On the evening of August 6, 1930, New York Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater finished dinner at a West 45th Street chop house, said goodbye to two companions, and walked out of the historical record. The police weren’t told for 28 days. The case stayed open for nearly 50 years.

Tonight’s story follows the documented trail: Crater’s rise through Tammany Hall’s Cayuga Democratic Club, his appointment to the bench by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt just four months earlier, and the hurried final days in which he destroyed papers, moved files, and cashed checks totaling $5,150. We look at the dinner at Billy Haas’s with a Schubert lawyer and a showgirl, and at how the familiar image of Crater stepping into a taxi rests on thinner evidence than the legend suggests.

Then the aftermath: the month-long delay in reporting him missing, a grand jury that gathered roughly 2,000 pages of testimony and reached no conclusion, a flood of sightings, and the four envelopes Stella Crater found in a bureau drawer months later, including a handwritten note that can be read more than one way.

Finally, the theories, graded by what actually supports them: a voluntary disappearance or suicide, a political killing tied to Tammany Hall and the judgeship scandals, a blackmail plot, a gangland connection, and a sealed 2005 letter naming a spot under the Coney Island boardwalk. Evidence first, speculation clearly labeled.

Sources include Richard Tofel’s Vanishing Point, the New York Sun, the Saturday Evening Post, the Daily News, the Charley Project, and Lafayette College’s archive. The full source list is in the show notes.

Subscribe for new episodes of Midnight Mystery Archive. Part of the Archive Podcast Network.

Find us:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | midnightmysteryarchive.com

#JudgeCrater #JosephCrater #ColdCase #UnsolvedMysteries #TammanyHall #1930s #NewYorkHistory #MissingPerson #HistoricalMystery #TrueCrimePodcast #MidnightMysteryArchive

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

On December 12, 1910, Dorothy Arnold, a 25-year-old Bryn Mawr graduate and aspiring writer from a prominent Manhattan family, left home to go shopping. A little before two that afternoon, she spoke with a friend outside Brentano’s bookstore on Fifth Avenue. The friend waved goodbye from the corner. No one has been documented seeing Dorothy Arnold since.

Her family waited roughly six weeks to go public. The search that followed spanned Pinkerton agents, transatlantic cables, a confrontation in Florence, and the dragging of Central Park ponds. Over the decades, five explanations have survived, and a handful of false leads, hoaxes and claims have come and gone. This episode walks through the documented record, presents the evidence for and against each theory without ranking them, and flags the places where historical sources disagree.

Sources: Allen Churchill, “The Girl Who Never Came Back,” American Heritage (1960); Rosemary Counter, National Geographic (2024); The Charley Project; period newspaper reporting.

The Charley Project maintains the public case file for Dorothy Arnold and thousands of other missing persons: charleyproject.org

Midnight Mystery Archive is a research-driven show with an evidence-first, no-speculation standard. New episodes bi-weekly.

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

This is the final episode of the Midnight Mystery Archive.

In Part 1, we covered who Kerryn Tate was and what happened on December 29, 1979: a 22-year-old woman hitchhiking southeast of Perth, a deliberately set fire, a body found in bushland near the Canning Dam catchment. 45 years of the case staying open. And the biological evidence recovered at the scene in 1979 that police kept, year after year, waiting for science to catch up.

This is Part 2. The science caught up.

In 2023, Western Australia Police handed that biological evidence to their investigative genetic genealogy team — a unit WA Police has described as leading the world in this methodology. The team uploaded the DNA to a public genealogy database, the same kind people use to find their cousins and trace their ancestry. The database returned genetic matches: not to the offender, but to their relatives. From those relatives, the team built a family tree. Ten thousand people. Constructed from birth certificates, death records, census data, genealogical archives, and genetic connections. Every branch narrowed the pool. At the end of that tree was one name.

Terrence John Fisher.

Fisher had died in 2000 at the age of 50, of natural causes, while living with his father in Manning, Perth. He had never been charged. His name had never appeared in the original 1979 investigation. He had lived his life — working as a carpenter with the WA Public Works Department, sailing at the Fremantle Sailing Club, frequenting pubs in Carlisle and Victoria Park and Manning — and had died without ever facing a single consequence.

When WA Police named Fisher publicly in March 2025, they also said this: if Fisher were alive, he would be a person of interest in the deaths of two other Western Australian women — Barbara Western, murdered in 1986, and Carrie Turner, murdered in 1991. That is not an accusation. It is a statement of investigative significance. Police do not name dead men as persons of interest in other murders without a reason. The reason is not publicly detailed. What it means is that investigators looked at those three deaths and saw something worth pursuing.

Terrence John Fisher cannot be arrested. He cannot be tried. He cannot be convicted. Whatever he did on December 29, 1979, he died having never faced it.

Kerryn Tate's sister Anne-Marie Tate said publicly: "I strongly urge anyone who's had even a slight suspicion about Terrence Fisher to please come forward to police." She is still asking. The family is still building the picture of who he was. So is WA Police. And the investigative genealogy team that identified him is still working.

Kerryn Tate was 22 years old. She would be 68 today. This case, and this show, are for her.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

This is the final series of the Midnight Mystery Archive — the last two-parter before the podcast goes on hiatus. It ends in Australia, one of MMA's largest listener bases, with a case that captures something essential about why this show existed: what happens when a young woman's life is cut short, and what forensic science can now do that nobody could have imagined when the crime occurred.

Kerryn Tate was 22 years old when she was murdered in bushland southeast of Perth, Western Australia, on December 29, 1979. Forty-five years later, in March 2025, Western Australia Police named their prime suspect. He died in 2000. He will never stand trial. But his name is now on the record.

This is Part 1: who Kerryn was, what happened on December 29, 1979, and how a case with almost no leads in 1979 eventually had a name to put to it.

Kerryn was born in New South Wales and had been living in Western Australia for about a year. She worked in the arts. She was warm, social, well-connected — the kind of person whose presence in a room you noticed. She also hitchhiked. In 1979 Perth, this was not reckless. It was mainstream. Young Australians hitchhiked to the beach, between suburbs, between cities. It was an ordinary mode of transport. Kerryn was so accustomed to it that she carried a black motorcycle helmet specifically so she could accept lifts from motorbikes. That helmet is evidence of a routine, not a risk.

On the night of December 28th, Kerryn attended a dance at the North Cottesloe Surf Life Saving Club. She stayed with friends in Swanbourne. The following morning, December 29th, a friend drove her to her house-sitting address in Mount Lawley at approximately 11 AM. That is the last confirmed sighting of Kerryn Tate alive.

She was heading to Karragullen, approximately 40 kilometers southeast of Perth, to house-sit for other friends. She presumably hitchhiked. The next morning, December 30th, forestry workers found her body in bushland near the Canning Dam catchment. She was slumped over a smoldering tree stump. A fire had been deliberately set around the scene — calculated, not panic. A bloodstained piece of wood was recovered nearby. Kerryn had been beaten to death. Her jewelry was gone: the watch, the earrings, the bangle, the pendant, the rings that the Christmas Day family had noticed just four days earlier.

In 1979, without CCTV, without DNA, without any digital record of vehicle movements, identifying a stranger who gave a hitchhiker a lift on a rural road was essentially impossible. The case went cold. But it never closed. Police kept the biological material from the 1979 scene. In 2023, that evidence went to Western Australia Police's investigative genetic genealogy team. What they found is the story of Part 2.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

For 23 years, investigators and the public assumed the dark figure captured walking behind Trevor Deely on Haddington Road — 34 seconds after Trevor passed the camera — was the same man who had waited outside his office for 34 minutes in the rain. In December 2023, that assumption was definitively disproved.

Enhanced CCTV analysis, using the same UK-based company that had processed the footage in 2016, finally confirmed that the Haddington Road figure was a different person entirely — someone who had given a statement to the Garda in the original 2000 investigation. The footage had been too poor to confirm his identity at the time. The 2023 enhancement resolved it. He wasn't following Trevor. There was nothing sinister about his movements.

Trevor's brother Mark described it as a "bittersweet moment" — and said it put investigators "nearly straight back to square one."

The man in black who spoke to Trevor at the back gate of his office at 3:35 AM remains unidentified. That person — whoever they are — is still the central unresolved thread in this case. The Garda believes he may hold information critical to understanding what happened to Trevor. He may not know that. They are asking him to come forward.

Part 2 also covers the Garda's working theory: two separate informants, in 2017 and 2019, told investigators that Trevor was accidentally shot by a known Dublin criminal and that his body was concealed in the Chapelizod area, roughly five and a half miles from where he was last seen. In August 2017, Garda sealed off a three-acre site in Chapelizod and searched for six weeks. They found a gun and a quantity of drugs. Neither was connected to Trevor. The search ended in September 2017 without finding him.

Twenty-six years later, Trevor Deely has never been found. The man in black has never been identified. And the case remains open.

This episode also covers the lasting impact of Trevor's disappearance on how Ireland handles missing persons — the Garda National Missing Persons Unit, CCTV preservation protocols, and Ireland's national Missing Persons Day — changes driven in large part by the failures exposed in those first four days of Trevor's investigation.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

An important update for every Midnight Mystery Archive listener.

Kevin announced on social media Thursday, August 20th that MMA is going on extended hiatus. This episode is his direct message to the listeners — what happened, why, and what's still coming before the feed goes quiet.

A major professional opportunity that Kevin has been working toward for years has arrived, and producing MMA at the level it deserves — 12 to 15 hours a week, every week — is not compatible with what comes next. The decision was not easy. But it was the only honest one.

Before the hiatus begins: Trevor Deely Part 1 drops today. Part 2 drops next Friday. After that, a two-part Australian series. When that Part 2 lands, the hiatus officially begins.

What MMA became in 16 months: 150 episodes. Over 100,000 downloads and YouTube streams combined. A goal of 5,000 downloads in the first year that was essentially doubled. Cases that deserved to be told, told the way Kevin wanted to tell them — thoroughly, accurately, and with the missing person at the center of every episode.

The feed stays active. Kevin stays active on social media. And he holds out hope that when things settle, there's a path back.

Thank you to every listener who shared an episode, left a review, sent a tip, or just showed up every Friday. It meant everything.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

He was nine minutes from home. A man in dark clothing had been standing outside his office for 34 minutes before he got there. That was December 8, 2000. Trevor Deely has never been found.

Trevor Deely was 22 years old, working at the Bank of Ireland Asset Management office in Dublin. On the night of December 7, 2000, he attended his office Christmas party — drinks on Harcourt Street, dinner at the Hilton, on to a nightclub on Lower Leeson Street. Two things made the walk home that night different from any other night: it was a Thursday, not a Friday, so the streets were quieter than usual, and Dublin's taxi drivers were on strike. Everyone who would normally have flagged a cab was walking. Trevor was walking.

At 3:35 AM, he stopped at the rear entrance of his office on Wilton Terrace to collect an umbrella. CCTV footage, digitally enhanced years later, shows a man dressed entirely in black had been standing outside that entrance since 3:00 AM — 34 minutes in the rain before Trevor arrived. The man approached Trevor at the gate. They spoke briefly. Trevor went inside alone, came out alone, and walked toward home. At 4:14:21 AM, a CCTV camera at the AIB ATM on the corner of Haddington Road and Baggot Street Bridge captured him walking past — umbrella in hand, slightly unsteady, nine minutes from his flat in Ballsbridge. Thirty-four seconds later, the same camera captured a dark figure walking in the same direction.

That is the last confirmed record of Trevor Deely.

The man who waited outside his office for 34 minutes has never been identified. Twenty-six years of public appeals, a formal reopening of the investigation, and a 2023 development that turned out to be a dead end. The man in black remains the central unresolved thread in one of Ireland's most enduring missing persons cases. Part 2 covers what the investigation found — and what it didn't.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell

Trevor Deely Part 1 drops this Friday. The Louisa Dunne two-parter is wrapped. And the Amy Bradley work is far from over.

A quick Monday update on where we are and what's coming.

Louisa Dunne. A 1967 murder in Bristol that went cold almost immediately and stayed cold for 56 years. Three things made the eventual conviction possible: officers in 1967 who processed that crime scene at a standard well above what the era required; the people who stored that evidence correctly for more than five decades; and the MCRT in 2023 who had the will to go back and ask whether the evidence had ever been tested. The answer was no. Louisa's blue skirt yielded a usable DNA sample that linked directly to Ryland Headley — who was 92 years old when he was sentenced to life in prison. Othram Labs and their advanced DNA technology are at the forefront of making cases like this possible, and Kevin reposts from their feed regularly on X.

Trevor Deely. Part 1 this Friday. A case that is now a quarter century old and one of the most well-known disappearances in Ireland. Kevin won't spoil it — but it's a two-parter filled with mystery, intrigue, and questions that have gone unanswered for 25 years.

Amy Bradley. Two Wednesdays ago, Kevin did a high-level review of James Renner's book on Amy's case and took direct aim at Renner's central theories. Last Wednesday, Stacie — Amy's best friend and the last person to see her in Richmond before the cruise — spoke publicly for the first time in 28 years. Stacie confirmed: Amy was looking forward to the trip. She was a little nervous about the plane ride and the water. She was genuinely happy to be going and to be spending that time with her family.

That's not the end of it. Someone else has been reading Renner's book — closely, with sticky notes, going point by point through every claim she knows to be factually incorrect. She reached out. She has Kevin's platform whenever she needs it — one episode, three episodes, four episodes, whatever it takes.

More to come on Amy Bradley.

One last thing: if you want Kevin to be able to produce more series at the depth of Amy Bradley, there are a few things that help. A rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify takes 30 seconds. A subscribe on YouTube costs nothing. And if you want to go further — Patreon is at patreon.com/midnightmysteryarchive. Entry tier is $5 a month. That's it. Early access to episodes, and Kevin is working on additional patron exclusives. Echo 1953 — his debut novel, The Hollis Files Book 1 — is also on Amazon now: Kindle, Kindle Unlimited (free if you're a member), and paperback.

Trevor Deely. Part 1. This Friday.

ECHO 1953 - THE HOLLIS FILES, BOOK ONE
Available now on Amazon - Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
Order your copy today.

THE HALLS OF MEDIOCRITY
Sports. True crime. Athletes who had everything and threw it away.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Find us wherever you get your podcasts.

MIDNIGHT MYSTERY ARCHIVE
True crime. Cold cases. Every Friday.
midnightmysteryarchive.com | Substack | Patreon

Follow us: X | Facebook Group

• jared K
• Lisa Mooney
• Jamie Mcconnell