On a December night in 1919, a 23-year-old soldier named William N. Bishop managed to slip out of the stockade at Virginia’s Camp A.A. Humphreys and escape into the surrounding woods. Unable to locate Bishop, the army requested the assistance of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Division of Investigation, the precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Division’s assistant director, Frank Burke, compiled all the information he could get on Bishop – a complete physical description... READ ON

Image credit: National Archives On a Sunday afternoon in Washington, D.C., in 1859, Philip Barton Key, son of the man who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner,” stood in the park and waved his handkerchief in the air. He was attempting to signal his girlfriend, Teresa Sickles, who lived across the street, so that they could sneak out for a date. Someone parted the curtains in a window of Sickles’ home and watched Key for a few minutes, but it was not Teresa. It was her husband Daniel, a well-known... READ ON

Clement Laird Vallandigham was never a household name, but during the era of the Civil War, he led an interesting and amazing life that ended abruptly and bizarrely. Over the course of his career, Vallandigham edited the Dayton Empire, practiced law, served as a brigadier general in the Ohio militia, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In Congress, he earned a reputation as an aggressive states-rights advocate and earned the nickname “wily agitator” from Abraham Lincoln. In... READ ON

Werner Herzog premieres a four-part miniseries tonight (Friday, March 9) on Investigation Discovery at 10pm ET/PT. It's dark, and smart, and well worth your time -- as long as there are no kids in the room. A Question of Retribution On Death Row is the story of five death row inmates, as told through in-person interviews by Werner Herzog. Herzog seems fascinated by these people, who are almost by definition unreliable witnesses to their own lives. He treats them with respect, gently... READ ON