There has always been something strange about music. It has captured the imaginations of people in ways that nothing else has ever been able to do. This was true during the days of traveling minstrels, when folk music emerged from the Appalachian Mountains, when the first jazz music was played in the brothels of New Orleans, and when the first bluegrass songs rattled across the American South. But when the first notes of the blues – which eventually gave birth to rock-n-roll – began to be heard from roadhouses and juke joints, the fundamentalists were convinced that the Devil himself had invented his own brand of music.

And maybe they’re right. The origins of rock-n-roll are murky, at best. It is, by its nature, difficult to define, and even harder to explain. There may never be a single, clear-cut, universally accepted explanation for the origins of rock-n-roll. From its inception, it’s been twisted by myth, folklore, legend, rumor, and fact. There is no other kind of music – or even type of popular culture – that has such a rich history of depravity, untimely deaths, bizarre curses, and lives filled with excess.

It’s almost as if someone sold their soul to the Devil to end up with the kind of lifestyle that music can offer.

As John Torrio was dividing up Chicago into territories so that the gangs could fairly supply the city with bootleg liquor, Al Capone was coming into his own in the Windy City...

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

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There were few faces as recognizable to anyone with an interest in the occult as his was in the twentieth century. His clean-shaven head and piercing eyes got the attention of everyone from would-be disciples in the 1920s to rock stars in the 1960s.

Musicians like the Beatles put him on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper album and Ozzy Osborne used his name as the title of one of his songs. Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin was an ardent collector of his books, relics, and artifacts and he even bought the man’s home on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland – yes, that Loch Ness, where the monster lives.

But the former owner of that home was a monster of another kind. His name was Aleister Crowley, and he not only was a man closely linked to the Devil and the occult, but he also helped to shape the rabid interest in the occult that exploded in America decades after his death.

A family is slaughtered in their beds. No forced entry. No warning. The only timeline comes from what three children ate for dinner.

David Hendricks said he left town. Police said the clock told a different story.

Convicted. Overturned. Acquitted.

Four victims. No answers.

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American pop culture in the 1920s and 1930s was on the verge of a new sort of entertainment. Cultural shifts and breakthroughs in technology had led to a steady stream of new kinds of books, comics, music, and magazines, but it would be film that transformed popular culture forever. The ghostly images watched with strangers in the dark proved to be powerful enough to incite as well as to entertain.

Soon after films gained popularity, Americans began to use them to frame their history and their identity, as well as to literally project their fears and anxieties.

And among those fears were the fears of the Devil.

When the Devil first began to appear in early American movies, his story was part of a heavily Christianized moral lesson. The same couldn’t be said for Europe – where filmmakers were using satanic lore to create fantastic and uncanny imagery, but American films were much tamer and much more puritanical. They steered mostly clear of explicitly supernatural subjects and used theaters as fire and brimstone pulpits instead.

At first anyway… because as the imagery onscreen eventually began to reflect satanic themes, audiences responded and darker days for the cinema were soon on the way.

John Torrio was finally exactly where he wanted to be.

With his uncle, Big Jim Colosimo out of the way, his business expanding across the South Side of the city and into the suburbs, and his trustworthy young right-hand man, Al Capone, at his side, he was ready to start dividing up the Chicago into territories. With all the various gangs that already existed in the city eager to jump into the liquor business, Torrio knew that it would be impossible to keep the peace without a plan...

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck

A mother. A bathtub. A death ruled suspicious.

In 2012, Lisa Cutler was found drowned in her Mount Zion, Illinois home while her children slept upstairs.

At first, it looked like an accident.

But more than 20 bruises… a failing marriage… and over a million dollars in life insurance told a different story.

Was it a tragic fall— or something far more deliberate?

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John Torrio was ready when the new Prohibition law went into effect, but he seemed to be the only one. He was waiting impatiently for everyone else to catch up. He’d been predicting Prohibition to his friends and business associates for months and knew it would be how organized crime could amass untold amounts of wealth. To take something that had always been legal, and make it illegal, especially a vice like alcohol, and then expect Americans to adhere to the letter of the law was incredibly naïve. Torrio knew that by taking advantage of Prohibition, it was a way for people like himself to become millionaires.

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This episode was written by Troy Taylor

Produced and edited by Cody Beck