Last Seen
A collection of mysteries about unexpected people, places and things that have all gone missing.
Episodes
Postmortem, Update: The Sentences
In this update episode of Postmortem, reporter Ally Jarmanning updates us on the criminal cases against Harvard Medical School's former morgue manager Cedric Lodge, his wife Denise, and Jeremy Pauley, whose arrest first exposed the nationwide network of human remains trading. All were sentenced to time in federal prison.
Introducing: What Remains from NHPR's Outside/In
Introducing “What Remains,” a special series from NHPR’s Outside/In. A classroom display of human skulls sparks a reckoning at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. A movement grows to “abolish the collection.” The Penn Museum relents to pressure. But there are more skeletons in the closet.
To hear all three parts, including the prologue, subscribe to Outside/In.
Postmortem, Ep. 5: A reckoning
In Episode 5 of Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard, reporter Ally Jarmanning digs deeper into the "legitimate" realm of body-parts collecting — museums — and asks the burning question: How different is this from the world of Jeremy Pauley in his basement or Cedric Lodge seizing a financial opportunity at Harvard's morgue.
At the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, she takes us through displays
Postmortem, Ep. 4: The anatomy lab
As haunting as the Harvard morgue scandal is, you don't have to go back very far in history to find practices for sourcing bodies that would be shocking today. Reporter Ally Jarmanning finds that for more than a century, medical schools relied on grave robbing and body snatching to supply anatomical dissection classes.
In Episode 4 of Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard, she talks to medical
Postmortem, Ep. 3: The collectors
Who are the people buying this stuff anyway? People who collect human remains don’t see it as gross. In fact, these collectors connect and communicate openly on social media. In Episode 3 of Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard, reporter Ally Jarmanning meets Jeremy Pauley, the Pennsylvania man with a tattooed eye whose arrest unravels this whole case.
Jarmanning dines in the home of a Delawa
Postmortem, Ep. 2: The victims
When news of the Harvard morgue scandal went viral, no one was hit harder than the families of people who had donated their bodies for study at the nation's most prestigious medical school. As if grieving the loss of a loved one wasn't enough, now there was this: the specter of a family member's body dismembered and sold to strangers for profit.
In Episode 2 of Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Ha
Postmortem Ep. 1: The crime
Hundreds of people have donated their bodies to Harvard Medical School, hoping to advance science and train the next generation of doctors. But in the basement of the nation's most prestigious medical institution, something went terribly wrong in recent years.
In the five-part series Postmortem: The Stolen Bodies of Harvard, WBUR reporter Ally Jarmanning takes us deep into the macabre story of wh
TRAILER: Last Seen S4 'Postmortem': The Stolen Bodies of Harvard
Hundreds of people donated their bodies to Harvard Medical School hoping to advance science and train the next generation of doctors. Meanwhile, prosecutors say that for years, the school's morgue manager treated it like a storefront, letting potential customers browse body parts and bringing home skin and brains to be shipped out to people across the country.
Last year's arrest of the morgue man
Last Seen presents: "Beyond All Repair," a new murder mystery podcast
Introducing Beyond All Repair, a new WBUR podcast hosted by Amory Sivertson. This series tells the story of a murder, but also the woman who was accused of that murder, Sophia.
Sophia was newly married and six months pregnant when she was charged with murdering her mother-in-law in 2002. She gave birth to a son in jail that she hasn’t seen since, and for the last three years, she’s been telling m
A family's peace | Part III
On a sunny Saturday in 2016, Benine Timothee left her house to visit a friend who lived close by and never returned. She had lived in the United States for only three months when she was shot and killed outside a corner store in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. No arrests have been made, and there are no suspects in the case.
This is the third and final episode of our three-part series, A Family
A family's peace | Part II
On a sunny Saturday in 2016, Benine Timothee left her house to visit a friend who lived close by and never returned. She had lived in the United States for only three months when she was shot and killed outside a corner store in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. No arrests have been made, and there are no suspects in the case.
This is the second episode of our three-part series, A Family's Peace,
A family's peace | Part I
On a sunny Saturday in 2016, Benine Timothee left her house to visit a friend who lived close by and never returned. She had lived in the United States for only three months when she was shot and killed outside a corner store in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. No arrests have been made, and there are no suspects in the case.
For six years, her family and others have been haunted by the question
The Guilty Plate
This week, we're bringing you another food-related mystery - this time from our friendly neighbors to the north, Vermont Public and Brave Little State producer Josh Crane.
If you go out to eat right now, you’re likely to run into restaurants that are struggling because they’re missing a crucial ingredient: staff. In this episode, Josh sets out to solve the mystery of the COVID-era restaurant indu
Chinese pie
Mashed potatoes, corn and ground beef. These aren't the ingredients for shepherd's pie, but for Chinese pie, a traditional and very famous French Canadian dish.
WBUR producer Amanda Beland, grew up eating Chinese pie, or pâté chinois, with her French Canadian family. But the pie's origins have always been a culinary mystery. In this episode of Last Seen, Amanda talks to historians and culinary ex
Confectioner's Row
For years, WBUR senior arts and culture reporter Andrea Shea drove by an old, mysterious factory in Cambridge, Mass. To her surprise, it turned to be the last vestige of a 20th century candy hub called Confectioner's Row.
Manufacturing jobs dried up, and only one factory, Cambridge Brands, remains. In this episode of Last Seen, Andrea walks us through the history of Confectioner's Row and meets f
Berried treasure
WBUR senior arts reporter Amelia Mason is on the hunt to solve a mystery that has been haunting her for years: why are black raspberries so hard to find? The answer takes us through grocery stores, farms, foraging expeditions, and Amelia's own childhood backyard.
Trailer: 'Last Seen,' Season 3
The third season of Last Seen, coming November 2022, is a collection of personal and political mysteries from public radio storytellers that you won't want to miss.
Episode 10: Searching for a Miracle
On his way to Hollywood, a young Black man named Winston Willis stopped in Cleveland in 1959 to shoot a little pool and walked away $35,000 richer. He used his winnings to open over two dozen businesses on Cleveland's East Side, a vibrant area that locals referred to as "Inner City Disneyland." For a time, Willis was a multi-millionaire, the largest employer of Black people in the Midwest, and a b
Episode 9: Bad Actor
People will tell you Richard Bento is a good actor — on and off the stage. Over the past decade, he's been a pillar of the New England community theater scene - acting in and directing countless productions, and fostering the love of theater in other thespians.
But lately, he's been at the center of some real life dramas swirling behind the scenes, involving accusations of fraud, embezzlement, a
Episode 8: The Emotional Lives of Everyday Objects
Many prized possessions and artifacts imbued with sentimental value go missing, unintentionally. But, what about when we choose to renounce the items that mean the most to us -- like that mixtape your old girlfriend made, right before she broke up with you? The Nirvana baseball cap you wore to a Kurt Cobain memorial? Or the Sorel boots your father-in-law gave you, right before he died?
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Episode 7: A Most Unusual Houseguest
When artist Alison Byrnes opened a package she had mailed to herself two years earlier, she was expecting to find a sealed box of her prints - but that's not what was inside.
The United States Postal Service had made a rather serious mistake. Instead of artist prints, USPS delivered a little blue urn -- containing the ashes of a total stranger.
Attempts at finding the family of the deceased fail
Episode 6: A Hole in the Silence
Spain has one of the highest number of forced disappearances in the world, second only to Cambodia. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and General Francisco Franco's dictatorship, fascist troops killed tens of thousands of people and threw them into mass graves.
For decades, few people knew this — and no one in Spain talked about it. But in the year 2000, a man in the middle of an identity
Episode 5: Belly Up
When three friends went on a rum-fueled rampage one night deep in the Nevada desert, they never expected the trouble they would find themselves in a week later.
The men broke into a remote unit of Death Valley National Park known as Devil's Hole — a mysterious flooded cave that happens to be home to the one of the rarest fish on Earth, and one that's critically endangered too.
This episode, base
Episode 4: Africa’s Lost Year of Hope
In 1960, dubbed "The Year Of Africa", a pair of bold leaders fanned the flames of hope for a brighter future in the Belgian colony of Congo. But by the following year, that hope had been dashed by outside forces.
Using traditional griot storytelling, writer Brenton Zola transports us to a turning point in Congo's path to independence, and remembers the future that almost was.
Episode 3: The Lost World
Every school kid learns that there are exactly eight planets in our solar system. But what if we told you there might be a ninth? A world that may be six times the size of Earth and take 12,000 years to orbit the Sun. The only thing is, while some scientists are convinced Planet Nine exists, no one has seen it. Yet.
Science journalist and WBUR producer Dean Russell (Endless Thread) traces the liv
Episode 2: Out of Time
Freeports are the most expensive and secretive warehouses in the world, which now hide some of the world’s cultural treasures from the public eye.
Join Ben Brock Johnson as he traces the path of one lost Modigliani painting, "Seated Man with a Cane," and attempts to catch a glimpse inside these high-tech storage dungeons.
Episode 1: Murph
In 1964, Jack Murphy, or "Murph the Surf," pulled off the biggest jewel heist in New York City history only to be caught 48 hours later.
Amory Sivertson traces the enigmatic life of this folk hero and examines why men like him continue to be idolized.
Trailer: 'Last Seen,' Season 2
The new season, coming out Feb. 1, has 10 new true-crime mysteries that you don’t want to miss.
Coming in February: Things that have gone missing
WBUR’s popular true-crime podcast returns, with mysterious tales about people, places, ashes, planets, endangered species, feelings and much more.
Episode 10: 'Last Seen' Live
A behind-the-scenes conversation about how we investigated the most sensational unsolved art heist in history.
Episode 9: 'The Big Dig'
We follow a mobster's tip to excavate a lot in Orlando.
Episode 8: 'Flimflammer'
After a parallel heist gone wrong, did Brian McDevitt succeed at the Gardner Museum?
Episode 7: 'I Was The One'
Was the world's greatest art thief the inspiration, or actually the mastermind, of the Gardner heist?
Episode 6: 'Befriend And Betray'
This is a story about how to plot an art recovery, and then blow it entirely.
Episode 5: 'The Bobbys'
We trace the art's possible path from Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia.
Episode 4: 'Two Bad Men'
Were George Reissfelder and David Turner involved in the Gardner heist?
Episode 3: 'Not A Bunch Of Jamokes'
Was the heist planned in the belly of Boston's criminal underworld operating out of a Dorchester auto body shop?
Episode 2: 'Inside Job?'
On the night of the heist, security guard Rick Abath made the critical mistake of letting the thieves into the museum. In this episode, we ask if it was indeed a mistake.
Episode 1: '81 Minutes'
In 1990, two thieves stole 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. We take a closer look at what happened that night.
Introducing 'Last Seen'
A look into the largest unsolved art heist in history: the theft of 13 irreplaceable artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. "Last Seen" begins Sept. 17.
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