Episodes

  • Truth Deferred - Series Promo

    Truth Deferred - Series Promo
    Mar 26 2026
    Season One of Truth Deferred: The National Guard Massacre takes listeners through a series of grisly murders, into the minds of a public whipped into a lynch mob, and explains how it all ended in the largest slaughter of unarmed civilians by National Guard troops in U.S. history. Just as shockingly, hosts Mike and Amy Morgan reveal how the truth of these events was so successfully whitewashed that the real story has been buried for over 140 years – until now – and well also ask the unsettling question: could it happen again?
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    2 mins
  • 1: Love Lost & Justice Unraveling

    1: Love Lost & Justice Unraveling
    Mar 27 2026
    Our story starts on Monday, March 31, 1884. The streets are covered in blood. Over 50 people are dead and some are dying in the hallways of the hospital. Every window has been smashed out of the jail, and the county courthouse is a smoldering ruin. To find out how we got here, we travel back to an imperfect love story ending in a public murder, and how the case of William McHugh illustrates a growing distrust of the criminal justice system.
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    57 mins
  • 2: “Crazy Joe” Pleads Insanity

    2: “Crazy Joe” Pleads Insanity
    Apr 1 2026
    The heartless crime and multiple murder trials of “Crazy Joe” Payton introduce us to the morally pliable brilliance of attorney T.C. Campbell, his odd political alliance with The Cincinnati Enquirer, and his blood feud with the Commercial Gazette and a young, idealistic lawyer named William Howard Taft – personal animosities that will help re-write history.
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    55 mins
  • 3: A Christmas Eve Murder

    3: A Christmas Eve Murder
    Apr 8 2026
    William Kirk was a horse trader with too many wives, an unlikely man to become a rallying cry for a city, but when he is brutally killed on Christmas Eve, and one of the accused “boy murderers” hires the venerated T.C. Campbell to defend him, a murder trial becomes a public litmus test for the entire justice system.
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    40 mins
  • 4: The Resurrectionist and the Avondale Horror

    4: The Resurrectionist and the Avondale Horror
    Apr 15 2026
    When two body snatchers commit a triple homicide so barbaric that it shocks the nation, Cincinnatians grow more alarmed that the laws of human decency are coming untethered and that the legal system is no longer protecting them from falling victim to incredible violence. We also explore the recent, prolific history of lynchings to see how the public views its options.
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    50 mins
  • 5: One Trial Decides the Fate of a City

    5: One Trial Decides the Fate of a City
    Apr 22 2026
    Before the "boy murderer" goes to trial, newspapers inflame the city with a non-existent crime wave. Prosecutor Pugh rejects an offer to plead Berner guilty to 2nd degree murder, and the public is told that if this 17-year-old defendant isn’t hanged, every citizen will be a future target. But jurors hear a more nuanced and complicated story, creating a dangerous divide between the people who hear the evidence in court from the ones that only get it from newsprint.
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    1 hr and 1 min