The new season of Deep Cover , a podcast about people who lead double lives, reveals a story of stolen valor and misplaced heroism. Sarah Cavanaugh was many things to the people who knew her: a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a young woman fighting cancer. Sarah was everything people wanted her to be—until she wasn’t. Turns out, no one knew the real Sarah. Not her comrades. Not her wife. No one. In Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer J...
May 19, 2025•42 min
Detective Louis N. Scarcella was a legendary figure in New York City during the '90s. In a city overrun with violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. But the story changed when a group of convicted murderers-turned-jailhouse lawyers made a startling discovery that linked all their cases: Scarcella was the cop who helped put many of them away. They made a vow: Take down Scarcella. And with the help of a relentless New York Times reporter, they did just that. ...
Mar 28, 2024•16 min
Hallie Rubenhold joins Betwixt the Sheets host Kate Lister to discuss our culture’s fascination with serial killers. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Jack the Ripper…. these violent people are famous, but we only know them for their horrific crimes. What role does misogyny play in how these serial killers are portrayed on our screens and in our newspapers? And how does it affect court cases? Hear more from Betwixt the Sheets, from our friends at History Hit, wherever you get podcasts....
Apr 04, 2023•40 min
The rich and famous leave many traces in the historical records, but how can you reconstruct the lives of ordinary people who lived decades and decades ago? That was the challenge facing the team behind the Bad Women podcast. Hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes sit down with genealogist Kate Healy to discuss the detective work involved in scouring the archives for the scraps of information which - when gathered together - created a richer picture of the women chronicled in seasons one and t...
Dec 22, 2022•44 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Season Finale: Marjorie Cummins is certain that her husband is innocent - he's not the violent Blackout Ripper and he shouldn't hang for murder. She loyally supports him in court - refusing to believe the compelling evidence against him. Will the jury agree with her? In wartime London, it seems, men could murder some women and still escape the hangman. Some juries defied the directions of judges to reach 'not guilty' verdicts if the female murder victims were painted as being promiscuous, immora...
Dec 20, 2022•55 min•Season 2Ep. 11
The murders of The Blackout Ripper - indeed many of the crimes committed against women in World War Two - aren't often spoken about by historians of the conflict. That's changing. The co-host of Bad Women Hallie Rubenhold and regular guest Dr Julia Laite recently appeared on the WW2 podcast We Have Ways of Making You Talk to talk to James Holland about the wartime experiences of women. Here's chance to hear the conversation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 15, 2022•44 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Doris had made her living as "Olga" - a dominatrix alter ego charging men handsomely for sex involving corsets, whips and "unusual methods". But when she married aged businessman (and former client) Henri Jouannet, she'd promised to give it all up. The coming of war put a strain on the couple's finances and their relationship - and Doris secretly returned to selling sex. But the trade had changed - instead of seeing her regular clients, "Olga" now meets strangers on the street... including The B...
Dec 13, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 10
The story of the Blackout Ripper partly takes place in the wartime bars and clubs of West End London. To recreate their sound, Bad Women's composer and sound designer Pascal Wyse put together a quartet to play jazz tunes of the time. Here Pascal and guitarist Ed Gaughan talk about the history of that music and play some of the numbers in full on this episode on Pushkin Industries' Broken Record show, hosted by Justin Richmond. The band included Ed Gaughan, Ross Hughes, Christian Miller and Marcu...
Dec 08, 2022•59 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Greta Heywood is being strangled in a Piccadilly doorway when a passerby interrupts the Blackout Ripper, who disappears into the night. Greta survives the attack and the killer leaves vital clues as to his identity. The police are now closing in on their man - but can they catch him before he can claim more victims? Further reading: Andrews, Maggie and Lomas, Janis. T he Home Front in Britain: Images, Myths and Forgotten Experiences since 1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Laite, Julia...
Dec 06, 2022•41 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Rachel Dobkin has come to see her psychic advisor, Madam Nerva. After years of bitter disagreements and financial wranglings with her estranged and violent husband, Rachel wants to know what the spirits think she should do next. Through Madam Nerva the spirts tell Rachel not to go near her husband again... but will she heed their warnings? The case of Rachel Dobkin is another face of wartime crime and not the work of the Blackout Ripper - but it reveals a common thread. It shows how some men tho...
Nov 29, 2022•50 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Unlike white GIs, it was made virtually impossible for African-American servicemen to marry the women they met and fell in love with in the UK during World War Two. If these couples had children, those so-called "Brown Babies" were stigmatized and scorned - with many ending up in grim children's homes. Pausing the story of the Blackout Ripper - this episode examines the experiences of those Black GIs, their white partners and two "Brown Babies" - Leon Lomax and Terry Harrison - who have both spe...
Nov 22, 2022•33 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Seamstress Doris Staples doesn't want to see Private John Waters any more... but the American soldier has other ideas. He goes to her workplace to make sure she doesn't "step out" with any other man... and carries with him a pistol. Men were expected to seek an outlet for their sexual appetites, but any women who saw multiple partners or wanted to exit a relationship faced stigma, hostility and deadly violence. Further reading: Ashton, John R; Machin, David; Osmond, Clive; Balajaran, Rasaratnam;...
Nov 15, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Around Piccadilly she's known as "The Lady" - a quiet, rather remote figure. Widow Margaret Lowe tries to keep herself to herself and stay out of trouble - but trouble is never far away. The other residents of her building on Gosfield Street are used to hearing crashes and cries in the dead of night. Margaret sells sex in her flat, and with the coming of war that's an increasingly dangerous business. But when her clients turn violent, "The Lady" can't turn to the police and her neighbours seldom...
Nov 08, 2022•48 min•Season 2Ep. 6
The Blackout Ripper wasn't the only serviceman attacking women in World War Two. In cities, towns and villages women were being harassed and abused by men in the military - and the women who chose to join the armed forces weren't immune from such treatment. Those women who signed up for the army, navy or air force to fight Hitler were dogged by crude insinuations that they were promiscuous - especially if they went to dances and drank alcohol. When these servicewomen were stalked, raped or murde...
Nov 01, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Though married to chicken farmer Harold, Evelyn Oatley has given up on rural life and returned to live in seedy Soho under her showgirl alias "Lita Ward". The coming of war has meant a boom time for those selling entertainment, liquor and sex to the servicemen flooding the area. It is in this world of dancing and drinking that Evelyn lives. But beneath a fun-loving facade, Evelyn is lonely. Her male callers help stave off this sense of isolation, but only temporarily. And it’s while working that...
Oct 25, 2022•39 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Evelyn Oatley dreams of becoming a stage star in London's glamorous theaterland. It's a world away from her grim provincial upbringing. The daughter of a German immigrant, her troubled home life was compounded by a wave of anti-German rioting that broke out during World War One. Tiring of both her job at a textile mill and her relationship with a local farmer, Evelyn ran off to London and transformed herself into budding starlet "Lita Ward". But she found neither fame nor fortune there... only d...
Oct 18, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Evelyn Hamilton has annoyed her bosses in the male-dominated world of pharmacy - they find her quiet and independent nature mystifying and odd. After an unhappy stint at a druggist shop outside London, she's landed a new job and a fresh start in a faraway town. In February 1942, Evelyn sets out on her long journey – just as the Blackout Ripper is hunting for his first victim… Join hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes as they traces Evelyn's life and struggles; and with the help of Lauren Obe...
Oct 11, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 2
London's West End - once a glittering Mecca of nightlife - is pitch black. The lights are off to hide the city from waves of Nazi bombers - but in the darkness a merciless killer is hunting down the women of this district. Join hosts Hallie Rubenhold and Alice Fiennes as they walk those bomb-damaged streets to tell the stories of the women targeted by this "Blackout Ripper" over the course of just one week in 1942. You'll glimpse inside the theaters, jazz joints and dive bars of Piccadilly and S...
Oct 11, 2022•42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
London is pitch black. It's wartime and the lights are out to confuse Nazi bombers. But in this darkness a killer as warped and as violent as Jack the Ripper is hunting for women night after night in the bomb-damaged streets. The women murdered by the so-called Blackout Ripper received little sympathy at the time and have been largely forgotten since. So historian Hallie Rubenhold and criminologist Alice Fiennes have gathered fresh evidence about the rich and complex lives of the women - and rev...
Sep 27, 2022•4 min
We'll be dropping a trailer for the new brand new season of Bad Women next week. But in the meantime, here’s a preview from Death of an Artist, a new podcast from Pushkin Industries. For more than 35 years, accusations of murder shrouded one of the art world’s most storied couples: Was the famous sculptor Carl Andre involved in the death of his up-and-coming artist wife Ana Mendieta? Host Helen Molesworth revisits Mendieta’s death, taking a closer look at how she might have fallen out of the win...
Sep 23, 2022•8 min
We’ll be back on October 11th with a brand new season of Bad Women, but in the meantime, we wanted to give you a taste of another history podcast we think you'll like. From History Daily, host Lindsay Graham takes listeners back in time to a certain day in history to explore a momentous event. On this episode, we'll go back to August 10, 1993 when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court’s 107th justice, becoming only the second woman in history to serve on the country’s highes...
Sep 20, 2022•20 min
Families of Ripper victims often suppressed the memories of their murdered loved ones - fearing the stigma of being related to supposed "prostitutes". And descendants of men accused of being the infamous killer have also had to endure seeing their ancestors' reputations sullied. We hear from a living relatives of Annie Chapman... and of Jacob Levy, a Whitechapel butcher whose appalling struggle with mental illness has caused unsympathetic observers to conclude that he was Jack the Ripper. Learn ...
Dec 28, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Children around the world are taught about Jack the Ripper and shown graphic images of his victims. Is that wise? Are we in danger of normalising his crimes and encouraging those who seek to venerate and even emulate him? Hallie Rubenhold talks to students and teachers, and hears from crime novelist and Ripper investigator Patricia Cornwell about finding a way to discuss the Whitechapel murders without glamorizing the killer. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.c...
Dec 21, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Mary Jane Kelly was the final victim of Jack the Ripper. And the mutilation of her body was more horrendous than in any previous murder. But something also sets her apart from the other victims. Her youth, her reputed beauty and the nature of her death have resulted in a strange cult growing up around her. Even her corpse cannot rest in peace... with some demanding that her bones been exhumed for examination. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio...
Dec 14, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Mary Jane Kelly's life ended brutally in a small room in Whitechapel - but what journey brought her to East London? She sold sex in her final years - but was she born to a rich family or was she the teenage bride of a coal miner? Had she been tricked into sex slavery abroad, escaped and gone on the run from her criminal traffickers? Was Mary Jane Kelly even her real name? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 07, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In October 1888, Jack the Ripper went to ground. Although the murders seemed to ceased, public interest in the killings remained intense. Entrepreneurs exploited this prurience for profit - even opening blood-drenched waxworks exhibits in Whitechapel. This melding of fact and fiction, murder and mammon persists to this day. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 30, 2021•35 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Kate Eddowes was murdered in a dark London square in the dead of the night. What had she been doing there? It seems improbable that she was selling sex... and the more likely explanation totally upends the idea that Jack the Ripper posed as a "John" to launch his brutal attacks. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 23, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Kate Eddowes rejected the drudgery of conventional working class life and left the factory and hearth to roam the open road. She travelled the country, performing and selling songs she had written with her partner. But her existence was far from carefree and her lover turned violent. Eventually, Kate ended up penniless in Whitechapel - and an easy target for the Ripper. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 16, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Elizabeth Stride was supposedly seen by several eyewitnesses in her final hours. They also saw a man with her. At last, Jack the Ripper had a face. These descriptions are the bedrock of many well known theories about the killer’s true identity. But can they be believed? And was the Ripper even responsible for Elizabeth’s murder? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 09, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 8
Swedish farmer’s daughter Elizabeth fell pregnant out of wedlock. The authorities considered her no better than a prostitute and subjected her to myriad physical and emotional humiliations. After she lost the baby, Elizabeth fled Sweden - embarking on a life of deceit that would end in her vicious murder on the streets of Whitechapel. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 02, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 7
