What happens when a criminal empire is born in your own backyard? In our premier episode, host Erica is joined by her best friend and fellow Jackson County local, Heather, to track the blood-soaked history of America's very first moving train robbers: The Reno Brothers Gang.

With both hosts bringing a professional background in probation, corrections, and social work, they look past the standard textbook history to dissect a chilling cycle of criminal escalation, systemic corruption, and local terror. From their early days as Civil War bounty jumpers to the massive heist at the Seymour depot, the Renos ruled the region—until the community reached its breaking point. We walk you through the dark history of the Scarlet Mask Society, the brutal lynchings at Hangman’s Crossing, and the final, shocking act of vigilante justice inside the Floyd County Jail.

📍 Locations Visited & Discussed in this Episode

• The Rockford Homestead / Lydia Grove: The original Reno family farming ground where a strict upbringing gave way to arson and horse thievery.

• The Seymour Depot: Site of the historic October 6, 1866, train robbery where the gang made off with over $16,000 in cash.

• Hangman’s Crossing: The isolated rail switch west of Seymour where a mob of 200 regulators wearing scarlet masks took the law into their own hands.

• The Reno Gravesites: The iron-gated plot where Frank, Simeon, and William Reno rest today.

⏱️ Timeline & Episode Highlights

– Intro: Erica and Heather introduce their local roots and share their personal journey exploring these dark historic sites.

– The Rockford Roots: A look at the Reno family background and how petty crimes quickly escalated into an organized syndicate.

– The Heist & The Pinkertons: Breaking down the historic 1866 train robbery, the modern-day value of the stolen safe, and the arrival of undercover detective Dick Winscott.

– The Scarlet Mask Society: The rise of Jackson County's vigilante committee and the brutal reality of what took place at Hangman’s Crossing.

– Midnight Train to New Albany & Outro: The final lynching of the Reno brothers and a closing discussion on due process versus vigilante justice.

Professional Insights from Erica & Heather

• Criminal Escalation: How the Renos' transition from serial arson and fraud to organized train heists mimics modern patterns of criminal escalation—and why early intervention systems are vital.

• Systemic Collapse: A look at how easily witness intimidation, public corruption, and a lack of cross-county communication allowed a 19th-century gang to bypass the local judicial structure entirely.

• The Trauma of Vigilante Justice: Why street justice never truly heals a community, but instead leaves multi-generational scars of fear and trauma.

🔗 Connect with Indiana True Crime

• Host: Erica

• Special Guest: Heather

• Follow on TikTok: [@IndianaTrueCrime] for exclusive B-roll footage, behind-the-scenes exploration, and video deep-dives from the field.

If you listen to a lot of true crime, you already know there is an invisible script most stories follow. We are used to hearing about the "perfect" victim—stories that comfortably fit into a neat, marketable headline. But the reality of who vanishes or gets hurt in this country is a lot messier, and a lot darker, than what fills our national feeds.

In criminology, the term "Less Dead" describes a class of victims who are essentially marginalized twice: first by their attacker, and second by a system and a society that looks at their lifestyle, their race, their income, or their struggles, and decides their absence isn't worth a headline.

In this episode, host Erica crumples up that template and throws it in the trash. We travel across the entire state of Indiana—from the far northern borders down through Indianapolis and into our southern river communities—to look past the official silence, past the frozen case files, and shine an unyielding spotlight on six names that never got the urgency or headlines they deserved. Because a human life isn't valued by a flawless background. We all carry the exact same weight.

• – Intro: Demolishing the "perfect victim" narrative and defining the systemic apathy behind the criminology term, the "Less Dead."
• – Case 1: Alexandra "Alex" Anaya (Hammond, IN): A 13-year-old child abducted from her home in 2005, whose horrific, premeditated case became caught in a devastating administrative limbo across state lines.
• – Case 2: Crystal Grubb (Bloomington, IN): A mother of two whose 2010 disappearance and murder were heavily overshadowed by socioeconomic divides, illustrating a staggering disparity in community and media response.
• – Case 3: Angie Barlow (Indianapolis, IN): A fierce, intelligent 23-year-old woman who built her own digital safety net before a private party gig in 2016, only to have her right to safety erased by public judgment of her profession.
• – Case 4: Diamond Bynum & King Walker (Gary, IN): A highly vulnerable 21-year-old woman living with a rare genetic disorder and her 2-year-old nephew who vanished into thin air in 2015, facing rigid bureaucratic hurdles that delayed the initial response.
• – Case 5: Larissa Sam (Indianapolis, IN): A young mother, talented musician, and dancer who disappeared after her shift in 2015, whose case reveals the cold, calculated digital footprints left behind by predators exploiting systemic blind spots.
• – Case 6: Andi Wagner (Evansville, IN): A beloved daughter and mother whose exhausting struggle with housing instability and substance use disorder was used as an active eraser by public bulletins, despite major federal and state forensic interventions in 2024.
• – Conclusion: A call to action for the true crime community to look past the labels, street names, and lifestyles, and remember that the right to justice is absolute.

Thanks for listening and until next week, keep digging, stay safe, and remember what's lurking just beneath the Indiana surface.

Explore how ambitions for wealth and power drove a small-town kid to mastermind Indiana's largest financial fraud, leaving hundreds devastated. Discover the journey from humble beginnings to a lavish lifestyle and the reckoning that followed.

In this episode:

• The early life of Tim Durham in Seymour, Indiana, and his childhood aspirations
• How Durham became a successful lawyer and venture capitalist in Indianapolis
• The rise of his luxurious lifestyle: a mansion, exotic cars, and high-profile parties
• The details of the $200 million Ponzi scheme and its victims
• Durham’s arrest, trial, and 50-year federal prison sentence
• Parallels with local cases of greed and lack of conscience
• Reflection on the impact of social media in exposing wealth disparities

Resources & Links:

• Tim Durham and Fair Finance Case Details on Wikipedia
• Durham's exploits are featured in the 2015 episode "Playboy of Indiana", of the television series American Greed.

Our guest Nolan Brewer:

Nolan has worked at the library for 20 years and has his BA in Philosophy from ISU and MLIS from IUPUI. He stated that he is really into TV/Film and reading and he has a beloved cat named Alley.

Notable Quotes:

• "He traded it all for a cell in a federal pen."
• “Greed has no conscience, especially when it leaves a trail of shattered lives.”

Stay curious, dig deeper, and remember: not all that glitters is gold.

Think Indiana is just endless cornfields, high school basketball, and quiet, small towns where nothing ever happens? Think again. Welcome to the dark, beating heart of the Midwestern underworld.

For over a century, the Crossroads of America hasn’t just been a quiet country neighbor—it has functioned as a premier sanctuary, highway, and headquarters for organized crime. Our geography made us perfect for it. With thousands of miles of unpoliced rural backroads, direct rail lines to Chicago and Detroit, and historically underpaid local authorities who were easily bought, Indiana became the ultimate playground for vice.

Hosted by Erica, this podcast pulls back the curtain on the shadow history running right alongside our state highways and gravel roads. We are weaving together a timeline of past and present Hoosier underworlds. We’ll take you from Depression-era bank robbers outsmarting "escape-proof" jails, down to the luxury, mob-protected resorts of Southern Indiana where Al Capone rubbed elbows with high society. We’ll walk the neon-lit, wide-open streets of mid-century industrial cities run by international gambling syndicates, and we’ll bring it right into the modern era—exposing massive, active federal busts that prove old-school mafia tactics never died, they just went digital.

This isn’t just true crime; it’s a masterclass in institutional corruption, hidden local history, and the fierce grassroots community action that rose up to fight it. From high-flying white-collar playboys running multi-million dollar Ponzi schemes to bookies texting mob movie codes on iPhones in crowded local steakhouses, we cover it all with a victim-centered, trauma-informed lens.

Forget the wholesome flyover myth. There is more than corn in Indiana.

Grab your headphones, earbuds, or whatever you’re using to listen today. Let’s dive into the Hoosier Underworld.

One single act of violence can fundamentally change a community’s sense of safety. In this episode of Indiana True Crime, host Erica connects the dots across fifty years of local history to explore the anatomy of a threat, the power of collective memory, and the thin line between a normal morning and an unthinkable tragedy.

We look back at Friday morning, February 22, 1974, at Brownstown Central High School, when the loss of beloved educator and coach Jim Blevins shattered the illusion that rural America was immune to school violence. Then, we trace how that generational scar informed a culture of vigilance that echoed into Wednesday, April 30, 2025—when a heavily armed individual attempted a multi-site tragedy at Seymour High School and the Jackson County Public Library.

Utilizing real-time community reflections and TikTok listener commentary, this episode bypasses the shooter to focus strictly on a community’s grief, the everyday citizens who stood up to protect their neighbors, and a fierce, unyielding argument for the structural security measures our classrooms desperately need. Because protecting our most precious population is a job that is never, ever finished.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The legacy of Mr. Jim Blevins and the 1974 BCHS tragedy.
• The living history preserved by the Jackson County community.
• A minute-by-minute breakdown of the civilian heroics at the Seymour Library in 2025.
• The secondary trauma carried by students and families in the aftermath of a near-miss.
• An urgent call to action regarding walk-through metal detectors and daily anti-complacency discipline in public spaces.
• An update on the upcoming legal proceedings and jury trial.

Disclaimer: Because the events of 2025 are part of an ongoing legal matter with an upcoming trial, all details regarding the pending case are allegations, and the suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Follow & Support:

• TikTok: @IndianaTrueCrime
• Listen, rate, and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts!

Episode 2: Pamela Milam: Echoes on the ISU Campus (with Special Guest Trevor)

On a clear, warm Friday night in September 1972, nineteen-year-old Indiana State University sophomore Pamela Milam walked out to her car after a campus sorority event and vanished into the shadows. The heartbreaking discovery of her body the next day sent shockwaves through the city of Terre Haute and left a dark cloud over the university that would linger for nearly fifty years.

In this episode of Indiana True Crime, we retrace Pamela's final hours on campus, look at why the investigation went completely cold in the 1970s, and break down the incredible 2019 forensic breakthrough that finally utilized investigative genetic genealogy to name her killer, Jeffrey Lynn Hand.

To bridge the fifty-year gap between the past and the present, host Erica is joined in the studio by a very special guest: her oldest son, Trevor, a current ISU political science student. Together, they explore the physical geography of the case—contrasting the old campus layout of Normal Hall with the modern green space where the Lincoln Quad once stood—and discuss what it means to walk those same sidewalks today through the lens of a future law student.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Retracing Pamela's Steps: Who Pamela was, her job at the university library, and the timeline of September 15th, 1972.
• The 47-Year Cold Case: The physical evidence preserved by 1972 investigators and the limitations of early forensic science.
• The Meaning of Justice: A political science perspective on truth, closure, and accountability when a killer is identified decades after his death.
• A Radical Grace: Celebrating the profound compassion shown by Pamela's family toward the living relatives of her attacker.

Connect with Us:

• TikTok: @indianatruecrime
• Listen & Subscribe: Available on Spotify and all major podcast platforms.
• Feedback & Business Inquiries: indianatruecrime@gmail.com
• Next Week's Preview: Stay tuned until the very end of the episode for a somber, deeply personal lookahead at Episode 3, where we will examine local school safety history through two tragic Jackson County cases: the 1974 shooting at Brownstown Central High School and the 2025 almost incident at the Seymour High School and then the shooting at the library.

In the premiere episode of Indiana True Crime, we examine a case that deeply impacted anyone who grew up in Indiana during the 1980s and 1990s: the tragic loss of 12-year-old Shanda Sharer in January 1992.

Moving past the sensationalized headlines of the 1990s, this episode centers on who Shanda was—a vibrant, active Midwest preteen—while taking a critical look at the toxic dynamics of juvenile peer pressure, the failures of the judicial system's plea bargains, and the extraordinary legacy of advocacy and grace left behind by her mother, Jacque Vaught.

Content Warning: This episode discusses severe bullying, juvenile delinquency, and murder. Out of respect for the victim and her family, explicit details of violence are intentionally excluded.

Sources & Further Reading:

• Cruel Sacrifice by Aphrodite Jones
• Little Lost Angel by Michael Quinlan
• Official Court and Indiana Department of Correction Public Records

Welcome to the premiere of Indiana True Crime. In this quick introductory episode, host Erica Bohn steps into the studio to strip away the sensationalized headlines and lay out the heart, the history, and the mission behind this project.

Discover how growing up in a small town, navigating personal trauma, and working daily in the intensive aftermath of social work shaped a completely different perspective on true crime—one driven by a survivor’s eye, a social worker’s heart, and an unyielding commitment to victim advocacy.

We aren't just reading summary pages. We are digging beneath the surface to correct scrambled timelines, fix historical errors, and reclaim the narrative for forgotten victims.

Next Episode: We open the archives for a heavy, deep-dive exploration into the Shanda Sharer case, taking the time to look at the details and systemic aftermath in a way a short social media reel simply cannot do. Hit that follow button so you don’t miss it.

Until next time... keep digging, stay safe, and remember what’s lurking just beneath the Indiana surface.