Dropping today: A Study in Crime podcast episode on the Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins case

I tend to think of the Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins case as a bit of a sleeper case. Though his name comes up sometimes in conversations about serial killers, and people are aware of him (he does indeed have a Wikipedia page), there has never been an episode of true-crime television done about the case, as far as I can tell. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But the only episodes of any kind of modern media done on the case are a handful of podcasts that read from newspaper articles found online from the time of the case.

So Scott Fulmer with his well-done A Study in Crime podcast is the very first person to interview me on the Atkins case and the book "The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins" just released from WildBlue Press, and since that interview was back in January 2025, he can be considered the very first person to produce an original-content modern media episode on the case. Scott, incidentally, was also the first podcaster to interview me and my collaborator for the first book, "The 'Baby Doll' Serial Killer: The John Eric Armstrong Homicides."

This was a great discussion, dropping today. Scott and I tackle a lot of topics around the Atkins case: the culture of inner-city Detroit and Highland Park, Michigan, where Atkins was raised, his horrifying childhood with a heroin-addicted prostitute mother, his jumps from foster home to foster home and even a home for boys, his own hustling on the street for cash for drugs, and his progression to taking human life. Did you know Atkins claimed to hear voices that influenced him to do the crimes? We explore that and much more. Check it out, and feel free to let me know what you think.

 45. The Crack City Strangler

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Murders in the Motor City Series