Antemortem

A short goodbye and thank you.

LZ-129 Hindenburg was the pride and joy of the Zeppelin company. The rigid airship took its final voyage in May 1937. Big and buoyant, its failure singlehandedly ruined commercial travel via dirigible.

This episode is torture.

When a big windy tunnel comes down from the sky

In July 2005, four terrorists attacked London at rush hour. We look at who they were and how it happened. A cameo from the Mother of Satan.

Goodbye, Galen. Hello, cyberknife!

In this episode, John Hunter saves a few legs and Civil War surgeons remove quite a few. Luckily for the soldiers, chloroform is in use.

When it came to cutting people open during the medieval period and renaissance, the barber surgeon reigned supreme. The bandages were drunk, the c-sections were deadly, and da Vinci was slicing bodies open left and right.

In 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon experienced catastrophic failure. After the deadly blast, there came an oil spill of monstrous proportions.

If you like unsolvable murders with heaps of contradictory evidence and an inscrutable ransom note, you've come to the right episode. JonBenét Ramsey was killed in 1996 but even a decade-late confession has brought us no closer to knowing who's responsible. Listen to see if you can figure out whether the pineapple is important.

The year was 1912. The ocean was below freezing. The lifeboats were inadequate. The punctures of an iceberg took down the world's largest ship in under three hours. Based on the 1997 blockbuster, Titanic.

Meet Israel Keyes: loner, carpenter, killer. Keyes murdered at least eight victims and committed a variety of other crimes. He wouldn't want us talking about him.

When faced with a difficult financial situation, John List chose the worst possible option.

For a few days in August, 1831, Nat Turner led a rebellion that shocked and terrified the enslavers of Southampton County, Virginia and hastened abolition.

Episode 2 on tuberculosis explores some of the pre-antibiotic methods for dealing with the disease. You should probably try sitting outside and drinking milk before considering surgical options. Neither will cure you but you might be inspired to write a poem before you expire.

Too robust to be contained by just one episode, tuberculosis will be difficult to conquer. TB has been infecting humans since the dawn of agriculture and it remains a significant cause of death today. And it's not just for lungs. Did you know you can get tuberculosis in your spine?

Disguises. Poison. A headless body. Cora Turner disappeared after a dinner party in 1910. Her duplicitous husband, Dr. Crippen, would be prosecuted for the crime but some believe in his innocence.

Ever since people first raised their eyes to the heavens and saw a balloon up there, they wanted to jump out of it for some reason. Same for airplanes. So now we have skydiving.

Dejected by the Confederacy's defeat in the Civil War, one sad actor hatches a plot. All things didn’t quite go to plan, but Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot in Ford’s Theatre. Listen to find out where the subplots failed.

The tale of the Hinterkaifeck murders is as enigmatic as it is sordid. The suspects are plentiful but the evidence is lacking. Creepy footprints, a rambunctious cow, and a short jail term preceded the events of the day.

Once upon a time, there lived various kings and emperors and noblemen. Some of them died peacefully in their beds. Others died screaming bloody murder. This episode explores the latter.

There are four more B.T.K. murders in this episode. But that's not all. Rader's poetic side will emerge and we'll all hate it. Plus, I'll tell you what "frotteurism" means.

On this, the first of three episodes on B.T.K., Antemortem will introduce you to the man behind the initialism. Murders one through six are enclosed.

Selena, the Queen of Tejano music, was murdered in 1995. We’ll cover her rise to fame and an unfortunate hiring choice. You’ll want to listen to that cover of La Bamba in full by the end.

This long-awaited Antemortem episode is all about polio. When poliovirus attacks the central nervous system, it can cause temporary paralysis, permanent disability, or even more permanent death. The good news is that we have a vaccine! 

In 1948, a man died on an Australian beach. Since then, the case has baffled cryptographers and wikipedia readers alike. Did the woman know more than she said? Did he dance like no one was watching? Was the code just a shopping list? Quite possibly!

What's odorless, tasteless, and will make your diaphragm seize until you die? Well, most nerve agents, actually. But this episode is just about sarin. Thanks a lot, Nazis.

This episode has three murder cases, four victims, and six individuals who may never have killed on their own. It has one rogue eyeball found on the stairs.

The pharaoh Tutankhamun died young after an insignificant reign. 3,000 years later, his (nearly) untouched tomb was discovered and his fame skyrocketed. Now everyone knows how shiny a death mask can be.

Whether the condemned faces a beheading, hanging, or other method of execution, much can go wrong. When it does, the effect is usually grisly and painful. Join Antemortem for several tales of state-sanctioned killing gone wrong.

More from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. For those wondering "What does my body disposal pathway say about me?"

Are you sick and tired of police procedurals telling you that serial murderers are unstoppable geniuses roaming the country, waiting to wack you on the head with a lead pipe as they jump out from an alleyway? Get the cold hard facts from the FBI instead. It won't be a lead pipe, but it might be your own shoelace.

On the 16th of April, 2007, America experienced its deadliest shooting on a college campus. The senseless violence took the lives of more than 30 victims. Here’s what we know about the shooter, the attack, and the aftermath.

Dracula's reign of terror really gets going.

Vlad the Impaler's homeland was nestled tightly between the warring Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. In this episode we will see Dracula's father take the throne, maneuver to keep the throne, and lose the throne. Dracula will do two of those things. Antemortem: come for the assassinations, stay for the mispronunciations.

Bees? Bees! But not just any bees. The hybrid subspecies of Africanized honey bee was created in Brazil. Scientists were hoping for gentle honey-providers but got territorial aggressors instead.

California didn’t exactly have a shortage of serial killers in the 1970s. Rodney Alcala was one of them. The extent of his crimes was not discovered until decades later when forensic science caught up with him. Cheryl Bradshaw demonstrates bad judgement followed by good judgment.

Every year in the United States, thousands of unidentified bodies are recovered. Some linger as Jane and John Does long term. This episode contains two stories of unidentified remains. We’ll also learn about the trade of the body broker. Guard your cervical spine and listen!