TRAVEL/FOOD

A Jazz Age Murder Podcast

July 19, 2026

A big thank you to Laura Shimel, who interviewed me for her podcast, Fact or Fiction: A Mostly-True Crime History Podcast.

Here’s her introduction to this episode.

Fact or Fiction: A Mostly-True Crime Podcast is excited to share a new episode featuring author Jane Simon Ammeson. In this episode, Jane tells a mostly-true story about the sensational 1923 murder of Nettie Diamond, the wealthy older wife of bootlegger Harry Diamond. While the couple was out for a Valentine’s Day drive, Harry killed his wife and tried to pin the crime on the fleeing chauffeur. Nettie Diamond, though, was not a cooperative victim.

Join Fact or Fiction host Laura Shimel to hear Jane tell the shocking true story (infused with one lie!) behind her 2015 book, A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana: The Tragic Betrayal of Nettie Diamond.

Will Laura guess the fiction? Will you? Listen carefully, because it’s tricky to know if something is fact or fiction. Ready to play?

Laura has created an interactive true crime show with each episode diving into a historical crime. But there’s a twist: she embeds exactly one fictional detail into the story for the guest and listeners to identify.

The show is available across all major audio platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Audible, and listeners can view images and resources on her official website.

A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana was my first historic true crime non-fiction book and discovering this forgotten crime came about when my mother, at age 92, told me about her college sweetheart who later was my elementary school principal and how the family name was changed after his mother was murdered.

Murdered? Mr. Hurst’s mother murdered?

It was more complicated than that. She was murdered by her fourth (or was it fifth?) husband, a handsome bootlegger much younger than her, who tried to blame it on their Black chauffeur.