The Salem Witch Trials of 1692: Witch Hunts, Executions, and Salem's Haunted History

The Salem Witch Trials remain one of the most disturbing cases of mass hysteria, false accusations, and judicial injustice in American history.

It began when two young girls in Salem Village exhibited strange behavior that frightened their families. Soon, accusations of witchcraft spread like wildfire. Enslaved woman Tituba, impoverished Sarah Good, and elderly Sarah Osborne became the first targets of a terrifying investigation.

Before it was over, more than 150 people had been imprisoned. Nineteen men and women were hanged, and 81-year-old Giles Corey was crushed to death beneath heavy stones after refusing to enter a plea.

In this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, we take a deep dive into the true crime history behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, exploring the role of Puritan religious beliefs, the mysterious behavior of the afflicted girls, the devastating testimony of Ann Putnam Jr., and the use of spectral evidence that made defending yourself nearly impossible.

We'll uncover the heartbreaking stories of Rebecca Nurse, John and Elizabeth Proctor, George Burroughs, and Giles Corey. We'll examine how the courts allowed fear to replace facts and why it took centuries for some victims to receive justice.

And because Salem's story didn't end with the executions, we'll explore the city's haunted reputation, including the ghost of Giles Corey, the legends surrounding the Witch House, the historic cemeteries, and the actual execution site at Proctor's Ledge.

Were the Salem Witch Trials simply the result of religious extremism and mass hysteria? Did personal grudges help fuel the accusations? And why, more than 300 years later, does Salem remain one of America's most famous haunted destinations?

Join us for a chilling journey into colonial America's darkest witch hunt—where being accused could be a death sentence, innocence offered little protection, and the truth was buried beneath fear.

The witches weren't the danger. The witch hunt was.

Listen to Hitched 2 Homicide as we investigate the history, victims, executions, and haunting legacy of the Salem Witch Trials.

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The Villisca Axe Murders of 1912: Eight Victims, One Axe, and a Killer Who Was Never Caught

On a quiet Sunday evening in June 1912, the Moore family attended a children's church program in the small, close-knit community of Villisca, Iowa. Afterward, Josiah and Sarah Moore returned home with their four children and two young sisters, Lena and Ina Stillinger, who had been invited for a sleepover.

It should have been an ordinary summer night.

Instead, it would become one of the most horrifying chapters in American true crime history.

Sometime during the night of June 9 and the early morning hours of June 10, an unknown killer entered the Moore home and brutally murdered all eight people with an axe. Six of the victims were children, the youngest just five years old.

When the bodies were discovered the following morning, the scene was almost beyond comprehension. Mirrors had been covered, the murder weapon was left inside the house, and the investigation quickly became a spectacle. Curious townspeople flooded the property, potential evidence was compromised, and accusations began flying.

Was the killer a traveling stranger? A respected local businessman with a grudge? Or a minister whose suspicious behavior would place him at the center of one of Iowa's most sensational murder trials?

Despite multiple suspects, investigations, and courtroom battles, nobody was ever convicted.

More than 114 years later, the Villisca Axe Murder House still stands, attracting historians, paranormal investigators, and true crime enthusiasts. But behind the ghost stories and chilling legends is the very real tragedy of eight innocent lives stolen in their sleep.

In this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, we examine the victims, the crime scene, the suspects, the investigation, and the enduring mystery of the 1912 Villisca Axe Murders.

Who entered that house in the darkness? And how did a killer responsible for eight deaths escape justice?

Listen as we revisit one of America's most infamous unsolved mass murders.

0:00 Opening
5:45 The Rise of Josiah Moore
13:29 The Children's Day Program
16:15 The Intruder Enters
25:29 The Discovery of the Bodies
31:26 The Prime Suspects 35:46
The Peculiar Preacher 54:38
The Haunted Legacy
1:01:22 Bless Your Heart

Sources used for this podcast

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The Greenbrier Ghost is the name given to Elva Zona Heaster Shue, a young bride murdered in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, in January 1897.

After only a few months of marriage to blacksmith Edward “Trout” Shue, Zona was found dead in their home. A local doctor called it heart disease. She was buried the next day at what is now Soule Chapel Methodist Cemetery near Smoot. Her husband had dressed the body, packed her neck in a high collar and scarf, and discouraged a full examination.

Zona’s mother, Mary Jane Heaster, refused that story. She later testified that her daughter’s spirit came to her bedside four nights in a row and described how Trout Shue had flown into a rage and broken her neck. Mary Jane took that account to the prosecutor. Zona was exhumed. The autopsy found the neck dislocated between the first and second vertebrae, the windpipe crushed, and finger marks on the throat.

Edward Shue was tried in Lewisburg in the summer of 1897. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder. He was sent to the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville and died there in 1900. A state historic marker still stands near I-64: the only widely cited American case in which a spirit’s reported words helped open a murder investigation that ended in a conviction.

On this episode of Hitched 2 Homicide, Kris and Rob go through the marriage, the scene, the inquest, the courtroom, and the folklore that grew up around it — without losing Zona Heaster Shue inside the ghost story.

Content note: intimate partner homicide and historical autopsy detail.

CHAPTERS
0:00 The Greenbrier Ghost
1:02 Welcome to Hitched 2 Homicide
1:46 Housekeeping & sources
4:34 Greenbrier County
9:05 Zona Heaster
10:04 Appalachian folklore
16:43 The Heaster family
17:50 George Wooldridge
19:08 Trout Shue
20:41 Allie Cutlip
21:49 Lucy Ann Tritt
23:25 Greenbrier
24:19 Marriage and illness
25:37 Aunt Martha and Andy
27:44 Zona is found
28:21 The collar and the “everlasting faint”
30:00 Wake and burial
31:06 Mary Jane Heaster
33:24 Four nights
35:21 The prosecutor
37:11 Exhumation and autopsy
40:03 Arrest
40:39 Lewisburg trial
44:31 Verdict and Moundsville
50:04 Did Zona come back?
52:29 Bless Your Heart
58:52 Close

Sources used for this podcast

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• Start Reading Kris Calvert's Books for FREE

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In March 1954, 25-year-old Constance Fisher was living with her husband, Carl, and their three young children in Waterville, Maine. In part one of this case, we look into Constance's struggle with severe mental illness following childbirth. Following a voice she believed was God's, she drowned her three children–Richard, 6, Daniel, 4, and baby Deborah in the family home before attempting to take her own life. She was committed to Augusta State Hospital, where doctors treated her for serious psychiatric illness.

Five years later, Constance was released and returned to her husband. The couple rebuilt their life and had more children. Then, on June 30, 1966, history repeated itself.

Constance again drowned her three children: six-year-old Kathleen, four-year-old Michael Jon, and nine-month-old Natalie Rose.

She was sent back to the Augusta State Mental Hospital to live out the rest of her life. But in 1973, with no hope of ever leaving the hospital, Constance wandered off the grounds of the hospital and into the Kennebec River where she drowned herself.

Her husband, Carl, never remarried and buried his wife next to the bodies of their six children.

• Join the H2H In-laws & Outlaws
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• Start Reading Kris Calvert's Books for FREE

This episode of Hitched to Homicide discusses suicide, postpartum depression, severe mental illness, and the deaths of children. Some listeners may find these topics distressing. Please take care of yourself and consider skipping this episode if you are feeling vulnerable.

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger or may act on thoughts of self-harm, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. In the United States, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. For pregnancy and postpartum mental-health support, call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA—that’s 1-833-852-6262—for free, confidential support.

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In March 1954, 25-year-old Constance Fisher was living with her husband, Carl, and their three young children in Waterville, Maine. In part one of this case, we look into Constance's struggle with severe mental illness following childbirth. Following a voice she believed was God's, she drowned her three children–Richard, 6, Daniel, 4, and baby Deborah in the family home before attempting to take her own life. She was committed to Augusta State Hospital, where doctors treated her for serious psychiatric illness.

Five years later, Constance was released and returned to her husband. The couple rebuilt their life and had more children. Then, on June 30, 1966, history repeated itself.

• Join the H2H In-laws & Outlaws
• Follow H2H on Instagram
• Follow H2H on X
• Send Kris and Rob a Text or Message
• Start Reading Kris Calvert's Books for FREE

This episode of Hitched to Homicide discusses suicide, postpartum depression, severe mental illness, and the deaths of children. Some listeners may find these topics distressing. Please take care of yourself and consider skipping this episode if you are feeling vulnerable.

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger or may act on thoughts of self-harm, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. In the United States, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. For pregnancy and postpartum mental-health support, call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA—that’s 1-833-852-6262—for free, confidential support.

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Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt looked more like retirees than ruthless killers, but prosecutors said the two women spent years building an elaborate life insurance murder scheme in Los Angeles.

Their victims, Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid, were vulnerable men living on the margins when Golay and Rutterschmidt entered their lives with offers of food, housing, and help. Behind that apparent generosity, the women secured multiple life insurance policies, fabricated personal and financial relationships, and waited for the policies to mature.

Then both men died in separate apparent hit-and-run incidents.

What first looked like two unrelated tragedies eventually unraveled into a chilling case of fraud, greed, and murder. Insurance records, surveillance footage, towing records, forensic evidence, and DNA beneath a Mercury Sable helped investigators connect the women to both deaths and expose a scheme worth millions.

Known as The Black Widows of L.A., Helen Golay and Olga Rutterschmidt were ultimately convicted of murdering Paul Vados and Kenneth McDavid and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Sources used for this podcast

• Join the H2H In-laws & Outlaws
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• Follow H2H on X
• Send Kris and Rob a Text or Message
• Start Reading Kris Calvert's Books for FREE

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In September 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of the most recognizable figures in American entertainment: a silent-film comedian, director, and major Paramount star. Virginia Rappe was a model, designer, and working actress with ambitions of her own in the young film industry.

After both attended a Labor Day gathering in Arbuckle’s suite at San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel, Rappe became critically ill. She died four days later from peritonitis associated with a ruptured bladder. What happened in the hotel rooms—and what caused her fatal injury—became the subject of competing accounts, disputed medical testimony, and one of the most sensational criminal cases of the 1920s.

Arbuckle was charged in connection with Rappe’s death and faced three manslaughter trials. The first two trials ended in hung juries. In April 1922, the third jury acquitted him and issued an extraordinary statement arguing that he had been treated unjustly. But the legal verdict did not end the public scandal. Newspapers had already circulated lurid allegations, including claims never established by forensic evidence, while Rappe’s private life and reputation were publicly attacked in ways that reflected the era’s deep misogyny and victim-blaming culture.

In this episode, we reconstruct the party at the St. Francis Hotel, trace Virginia Rappe’s life before the scandal, examine the accusations made by Maude Delmont, follow the contested medical and courtroom evidence, and explore why Arbuckle’s career never recovered despite his acquittal. We also investigate how the case helped fuel anti-Hollywood outrage and strengthened calls for the movie industry to regulate its stars and public image.This is not a story with a neat conclusion. It is a case shaped by a woman’s death, disputed testimony, unreliable reporting, celebrity power, public prejudice, and the enduring difference between a courtroom verdict and historical certainty.

Sources used for this podcast

• Join the H2H In-laws & Outlaws
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#RoscoeArbuckle #VirginiaRappe #TrueCrime #HollywoodHistory #SilentFilm #OldHollywood #HistoricalTrueCrime #TrueCrimeDocumentary #1920s #FilmHistory

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