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The Devil Within (Cavalry Audio/Wondery) ? Premiered May 24
It's details of this case?especially the perpetrator's age?that grabbed me. First, let me set the scene. It's a Saturday in early January, 1988. Whitney Houston's ?So Emotional? is the number-one song in the country. Three Men and a Baby is about to break box-office records. In a sleepy New Jersey suburb about 50 miles west of New York City, a 14 year-old boy murders his mother, sets fire to the family home, then commits suicide with the same knife he used to kill his mother. What happened? Could Thomas Sullivan, Jr's burgeoning interest in the occult?as evidenced by the note he left behind?have been the motivation? The Devil Within seeks new answers within this disturbing 33 year-old case.
To Live and Die in LA: Season 2 (Tenderfoot TV) ? Premiered May 29
Tenderfoot TV and Neil Strauss's award-winning podcast To Live and Die in LA is back with an all-new case. This season examines?and, perhaps most importantly, seeks to humanize?20 year-old Elaine Park, who disappeared from Kardashian hometown Calabasas, CA in 2017. Strauss's interest in the case emerged from its connections to his own backyard (not his literal backyard, of course, in case you're thinking about the recent developments in the Kristin Smart case): Elaine's abandoned car was found in Strauss's own neighborhood: Malibu. In a way, this case was the one that ?started it all? for Strauss, a case that consumed him and got him started down the part of real-time true crime investigation. This season of To Live and Die in LA is a group effort: Strauss teams up with his wife, neighbors, Incubus guitarist Mike Einzinger, and concert violinist Ann Marie Simpson to find out who Elaine was and what happened to her.
West Cork (Audible) ? Premiered on Apple Podcasts March 29
Another confession: West Cork isn't exactly a ?new? podcast. In fact, it came out in 2018, as an Audible Original.
Back then, my French-major-slash-true-crime-fanatic self jumped at the premise (and forked over the necessary cash: back then you had to pay to experience the podcast The New Yorker called ?a masterpiece.? Today, West Cork is available for free on Apple Podcasts.)
On December 23, 1996, stylish French TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found beaten to death outside her holiday home in West Cork. To the residents of Schull (pop. 700), Sophie was a ?blow-in,? a local term for outsiders drawn to this remote corner of southwest Ireland for its isolation and the rugged beauty of its terrain.
Police have long suspected Ian Bailey, a local freelance journalist with a history of domestic abuse charges, to be guilty of the murder. French authorities tried and convicted Bailey of the murder in 2019, but as the trial was conducted in abstentia (not to mention the fact that Bailey has successfully fought all extradition charges), it's unlikely the now-64 year-old will ever serve a day in jail.
Even if you've already had the pleasure of immersing yourself in this Serial-like thriller, stick around: co-hosts Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde released an all-new episode of West Cork on May 14. What's more, their production company Yarn has two new projects in the works (and their website seems to suggest that additional new episodes of West Cork might be around the corner.)
You also might want to re-listen (or listen for the first time) to West Cork before bingeing Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, Netflix's new three-part series about the murder.
LISK Podcast ? Season 2: The Search for Answers (Mopac Audio) ? Premieres July 14
If you've had enough of the Long Island Serial Killer case (which, if you're like me, is impossible, given the intrigue and police corruption inherent in this case, not to mention that mysterious belt evidence Suffolk County authorities released in December 2020), you have my full permission to skip to the next podcast in the round-up.
If you're ready for more LISK, then prepare yourself for round two of this Mopac Audio original.
In Season 1, host Chris Mass revisited the decade-old Gilgo case, re-examining old evidence and tracking down new leads. In Season 2: The Season for Answers, Mass and his team are back with boots on the ground in Long Island. Over the course of seven episodes, you'll hear first-hand interviews with victims' families and friends, law enforcement, DNA experts, criminologists, and more. Mass and his team aim to separate fact from fiction in a case that has remained unsolved for over a decade.
Why is the highest-paid police department in the country unable?or, perhaps more chillingly, unwilling?to crack this case? Could some of the victims' high-profile clients (the season 2 trailer lists judges, lawyers, police officers, and councilmen among Amber Costello's escorting clients) have something to do with it? Does the fact that former police chief James Burke (who did federal time for an incident that may or may not be connected to the LISK murders) no longer wields power mean people with information about the LISK case will finally come forward? What's with the sudden departure of Geraldine Hart, whose 2018 appointment to the role of Suffolk County Police Commissioner seemed like a welcome addition to a department mired in scandal and corruption? When it comes to the LISK case, is there a cover up? If so, who is covering for whom? Hopefully LISK: The Search for Answers will deliver on its title's promise.
Transportista (iHeartMedia's My Cultura Network) ? Premieres July 2021
In this new limited-series weekly podcast, Transportista pulls back the curtain on the underground world of drug trafficking and cartels.
This is a story told from the inside?of a North Carolina federal prison that is. Using a smuggled-in cell phone, the man who once helmed transportation for some of Latin America's most dangerous drug kingpins tells us his story firsthand. The women. The wealth. The connections to powerful political players. The man they call ?El Transportista? had everything?until it all came crashing down. A dual language podcast, Transportista will be available in both English and Spanish.
As a cipher clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, Canada, and a GRU intelligence officer, Igor Gouzenko had access to the secret communications of the GRU and NKGB between Canada and the Soviet consulates and embassies in Britain and the US. He was even able to open the safe in the embassy's cipher room, which contained such documents as officer dossiers and coded telegrams. Cipher clerks were the background players in the espionage world where spies were the featured performers. But in early September 1945, Gouzenko captured the limelight, bringing fame to his cryptic trade when he left his office never to return again, stuffing in his shirt 109 top-secret Soviet cables and more than a hundred documents outing Soviet spies in Canada, Britain, and the US, including some connected with atomic bomb espionage. It was ?a dazzling cache of stolen GRU documents,? as one scholar later described the feat.
In the days ahead, Gouzenko sought asylum for himself, his wife, and their fifteen-month-old son, as he gave the bulging contents of his theft to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. After the RCMP informed the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, on September 12, sent an urgent message to President Truman about the defector and his claims, one of which was that Stalin had made ?the obtaining of complete information regarding the atomic bomb the Number One Project of Soviet espionage.?
Because of Soviet mole Kim Philby, who was chief of British counterintelligence, the Soviets knew almost immediately about the defection. ?For the Russians, the defection was nothing short of a disaster, calling for a thorough reexamination of their intelligence operations,? a scholar later wrote. Lavrentiy Beria, by then Stalin's deputy premier, his ?first lieutenant,? would soon send a cable to every rezidentura abroad, warning that ?G.'s defection has caused great damage to our country and has, in particular, very greatly complicated our work in the American countries.? Instructions would soon be sent, he wrote, regarding ways to improve all agent networks and rules to tighten security. ?The work must be organized so that each member of the staff and agent can have no knowledge of our work beyond what directly relates to the task he is carrying out?
There was reason for panic, as Gouzenko had exposed Canadian and American spy networks and ignited a firestorm of counterintelligence searches for Communist spies on both sides of the border. Spies with whom Koval had ties were among those affected, such as Arthur Adams who, among other things, had once obtained a false Canadian passport through Sam Carr, head of the Canadian Communist party and one of the Soviet agents exposed by Gouzenko. Passport secrets were indeed among those the cipher clerk uncovered, showing the ways such fraud was devised.
Gouzenko unveiled numerous stars on the Soviet stage of spies, including an unnamed assistant to the US assistant secretary of state?later identified as Alger Hiss. He also outed Fred Rose, a member of the Canadian parliament. Considered to be one of the most important Soviet agents in Canada, Rose was the head of the GRU's Montreal group of spies. As such he was connected to Pavel Mikhailov at the Soviet consulate in Manhattan, linking Rose indirectly to Arthur Adams, Benjamin Lassen, and thus to Koval. When Rose was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1943, Mikhailov cabled Moscow, ?Fred, our man in Lesovia [code for Canada] has been elected to the Lesovian parliament.?
Fred Rose, like Adams, Lassen, and Jacob Golos once had worked at Amtorg in New York. Both Golos and Lassen, through Mikhailov or World Tourists, had used Rose to obtain Canadian travel documents for agents they assisted. One of Rose's spy duties was to help ?with bogus documentation for Soviet illegals seeking entry into the USA and beyond.?
Whether Koval had ever met any of these people other than Lassen is unknown. But in the months ahead, Fred Rose's organizational ties in both the Canadian and American spy networks would begin to surface, often in front-page news stories on both sides of the border. Hoover would send an urgent memo to his bureau chiefs announcing that the Gouzenko case must be their ?no. 1 project? and that every resource should be used ?to run down all angles very promptly.? It was in the midst of such exposures that Koval was offered the job at Monsanto in Dayton.
Like an aftershock to the Gouzenko earthquake, a few months later, another spy defected, this time an American by the name of Elizabeth Bentley, who had been the deputy and lover of Jacob Golos. After his death in 1943, Bentley took over two Golos networks of Communist informants: both headed by economists, one on the War Production Board and the other on the Board of Economic Warfare. Both men had ties to individuals known to Lassen. Though she likely did not know Koval, Bentley must have known Lassen because of his long-lasting ties to Golos and because Golos leased an apartment in the same building where Lassen maintained his principal office. The details she released would not be widely known to the public until the summer of 1948, but on November 6, 1945, when she walked into the FBI's New York bureau and began to spill the names and operations of dozens of Soviet spies she had known for the previous seven years, Bentley would further shake the trembling foundation of Soviet espionage in the US. Her interviews, which filled a 115-page single-space dossier, revealed the details of a vast infiltration of Soviet spies in America, especially during the war years. The Bentley defection was quickly known in Moscow.
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