places.
Each episode centers on one city and examines how geography, politics, law enforcement, and culture shaped what happened—and why justice often failed there.

Dead State

Patterns that don’t stay local.
Statewide cases, serial crimes, conspiracies, and systems that enabled violence across multiple jurisdictions.

If this story hooked you, explore the playlists—The Mob Is Dead, The Frontier Is Dead, Hollywood Is Dead, Dead City, and Dead State—and find the lane that pulls you in.

RESOURCES & SOURCES — Al Capone on Alcatraz

• Al Capone: His Life and Legacy — Deirdre Bair
  A comprehensive, well-researched biography that covers Capone’s rise, conviction, incarceration, medical decline, and final years with clinical clarity.

• Capone: The Man and the Era — Laurence Bergreen
  Excellent context on Prohibition, organized crime, and the federal response that led to Capone’s imprisonment and transfer to Alcatraz.

• Federal Bureau of Prisons — Historical Records
  Official Bureau of Prisons documentation on Alcatraz’s purpose, inmate selection, and administrative philosophy during the 1930s–1940s.

• National Park Service — Alcatraz Island Archives
  Primary historical material on Alcatraz Island, including inmate records, prison operations, medical care, and documented deaths.

• The Devil in the White City — Erik Larson
  Referenced for broader historical context on Chicago, institutional power, and the culture of control during Capone’s era (not a Capone biography, but useful context).

• Chicago Crime Commission — Archival Reports
  Contemporaneous reporting on organized crime activity, public corruption, and law enforcement failures in Chicago during Capone’s reign.

• Public Enemies — Bryan Burrough
  Context on federal enforcement, Public Enemies, and why the government escalated containment strategies like Alcatraz.

• Peer-reviewed medical literature on neurosyphilis and general paresis for understanding Capone’s documented neurological decline (used for symptom explanation, not diagnosis beyond historical medical records).