The great literary pantheon of horror would be nothing without the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe. His life was every bit as dark and melancholy as all his best writing. And as for his death? Fittingly for the inventor of the mystery novel, it’s shrouded in secrets…

Found in a Baltimore pub, wearing someone else’s clothes, Poe was rushed to hospital – where he hallucinated and screamed incoherently for days, then died before he could say a word of explanation. We take a look at Poe’s greatest mystery of all.

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First, children started to go missing in the villages around the Black Baron’s castle. Then, word spread of his dabbling in sinister, arcane rituals to conjure the Devil himself. And soon, in the dead of night, villagers reported hearing screams from a high castle window.

Some say Medieval French nobleman Gilles de Rais was the first recorded serial killer in history, responsible for the gruesome torture and murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of children. Join us to find out what really happened high up in the dark towers of the Black Baron.

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Boiled in blood, hacked at by knives, torn apart by iron dogs… the world’s religions differ on what exactly might await sinners in the afterlife. But one thing they can all agree on is that if you were naughty on Earth, you are in for one hell of a horrible time.

We take a quick tour of history’s grimmest netherzones: from freezing poison rain in the Norse Helheim, to a river of excrement, where monstrous aquatic beings eat your flesh, down in the Hindu Narakas. Welcome to Hell.

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The important bits: At the end of this year we'll no longer be a Wondery show. New ShortHand and early-release episodes will no longer appear in Wondery+ and Amazon Music subscriber feeds after 29th December.

The good news is that ShortHand will be free for everyone and living its best life on the main RedHanded feed!

If you're reading this, you're already on our main feed and don't need to go anywhere. See you in 2026!

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OJ Simpson wasn’t black, “he was OJ”. That was the narrative OJ had pushed his entire career… right up until he found himself in the dock for killing his ex-wife and a waiter. Then suddenly OJ Simpson was practically MLK himself.

Last week in our first part on “The Juice”, we told you how OJ Simpson killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. In Part Two, we’re going to tell you how he went to trial, with all of the evidence stacked against him – and, with the help of the “dream team”, still got away with murder.

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Orenthal James Simpson, aka “OJ”, aka “The Juice”: the single most famous man in American sporting history. By the early 90s he had not only established himself as the greatest American Football player who’d ever lived – but he had also transcended sport, turning himself into a charismatic advertising machine and national icon.

However, in June 1994, it all fell apart – when he killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman in cold blood, leaving a trail of evidence and eventually going on a highly televised (but actually pretty slow) car chase. But somehow, he got away with it. Welcome to the most American thing since apple pie: the life of OJ Simpson, and his unquestionable guilt.

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In May 1937, a chic young woman entered an empty Paris Métro carriage. Less than a minute later, she was discovered bleeding to death with a dagger in her neck.

It’s a locked-room whodunnit that has bamboozled the French public for almost a century.

The murder of Laetitia Toureaux unravelled her dizzying double (and triple) lives as a factory worker by day, nightclub siren by night – and a glamorous undercover spy tangled up in the deadliest politics of 1930s France…

The case still remains officially unsolved: but can we solve it? Step aboard and join us as we try to crack this shadowy Parisian mystery.

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Add together a narcissistic gold-digger, a gullible gym bro and a police department with a flair for theatrics, and what do you get? The Dalia Dippolito saga.

She thought she’d hired a hitman to kill her husband. Instead, she ended up starring in a viral sting complete with a staged crime scene, hidden cameras, and the world’s least convincing crocodile tears.

This week, we unpack the wild story of Dalia Dippolito – the wannabe black widow who fell for her own web of lies.

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