Crime&Stuff

The Jon Pownall murder case didn’t end with the trial of Herb Schwartz and Truman Dongo. There was so much more… particularly with the prosecution’s star witness, who couldn’t stay out of trouble afte...

All Jon Pownall wanted was to make his own movies after two decades of filming marketing spots and commercials. It looked like it was all coming together, too, as production began on his film “The Sal...

We take a look at the official report on the Lewiston, Maine, Oct. 24, 2023, shooting, that killed 18 people, and injured many more. The report, released on Aug. 20 by a governor’s commission set up t...

Back by popular demand! Am I the asshole? Asks the guy who’s pissed because his wife wrote a “secret book” that netted a book deal. The woman who yelled at her boyfriend because he thought that it was...

Rebecca picks up the story with Sabato Raia’s trial. Will his self-defense strategy for shooting Nick Patenaude, Dana Matthews and Kevin Pinette pass jury scrutiny? Maureen gives NNW treatment to the ...

On a hot June night in 1997, a dispute between Portland, Maine, bar owner Sabato Raia and three acquaintances – Nick Patenaude, Dana Matthews and Kevin Pinette – ended with the three men lying dead in...

How did a simmering lead-up to war between England and Spain, a 16th-century government coverup, fake news about piracy, a likely hoax by a college professor, dismissal of indigenous culture, early Am...

When Everett Savage staggered out of the woods of Fairfield, Maine, on a June day in 1958, the Augusta businessman had been missing for two days and had quite a story to tell. But it took a while for ...

In the early morning hours of Easter in 2006, Joseph Gray was shot through the window of his living room in Milo, Maine. Several hours later, William Elliott was shot when he answered the door of his ...

Many members of Lori Jane Kearsey’s family didn’t consider her lost, even though they hadn’t heard from her since November 1983. But the 21-year-old left behind a daughter when she “joined the witness...

There’s no doubt that Kenneth Eugene Smith, along with another man, killed Elizabeth Sennett in Alabama in 1988, a murder paid for by her husband, Charles Sennett. But the long road to Smith’s executi...

We explore the age-old question, “Am I the asshole?” with situations curated by Rebecca from the sub-Reddit world. Maureen also does an NNW on the Max docuseries Onision In Real Life. Enjoy!...

Charles Terry wasn’t a good guy, especially when it came to women. He liked to beat, rape and strangle them. He was convicted for several attacks and just out of prison in 1951 when Shirley Coolen, a ...

In our third episode looking at the “justified” killings of Maine citizens by the state’s law enforcement agencies, we go back to one that spurred a lot of changes over the past decade, but also — spo...

Ambroshia Fagre was just 18 and likely an innocent bystander when she was killed by police in Maine in February 2017, along with Kadhar Bailey, 25, who police suspected of an armed home invasion. The ...

One of Maine’s 2022 homicides was Drew McKenna, 24, accidentally shot by his older brother Shay. In 2023, the McKenna family suffered a second tragedy when the lost Shay, who was shot by police. We al...

We bring you our annual Maine homicide list with 2023’s 51 homicides, a record year and more than twice the average annual number. Even without the Lewiston shootings that killed 18, it was the worst ...

Enjoy the figgy pudding, fireworks, airing of grievances, or however else you celebrate! Here are some recommendations on what to watch to get you through until our next episode in two weeks. Happy ho...

Miriam Stoltz was found shot in the head on a cold February afternoon in the woods in New Hampshire, where she’d lain for 15 hours before being found by a runner. The next day, Roger Whittemore was fo...

Racial injustice on the high seas and in the courts plays out in a 1905 mass murder on a cargo ship, the Harry A. Berwind. Captain ER Rumill and three other crew members, all but one of them white, ar...

Presumption of guilt. Consciousness of guilt. The magical shell casing. Testilying. Giving the dogs credit. These are just some of the lessons learned as we wrap up discussion on the Logan Clegg murde...

Andrew Denton had made it clear he wanted to die. Sidney Kilmartin, living in Manchester, Maine, 3,000 miles away from Denton’s home in England, was determined to make sure that would happen. In Decem...

We’ll have Episode 148 of Crime & Stuff up shortly. But in the meantime, we have some exciting news! After a nearly four-year hiatus, our other podcast Groovy Tube: The Crimes of the Brady Bunch, is r...

No one knows why Fred Spencer was in his friend and apartment-mate’s room on the afternoon of April 28, 1973. One thing quickly became clear — he didn’t come out alive. The outcome of the University o...

No one in Belfast, Maine, who knew James Cummings liked him very much. But was it OK for his wife, Amber, to shoot him to death as he slept? Turns out, it very well may have been. Rebecca explains. Ma...

When Amie Riley disappeared from a Manchester, New Hampshire, bar on August 15, 2003, her boyfriend, mother and friends were frantic, but police weren’t. Not even a little bit. Eight months later, whe...

When police visited James Cameron’s house in Maine in 2007 and took his computer, among other things, most people figured there was just one crime he was likely being investigated for. And they were r...

In June 2021, we brought you Gerald Goodale Part 1, the 1988 murder of Geraldine Finn. At the time her killer, Goodale, had just been arrested for the 1987 murder of Janet Brochu. His case has finally...

Lillian MacDonald was just doing her job, passing out the pay envelopes on July 12, 1930, when she disappeared from her Portland, Maine, place of employment. Her grisly murder wasn’t the only injustic...

People will say that in 1980, Rosie Ruiz “came out of nowhere” to win the women’s race in the Boston Marathon. But it soon became clear she came out of the crowd a half mile from the finish line. In t...

Norway’s Black Metal music scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s brought together young men who, giving themselves nicknames like Necro Butcher and Hell Hammer, aimed to shock and act out more than ...

The crime of looting indigenous ancestral sites in the U.S. and around the world goes back centuries. Professor Liz makes a special guest appearance to school us on how archeological looting has led t...

Episode 133 told part of the story of what led police to arrest Logan Clegg in the April 2022 double murder of Djeswende and Stephen Reid in Concord, New Hampshire. With the release of the 25-page Con...

The second-to-the-last time Bob Maze heard from his wife Rita, she was on her way home to their Great Falls, Montana, home from visiting relatves in Helena, 90 minutes away. The last time he heard fro...

You may have heard the Brian Walshe — arrested Jan. 17 on charges her murdered his missing wife, Ana — was once convicted of fraud “for selling two fake Andy Warhol paintings for $80,000.” That’s like...

Arnold Nash was a “career criminal.” He was also a career escape artist from the Maine State Prison System. And the funny thing was, he was escaping because he wanted to stay incarcerated. His crimes ...

Thirty people died of homicide in Maine this year (not including the two perpetrators in murder-suicides), the most recent on Christmas Day. That’s the most since 2008, when there were 31. While the s...

When Djeswende and Stephen Reid were shot while out for a walk in the woods in Concord, New Hampshire, police said the public was not in danger, even though they didn’t know who did it and didn’t have...

Azita Jamshab, 29, and newly divorced was ready to move from Maine to Las Vegas and start a new life. But her insurance agent, who was also the beneficiary on her life insurance policy, had a differen...

The Lady in the Dunes case — a murdered woman found in the dunes of Cape Cod on July 26, 1974 — may have gone cold shortly after she was found, but the case lived on in New England as an enduring myst...

Michael Allen had been living large in the nine years since 1988, when he’d won $5.8 million in the lottery. The problem was, he didn’t really know who his friends around town in Lewiston, Maine, were...

When Ashling Murphy was attacked and killed in broad daylight by a stranger on a well-used path in Tullamore, Ireland, shock and anger reverberated across the small country. Her murder renewed vows th...

Miss us already? We’re taking a short break, but we’ll be back the first week of October with an exciting new episode. Thanks for all the support and thanks for listening. Meanwhile, check out our “Mo...

In one week, three arson fires in Lewiston, Maine’s Tree Streets downtown neighborhood made dozens of residents homeless, destroyed millions of dollars worth of property and added pain to the already ...

Jill Sidebotham and her daughter, Lydia Hansen, were last seen by their family on June 27 in Springvale, Maine, when they left with Lydia’s father (Jill’s former boyfriend) on what he described as a “...

In this Maine Mini we discuss the June 18 murder of Nicole Mokeme, who’s life mission was to create safe and powerful places for Maine’s black, brown, indigenous and other marginalized people. Unfortu...

It’s hard to get past some of the more sensational aspects of the New Hampshire murder of Jonathan Amerault and the horrific abuse of Brittney Barron by Armando Barron, but once you do it’s a textbook...

One of Maine’s greatest assets is Baxter State Park and Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain, is its crown jewel. Some visitors chafe at the rules, but those who don’t pay attention learn the hard way, ...

Rebecca takes on a tragic story from our old hometown, with a very special appearance by our mom! We also update our most-ever updated episode, Annie Dookhan (Episode 29), the Concord, NH, double-murd...

Sophie Sergie was killed on April 26, 1993, in the bathroom of a dorm at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. The case went cold fast and stayed that way for 26 years until an investigator in Alaska, i...