On this episode, Fatal Gothic Hosts, actress Julia Parker and film director Stephen Savage, sit down in studio to talk about their respective careers, the Fatal Gothic Podcast, and life in general working in Hollywood. 

France, 1573. A number of children have been abducted and eaten by what local villagers believe is a Werewolf. Gilles Garnier, a local hermit, is caught red handed with a murdered child and put on trial. But no one is willing to step forth to act as his defense attorney before the dreaded "Witch Hunter Judge", Henri Bouget. No one that is except a 26 year old nun from Paris called Sister Marie Arquette. Sister Marie's task is to prove that, though the man is obviously insane, he is not a werewolf, and certainly doesn't deserve to be burned alive at the stake. 

On this special episode of Fatal Gothic, co-host Stephen Savage talks one on one with author and Jack The Ripper researcher Simon Daryl Wood about his book "Deconstructing Jack: The Secret History of the Whitechapel Murders". Simon's theory about the Jack The Ripper murders of 1880's London has been turning the Ripperologist community on it's head, and earning praise for Simon's in-depth research and unique take on the subject. 

After the Donner Party incident of 1847, Cannibalism became the big sensationalist news across the United States for a generation. The public was obsessed by it, and two men became infamous for their taste for human flesh and murder. Though Jeremiah Johnson would become a larger than life fictional hero of mythical stature in books and finally in movies, the real man was known as "Liver Eating" Johnson, and killing and eating the body parts of a reported 300 plus warriors of the Crow and Blackfeet Nations in battle was far from his only activity. He was known to kill Native women and children as well, and may have murdered and eaten three white children years after his battles with the Indians.  And nearly as prolific a cannibal was Boone Helm, another mountain man of the mid 19th century. Helm is thought to have murdered and eaten as many as 100 people in his lifetime, and many more in gunfights and barroom brawls during his travels from Missouri to California. His cannibalism made him a creepy household name before he was finally hanged, not for eating people, but for simple bank robbery. 

Australia, 1835. The entire continent was at this time, for all intents and purposes, one giant prison colony. From the late 18th century until 1900, convicts from England, Ireland, and all of Great Britain’s worldwide domain, were routinely shipped off to the mysterious “Land Down Under” to serve out their sentences for crimes ranging from petty theft to murder. A prison break in '35 led to Australia’s first ever case of serial murder. Over the course of less than a year, ten innocent people, and perhaps as many as 5 more, were murdered in cold blood by an escaped convict named John Lynch, who would in time become known throughout Australia as the Berrima Ax Murderer.

England, 1657. The Civil War and the beheading of King Charles I has forced many Noble families into desperate straights, as Oliver Cromwell's Round Heads, along with the radical parliament, confiscated lands and fortunes that had been secure for centuries. Into this chaos arose a phenomenon known as The Highwaymen, former titled gentlemen who took to robbing pay wagons and travelers along the country's narrow roads after dark. The worst of these was no gentleman at all, but a woman who became known as The Wicked Lady Skelton, a Royalist aristocrat's daughter who murdered over 50 innocent souls during her three year reign of terror.  

In the spring of 1881. Bass Reeves, the first black Federal Marshall in US history, was called upon by an old friend, Cherokee Tribal Policeman Charlie Next Moon, to help track down a man who had murdered in cold blood two Cherokee women and a white reservation school teacher in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma. Both men were seasoned lawmen, but neither was prepared for what faced them out on the murderer's trail. And even after witnessing the brutality of the killing fields of the Civil War, the horrors they would witness in their pursuit of this crazed killer would haunt them both for the rest of their lives. 

Throughout history, stories of families that murdered for money, or simply to satisfy a lust for blood, have caused sleepless nights for nobility and commoners alike. On this episode of Fatal Gothic, hosts Julia Parker and Stephen Savage explore some of the most notorious Killer Clans ever to haunt our nightmares. These include the Beans, Scotland's legendary Cannibal Clan, The Harpe Brothers, who are considered by many the first true serial killers in America, a century before H.H. Holmes, and Kansas' Bloody Benders, an immigrant family from Germany who, in the years following the Civil War, murdered scores of western bound travelers before escaping into legend.    

Chicago, 1866. Pinkerton agent Kate Warne knows the identity of the serial killer she is seeking to capture, but he's still on the loose. And even though many Pinkertons and Chicago Police officers are scouring the city looking for him, Kate decides going undercover is probably the best bet to draw him out. Little does she know how right she is, or how dangerous her hunch will prove to be.

Chicago, 1866. The Civil War is over, and immigrants are pouring into Chicago from all over Europe looking for a better life. What they find instead are very few jobs, followed of course by a spike in crime, including a rash of brutal sexual murders against women in the mostly Irish and German areas of the city. The Pinkerton Detective Agency is called in by the city's major business interests who feel the police are too inept to solve these dreadful crimes. Pinkerton selects one of his top detectives, Kate Warne, known throughout the world as "The First Lady Detective", to hunt down the murderer. But how deep is Kate willing to travel into the Pits of Hell in order to complete her mission?