Antemortem

Whether the condemned faces a beheading, hanging, or other method of execution, much can go awry. When it does, the effect is usually grisly and painful. Join Antemortem for several tales of state-sanctioned killing gone wrong.

More from the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. For those wondering "What does my body disposal pathway say about me?"

Are you sick and tired of police procedurals telling you that serial murderers are unstoppable geniuses roaming the country, waiting to wack you on the head with a lead pipe as they jump out from an alleyway? Get the cold hard facts from the FBI instead. It won't be a lead pipe, but it might be your own shoelace.

On the 16th of April, 2007, America experienced its deadliest shooting on a college campus. The senseless violence took the lives of more than 30 victims. Here’s what we know about the shooter, the attack, and the aftermath.

Dracula's reign of terror really gets going.

Vlad the Impaler's homeland was nestled tightly between the warring Holy Roman and Ottoman Empires. In this episode we will see Dracula's father take the throne, maneuver to keep the throne, and lose the throne. Dracula will do two of those things. Antemortem: come for the assassinations, stay for the mispronunciations.

Bees? Bees! But not just any bees. The hybrid subspecies of Africanized honey bee was created in Brazil. Scientists were hoping for gentle honey-providers but got territorial aggressors instead.

California didn’t exactly have a shortage of serial killers in the 1970s. Rodney Alcala was one of them. The extent of his crimes was not discovered until decades later when forensic science caught up with him. Cheryl Bradshaw demonstrates bad judgement followed by good judgment.

Every year in the United States, thousands of unidentified bodies are recovered. Some linger as Jane and John Does long term. This episode contains two stories of unidentified remains. We’ll also learn about the trade of the body broker. Guard your cervical spine and listen!

Antemortem finally gets to the bottom of what happened to Flight 800.

There was nothing wrong with Flight 800 until it exploded. It was a perfectly normal 747 making its way to Paris. And then it wasn’t. This first episode takes us from TSA PreCheck to the discovery of the black box. Investigation to follow.

Aside from playing a pivotal role in Jurassic Park, what have mosquitoes ever done for us? The answer is "nothing." Mosquitoes are terrible and they spread a variety of horrible diseases that infect millions of people every year. Dengue, Malaria, and West Nile are some of the worst.

The Bosnian War and genocide campaign therein took place from 1992 to 1995. Bosnia and Herzegovina, a former republic of Yugoslavia, declared its independence and was unable to maintain peace between its ethnic groups.

When it comes to the problem of crossing rivers, bridges are a common solution. Sadly, they sometimes fail. Cables snap, steel rusts, and riprap erodes. This episode will explore common causes of collapse and take a closer look at several bridge disasters.

In April 2013, Dr. Autumn Klein was stricken with an unidentified medical condition. Three days and zero diagnoses later, she was dead. Klein’s husband quickly emerged as the investigation’s primary suspect. The case against him would be insurmountable.

Popes. What are they? Who were they? Did any of them ever rough-up a dead guy? Just how celibate was Benedict IX? Antemortem answers these burning questions and more.

Of all England's rippers, Peter Sutcliffe's identity is perhaps the most known. His reign of terror over Yorkshire spanned from 1975 to 1980. Wielding hammer and knife, he took the lives of 13 women and fractured the skulls of even more.