The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance calls attention to an epidemic of violence against trans people, and Black trans women in particular, but did you know that this solemn event was inspired by a brutal 1998 Allston murder? In this episode, we hear from the friends of Rita Hester about a vibrant life that was inspired by music and cut short by violence. We’ll see how her murder fit a pattern of crimes in the Boston area in the late 90s and how Rita’s family and friends channeled their grief into activism. You’ll also have to suffer through some meandering personal anecdotes, because this is one of the only episodes of the show to recount an event in Boston history that took place since I lived here.
Tag: True Crime
How two of Boston’s strangest shootings fueled the gun control debates of their times (episode 246)
Two deadly murders were committed in and around Boston using military grade assault weapons, and both of them happened in the middle of a raging debate around gun control in this country. You might assume I am talking about an incident that happened after the school shootings in Parkland Florida in 2018 or Columbine in 1999, but I’m not. The first crime took place in the sleepy Boston suburb of Needham in 1934, when three gangsters used a stolen Tommy gun to rob the Needham savings bank and murder two policemen. Sadly, this deadly crime took place just months before the 1934 federal firearms act made it illegal for civilians to own machine guns. The second crime we’ll discuss took place a generation later, in 1989, in the middle of a heated national debate that resulted in George HW Bush’s 1989 limited assault weapons ban, and the stronger 1994 ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. In what has to be the only recorded example of someone going postal in the sky, a disgruntled postal worker killed his ex wife, stole a plane, and spent hours shooting up downtown Boston with an AK-47.
Spring Gun in the Grape Vines (episode 235)
This week we’ll explore the strange case of a 1907 shooting in Jamaica Plain. There was a gun, a gunshot, and a gunshot victim… a child, in fact. But there was no shooter, or at least no human shooter. If this was today, we might be talking about a terrifying robot machine gun, but 1907 was a little early for that. Instead, we’re talking about a deadly trap laid by a homeowner to protect his grape arbor. For setting this deadly trap, the homeowner would face criminal trial for assault, but pay only a trivial fine. As bizarre as the case sounds, it was part of a trend that was sweeping the nation at the time, with many spring gun cases arising in the Boston area, until the matter was finally settled in a state supreme court case that every first year law student still studies today.
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The Mysterious Murder (Maybe) of Starr Faithful (episode 223)
When Starr Faithfull’s body washed up on a Long Island beach 90 years ago, the case became a national obsession. At the center of the story was a beautiful young flapper, with a diary full of covert sexual conquests, a sordid history with a prominent politician, and a drug and booze fueled nightlife in the speakeasies of two major cities. Was her death a suicide, driven by her dark past? A tragic accident after one too many? Or was it something darker, a murder for hire on behalf of a former Boston mayor… or his underworld adversaries?
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