Podcast Creates Series on the Missouri Underworld of Yesteryear

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The Our Missouri podcast did a series on renowned criminals in Missouri including the Barro Gang, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde.

When Katherine Seale started researching Bonnie and Clyde for the State Historical Society of Missouri's podcast series, Our Missouri, she knew she'd find some surprises. Uncovering new knowledge is part of the job.

But the coordinator of the Rolla and Springfield Research Centers was still interested to learn that there was just so much happening in Missouri in 1933. For example, there was a bank robbery in Mexico, Missouri, where two law enforcement members were killed.

"The sheer number of people suspected of having done this bank robbery is wild," Seale says. But the violence wasn't exactly rare. "There are a lot of bank robberies. There's a lot of carjacking. There's a lot of encounters, some of them violent, some of them leading to deaths, with law enforcement."

All this was set to the backdrop of the Great Depression. It was a lot for Missourians at the time to be dealing with.

"You hear about these singular, big events with big names like Bonnie and Clyde, but there was a lot more going on beyond just some of those more memorable or well-known names, for sure," she says.

Along with co-host Sean Rost, SHSM assistant director of research, Seale delved into that — and much more about Depression-era bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, the Barrow Gang, true crime and mystery in Missouri — in the four-part podcast series that the society is releasing over July and August this summer. The first two parts are now available on the SHSM website and all major podcast streaming services.

Rost has been hosting the Our Missouri podcast since it launched in 2018. He says that the idea behind it was to share the society's oral history projects, host conversations with scholars and authors, and use material from SHSM's collection to create narrative-driven episodes.

The first episodes were standalones. But Rost says that he quickly realized it was easier to do a series. In 2019, SHSM began putting together four-part series on topics such as the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, the enactment of suffrage and more.

Listeners kept asking Rost for a series on true crime and mystery. Then, about a year ago, Seale and Rost connected over a story about bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd. Pretty soon, she agreed to co-host the series.

The two decided to focus on tracing their subjects' movements across southeast Missouri in the summer of 1933, which are presented chronologically in the series. They also delve into the legacy of the events.

"How does this change criminal activity in Missouri, but also the nation?" Seale asks. "And what [did] that looked like for law enforcement in the coming years?"

Both say that putting the episodes together was fun and that they spent a lot of time going down rabbit holes, which isn't a bad thing. Rost says that they even had a joke about having just one more question.

"It's never just the one question," he says. "It's always many, many other ones."

Both hope their queries and the stories they tell in the podcast intrigue listeners and inspire them to do some of their own research. Rost points out that people may find themselves realizing how they interact every day with the same spaces these notorious historical figures once inhabited.

"Seeing those connections across the state is really interesting," Seale says.