Episodes

Have you ever wondered whose brainchild it was while you’re sitting watching a fabulous TV show or enjoying a news website? If so, this episode is for you. It was a privilege to chat with Phil Balboni recently. His pioneering contributions to broadcast and cable TV are extraordinary. A former vice president and news director of WCVB-TV Boston (Channel 5), he created and launched “Chronicle” a nightly news magazine, making it a staple of local journalism for over forty years. He has had his fi...

I recently caught up with Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Bill Lee at the West Newton Theatre in West Newton, Mass., where he promoted the independent baseball film, Eephus, in which he stars as himself. Lee, a left-handed pitcher, is famous for developing the Leephus pitch, a variety of the Eephus pitch. He used the Leephus pitch in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, which many consider the best match-up ever. Lee was on the roster for ten years with the Red Sox and later with th...

I caught up recently with Carson Lund, the director and co-writer of the independent film Eephus, and a New England native who grew up in New Hampshire. Carson, a cinematographer and film editor, holds a BA in Film Production from Emerson College in Boston. In an impromptu chat at the Dedham Community Theatre in Dedham, Massachusetts, I quickly learned that an “eephus” is a pitch rarely used in baseball but carries a significant metaphorical meaning in the 98-minute film. Eephus is Lund’s first ...

Sam LaGrassa’s Deli, situated just off the Freedom Trail, is an excellent spot to refuel during your walking tour of Boston. Since 1968, this family-operated sandwich mecca has been piling the meats high. Hats off to the Rumanian pastrami & Swiss on light rye. Honorable mention to the pickles. Sure, LaGrassa’s swarms with locals at lunchtime so you know it’s good, but don’t be put off – the line moves quickly. Each sandwich can easily feed to adult appetites. Leave room for the 7-layer bar for ...

Creative podcasters welcome the chance to spread their wings and try something new. After a very successful series of “true crime” podcasts, Diane Godfrey is now pursuing her passion for sharing stories about the people, places and things she loves about her fair City of Boston. We talk about the adventure Diane is about to begin which will have her out and about at local restaurants, cultural landmarks and interviewing fascinating people, including celebrities, who make Boston what it is, “The ...

We’re going “off road” to talk again with the writer Joseph P. O’Donnell. He is the author of the successful 2022 memoir of E. Steven Sachs, “Living On the Fringe of the Mob”, which we talked about on February 5, 2023. Joseph’s latest project was to put down on paper the gripping true story told to him by Daniel Kolmann, a gifted young athlete born in 1948 in Communist-occupied Czechoslovakia. Daniel was removed from his family at age twelve and forced to live in a Russian-controlled sports camp...

The fascinating and fearless best-selling author Jillian Lauren joins me to discuss her upcoming true-crime book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer (due out July 18, 2023). Before Samuel Little died in 2020, he confessed to having murdered 93 people, mostly women, between 1970 and 2005. Jillian was determined to give a voice many of his victims and so fostered a personal relationship with him to get material for this book. She is a candid and engaging guest. ...

Meet Bill Powers, the Retired Massachusetts State Police commander of the Detective Unit for Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. Bill guides us through every step of a truly bizarre murder investigation he recounts in his book, When the Smoke Cleared, A Murder Mystery in Malden Massachusetts. Powers and his colleagues knew someone had been murdered, but who? Where was the body? Who are the suspects? What was the motive? And where was the murder weapon? Against all odds, Powers and his team put...

Bonanno. Gambino. Colombo. Anyone familiar with the New York Mafia from the 1960s until the early 2000s will instantly recognize those notorious names. E. Steven Sachs was the lone Jewish kid growing up in a rough-and-tumble Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1960s among neighbors and playmates who would become members of the NY organized crime families. Steve gives us the reality, not the romanticized Hollywood version, of being an outsider who nonetheless was intimately acquainted with and forged l...

The Power of Crowds: Bob Ruff’s Truth & Justice Podcast Bob Ruff hosts Truth & Justice, the popular crowd-sourced podcast now in its twelfth season, where he and his followers seek truth and justice for the wrongly convicted. Each season Bob asks his listeners to help him work on a new case of a potential wrongful conviction. They comb through the details in real time, hoping to discover a new angle or to re-interpret piece of evidence that the initial investigation may have missed or got wron...

The Honorable Thomas A. Connors was appointed to the Massachusetts District Court by Governor William Weld in 1995. In 2004 he was appointed to the Superior Court Bench of Massachusetts by Governor Mitt Romney. As an attorney, he had built an impressive career in a solo practice that handled everything from real estate closings to murder cases. Judge Connors shares what prompted him to attend Boston College Law School and why he ultimately gravitated to the criminal side of law. His intellect, h...

A 50-year-old East Boston woman was the mastermind behind a human trafficking operation that forced women into prostitution in Massachusetts. Ramona Hernandez and her husband, Rafael Henriquez, earned the dubious distinction of being the first individuals charged under the state’s new anti-trafficking law. The couple lured women into their net and then shipped them to Massachusetts to be victimized as prostitutes. Law enforcement likened the sex ring to a pizza delivery business: Rafael would de...

With all the grimness that occurs in a courthouse, it’s no wonder that sometimes comic relief is on the docket. Diane reveals to Jordan the lighter side of working in the halls of justice, including antics by court officers, a rogue lawyer’s “gymnastics”, odd encounters, and how a bit of levity can help employees cope with the gravity of their work.

On February 5, 2015, a bitterly cold morning in the seaside town of Bourne, Massachusetts, a murder-suicide plan was set in motion. A 31-year old Coast Guard Petty Officer, Adrian Loya, armed with an assault rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun, had driven from Virginia to shoot his way into the condominium of a colleague, Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova, and her wife, Anna. Neighbors heard the sharp reports of multiple gunshots at 2 AM. First responders would be hampered by Loya’s vehicle w...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the USA Today bestselling author of 13 psychological thrillers, winning the most prestigious awards in the genre: five Agathas, four Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, with 37 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. Book critics call her “a master of suspense,” “a superb and gifted storyteller”; she’s the only author to have won the Agatha in four categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best ...

Someone commits a crime but is found “not guilty by reason of insanity”. It doesn’t happen just on TV – it’s a real defense entered by a defendant in a criminal trial. The defendant claims that they were so mentally disturbed or incapacitated at the time of the offense that they did not have the required intention to commit the crime and is therefore not guilty – even though they committed the crime. But as Elliot Levine, a noted criminal defense lawyer in Massachusetts, will explain, this rarel...

When Mark Putnam graduated from the FBI Academy in 1986, he seemed to have it all: the new career he’d dreamed about his entire life, darkly handsome good looks, an attractive wife from a rich family, a new baby daughter and another child on the way. His first big assignment took them to the podunk town of Pikeville KY, Hatfield and McCoy country, where Mark’s productive record of arrests seemed to make him a model agent. But his secret sexual entanglement with FBI paid informant Susan Smith (an...

Ring in the Year of the Tiger with Diane and Jordan as they look back at the best of their 2021 podcasts and give you a taste of what’s coming up in 2022. Many listeners have been asking about the everyday work of the court reporter, the nuts and bolts of the job, from the important grunt work of transcription to the ins and outs of trial assignments and courtroom sessions. Jordan will cross-examine Diane on the nitty-gritty of her profession and she doesn’t hold back. And they want to hear fr...

J.W. “Jay” Carney, a prominent Boston-based criminal defense lawyer, rose to national fame when he defended James “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous South Boston crime boss. Jay is known for taking on the gruesome or difficult cases, such as that of Tarek Mehanna, the pharmacist from Sudbury, MA who was convicted in 2012 for providing support to Al Qaeda, and of John Salvi, who in 1994 killed two people and wounded five others at two Brookline, MA abortion clinics. He has been spotlighted in media ou...

Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre thought he had finally found a place beyond the reach of death. He had fled threats and violence in his home country, Honduras, after refusing to join a gang. When he saw his best friend’s body dumped in front of his house, he got the message to join or be killed as well. A grueling journey through Nicaragua and Mexico, then across the Rio Grande, got him to his sister’s house in Florida. He got a job, found a place to stay in a trailer park, and looked forward to a cha...

“She still stays in St. Joseph’s Cemetery. Nobody overturns that verdict.” Joanne Arruda knew something was terribly wrong. It was late afternoon on Friday, September 8th, 1978: two days after her daughter’s 15th birthday. But Mary Lou still wasn’t home. She had been out riding her bike in her Raynham, MA neighborhood, about 32 miles south of Boston. The orange ten-speed bike turned up on a dirt road near her home, but Mary Lou would not be found for two months. On November 11th, kids riding di...

Violence against the homeless is only too common and has been on the rise over the last few years. Violence among the homeless is unfortunately also frequent; the odds of a homeless person becoming a crime victim are appallingly high. Going beyond the courtroom, today’s podcast brings you onto the streets of Boston to hear what it was like to be a crime victim while “living unsheltered”, the term now used to refer to the homeless. Ginny, a former registered nurse, ended up living on the sidewalk...

On the night of September 6th, 1987, Dora Jean Brimage, 19, accepted a ride from a birthday party in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. She was seen getting into a car with three men. The next day, construction workers renovating a vacant building a mile and a half away from the party location found her semi-clad, mutilated body; she had been severely beaten, raped, and strangled. There were no suspects, but investigators preserved the evidence, hoping that one day advances in DNA science would help...

October 23, 1989. It was a crime that shocked even the most jaded journalist and shook the city of Boston and beyond. Carol DiMaiti Stuart, nine months pregnant, was killed and her husband Chuck Stuart seriously wounded. They had been shot in their car after attending a birthing class at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Chuck claimed a Black man had tried to rob them at a red light in the Mission Hill section of Boston. The subsequent media circus turned the city upside-down for three months. The Bo...