Tales From the Rep Morgue

Scandal ends Levi Lupton's preaching career, but the story doesn't end there, as his descendants discover decades later.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Levi Lupton is a charismatic preacher in Alliance during the early 1900s. Some call him an apostle. Others call him a fraud. Just before Christmas in 1910, Lupton's life crashes in a scandal that becomes national news. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the late 1930s at least six men with Stark County ties journeyed to Spain to fight in that country's civil war, a conflict that was, in many ways, a preview of World War II. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Roller skating, civil rights and racism in early 1960s Canton. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost a century ago, when lethal germs lurked in water and food supplies, a young woman named Helen Parson protected Canton residents from diseases. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

Busty Russell was a legendary performer at Canton's State Theatre Burlesk. But who was she, really?

Their factory closed and the Great Depression getting worse, a group of Canton watchmakers traveled to Moscow in 1930 to set up a factory for the Soviet government. It was the adventure of a lifetime. cantonrep.com/canton-podcasts

A month after Ruth Hunter’s death in 1924, a second young woman goes missing and her body is found in a creek. Detectives investigate three suspects, one of whom confesses, but almost 100 years later the cases remain unsolved.

After a young woman is found dead on a lonely country road, police charge a Canton businessman with murder. But do they have the right man?

On Thanksgiving in 1944, Canton soldier Andrew K. Thellman was thankful to be alive while fighting the Germans during World War II.

A doctor pronounces a woman dead and sends her body to a local funeral home, only for an embalmer to discover she's alive.

When is a murder not a murder? When you're in Canton in 1974. Join Canton Repository reporters Shane Hoover and Tim Botos discuss their five-part print serial "The Madam Must Die" that starts Sunday, Oct. 20.

After almost a decade of being hunted by would-be assassins, Joe Butera strikes back. But he can't avoid a final showdown with the Black Hand in the conclusion of this series.

When a Black Hand gang bombs an Alliance merchant in 1912, Joe Butera helps police round up suspects. Butera’s enemies use the courts, as well as bullets, to get revenge.

Giuseppe Butera arrives in the United States in 1898 with $10 in his pocket. Giuseppe becomes Joseph, then, Joe, but he can’t outrun a secret from his past. Find the show notes at cantonrep.com/canton-podcasts.

When a would-be assassin shoots Joe Butera in the head on a summer evening in 1912, it’s not the first time he's been targeted by a Black Hand gang, and it won’t be the last. 

Wets indulge in a two-part bacchanalia before Prohibition starts in Ohio on May 27, 1919. While local churches celebrate the “funeral” of John Barleycorn and bury King Alcohol “deeply down,” four Canton saloons stock up for the last hurrah.

His mind warped by whiskey, Christian Bachtel kills his wife, Mary, and commits the first murder in Stark County in 1833. Thousands come to Canton to watch his hanging, the first and only truly public execution in the county’s history.

An Alliance soldier returns from World War I and his high-society friends throw him a party. But the food is deadlier than anything the vet faced on the Western Front. As one diner after another is paralyzed and dies, investigators race to solve the medical mystery. Show notes at CantonRep.com/canton-podcasts.

How did Canton and the rest of the world move on from the pandemic flu of 1918, what lessons did we learn and could a pandemic like this happen again? Show notes at CantonRep.com/canton-podcasts

Hundreds of people are getting the flu every day in Canton. The local Red Cross opens an emergency hospital that eventually cares for 100 patients at a time. Among those patients are the Rizzo orphans, for whom life will never be the same. Show notes at CantonRep.com/canton-podcasts

The first flu victims die in Canton, forcing health officials to admit the disease has reached the city and take action to close schools, saloons and churches. As the death toll rises, local residents are willing to try any remedy to beat the flu. Show notes at CantonRep.com/canton-podcasts

Episode 1: "Pandemic," Spanish influenza breaks out in U.S. military camps during the final year of World War 1, and the first victims from Stark County are local soldiers and sailors, including several doctors, such as Lt. Joseph C. Monnier, who is getting ill as his train pulls into his hometown of Louisville. The first of four episodes on the 1918-1919 pandemic. Show notes at CantonRep.com/canton-podcasts

With more than 200 years of archives, there are some great stories to be told from the archives of The Canton Repository and reporter Shane Hoover begins to tell those with his podcast. His first episode will look at the flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919, the lives that were lost and how the survivors went on.