True Crime History - Böcker

An exploration of murders in Northamptonshire from 1852 to 1952. A chapter is devoted to each murder featured. Kevin Turton covers not only the events and subsequent investigation but also the trial of the killer and public reaction to the crime. Featuring many illustrations including newspaper cuttings, penny dreadfuls, and photographs of the crime scenes as they are today, this book is a comprehensive reference to the county's dark past.

Warwickshire has seen its fair share of murder down the centuries. This latest collection explores notorious crimes from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using contemporary documents, trial transcripts and newspaper accounts to examine cases that gripped both the county and the nation. Among the stories included here are the case of Edwin James Moore, who set fire to his mother after an argument over supper at Leamington Spa in 1907; the Coventry bombings in 1939, for which two men were executed in 1940; and the case of Thomas Ball, who was poisoned by his wife in 1848. She was later tried and executed in Coventry and was the last woman to be executed in public.

Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most notorious murders in Norfolk's history. The cases covered here record the county's most fascinating but least known crimes as well as famous murders that gripped not just Norfolk but the whole nation. From the Burnham Poisoners of 1835 to the Yarmouth Beach Murders, from the Costessey Horror to the 'last judicial beheading in England', this is a collection of the county's most dramatic and interesting criminal cases.

Cornish Murders brings together numerous murderous tales that shocked not only the county but also made national news. They include the cases of Charlotte Dymond, whose throat was cut on Bodmin Moor in 1844, and Emily Tredrea, strangled at St Erth in 1909, both by their jilted suitors; Mary Ann Dunhill, murdered in a Bude hotel in 1931; shopkeeper Albert Bateman, battered to death on his premises in Falmouth on Christmas Eve 1942; Charlie and Elizabeth Giffard, savagely beaten and thrown over the cliffs near St Austell by their son in 1952; and William Rowe, brutally killed at his farm near Constantine for the sum of £4 in 1963.

Somerset Murders brings together numerous murderous tales that shocked not only the county but also made headlines throughout the country. They include the cases of Elizabeth and Betty Branch, a mother and daughter who beat a young servant girl to death in Hemington in 1740; 13-year-old Betty Trump, whose throat was cut while walking home at Buckland St Mary in 1823; factory worker Joan Turner, battered to death in Chard in 1829; George Watkins, killed in a bare knuckle fight outside the Running Horse pub in Yeovil in 1843; Constance Kent, who confessed in 1865 to killing her half-brother at Rode in 1860, nearly five years earlier; and elderly landlay, Mrs Emily Bowers, strangled in her bed in Middlezoy in 1947. Nicola Sly and John van der Kiste, co-authors of Cornish Murders in this series, have an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject. Their carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Somerset's history.

Located in central England, the Black Country is a distinctive industrial region encompassing numerous ancient towns and villages in a unique and diverse landscape, formed by centuries of mining and iron forging. Here evolved a breed of people much accustomed to the darker tragedies of life, often witness to horrific scenes of tragedy in many an industrial catastrophe, and home to some of the most gruesome murder cases in Britain's history. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in the Black Country. Ian M. Bott re-examines the cases, some almost forgotten by the ravages of time; and most untold or unpublished since they were first sensationalised in newspapers contemporary to their time. All manner of murder and mystery is featured here, and this book is sure to be a must-read for true crime enthusiasts everywhere.

Shropshire Murders brings together numerous murderous tales, some which were little known outside the county, and others which made national headlines. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Shropshire. They include the Revd Robert Foulkes, who killed his illegitimate child in 1678; the murder of Catherine Lewis by John Mapp at Longden in 1867; the horrific axe murders committed by John Doughty at Church Stretton in 1924; and the tragic death of Dennis O'Neill, who was beaten and starved by his foster parents in 1944. Nicola Sly's carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Shropshire's history.

Worcestershire Murders brings together numerous murderous tales, some which were little known outside the county, and others which made national headlines. Contained within the pages of this book are the stories behind some of the most heinous crimes ever committed in Worcestershire. They include the murders of the entire Gummery family at Berrow in 1780; Catherine Gulliver, killed by John Butler at Ombersley in 1864; and Maria Holmes, slain by her husband at Bromsgrove in 1872. Cases from the twentieth century include two unsolved murders - the body of an unidentified woman found in a tree in Hagley Wood in 1943, and the brutal killing of Florrie Porter at Lickey End in 1944. Nicola Sly's carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the shady side of Worcestershire's history.

Herefordshire Murders brings together twenty-eight murderous tales, some which were little known outside the county and others which made national headlines. Herefordshire was home to one of Britain’s most infamous murderers, Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong, who, in 1921, poisoned his wife and attempted to poison a fellow solicitor in Hay-on-Wye. However, the county has also experienced many lesser known murders. They include the case of two-year-old Walter Frederick Steers, brutally killed in Little Hereford in 1891; eighty-seven-year-old Phillip Ballard, who died at the hands of two would-be burglars in Tupsley in 1887; Jane Haywood, murdered by her husband near Leominster in 1903; and the shooting of two sisters at Burghill Court, near Hereford, by their butler in 1926. Nicola Sly’s carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in the shady side of Herefordshire’s history.

This chilling follow-up to Cornish Murders brings together more murderous tales that shocked not only the county but frequently made headline news throughout the nation. They include the brutal slaying of Elizabeth Seaman in Penzance in 1845, the murder in the course of a robbery of Robert Drew near Launceston in 1862, the slaughter of the entire Mortimer family in Saltash in 1901, and the suspicious death of a farmer near Liskeard in 1952, which was initially believed to be a tragic suicide until the results of the post-mortem examination were received. Nicola Sly and John Van der Kiste’s well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in true crime and the shadier side of Cornwall’s past.

Although an idyllic setting, where violent crime is thankfully rare, the Channel Islands have a shadier side. Contained within the pages of this book are twenty-five historic cases of murder committed in the Channel Islands. They include a fatal assault on John Francis in 1894, which remains unsolved; the murder by Philippe Jolin of his father in 1829; and the murder and suicide committed by Eugenie Toupin in 1881, all of which occurred in Jersey. In Guernsey, elderly widow Elizabeth Saujon was murdered during the course of a robbery in 1853, Edward Hooper drunkenly beat his wife to death in 1890, and housekeeper Elizabeth de la Mare murdered her elderly employer in 1935, wanting to hasten his demise on the understanding that she was the sole beneficiary of his will. Nicola Sly’s carefully researched and enthralling text will appeal to everyone interested in true crime and the shady side of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney’s history.

When the winter ice melted in April 1850, residents of Saco, Maine, made a gruesome discovery: the body of a young girl submerged in a stream. Thanks to evidence left at the scene, a local physician was arrested and tried for the death of Mary Bean, the name given to the unidentified young girl; the cause of death was failed abortion. Garnering extensive newspaper coverage, the trial revealed many secrets: a poorly trained doctor, connections to an unsolved murder in New Hampshire, and the true identity of ""Mary Bean"" - a young Canadian mill worker named Berengera Caswell, missing since the previous winter. ""The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories"" examines the series of events that led Caswell to become Mary Bean and the intense curiosity and anxiety stimulated by this heavily watched trial. In addition to the sensationalist murder accounts, De Wolfe looks back at these events through a wide-angle lens exploring such themes as the rapid social changes brought about by urbanization and industrialization in antebellum nineteenth-century society, factory work and the changing roles for women, unregulated sexuality and the specter of abortion, and the sentimental novel as a guidebook. She posits that the real threat to women in the nineteenth century was not murder but a society that had ambiguous feelings about the role of women in the economic system, in education, and as independent citizens. Sure to place this case among the classics of crime literature, ""The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories"" features two reprinted accounts of Caswell's death, both fictional and originally printed in the 1850s, as well as an introduction that places these salacious accounts in a historical context. This book serves not simply as true crime but, rather, presents a seamy side of rapid industrial growth and the public anxiety over the emerging economic roles of women.

This book tells the engaging tale of a nineteenth-century black widow. Intrigue, deception, bribery, poison, murder - all play a central role in the story of Minnie Walkup, a young woman from New Orleans who began her life of crime when she was only sixteen years old. Born in 1869 to Elizabeth and James Wallace, Minnie was a natural beauty and attended convent school where she learned social graces and how to play the piano. After the divorce of her parents, she was raised in multiple boardinghouses owned by her mother, and at one of them, met her first husband, James Reeves Walkup. At sixteen, she married Walkup, a forty-nine-year-old successful businessman and acting mayor of Emporia, Kansas. One month later, Walkup died from arsenic poisoning and his young wife was accused of murdering him. Her trial became one of the most sensational cases in Kansas history and was covered by reporters across the nation. ""The Adventuress"" details Minnie Walkup's remarkable life and criminal activities. Using newspaper articles, census and probate records, and descendants' reports, true crime writer Virginia A. McConnell depicts a captivating story that is full of scandal, gossip, theft, and murder and that includes events taking place across the South and Midwest. McConnell reveals a fascinating cast of characters revolving around Minnie Walkup, including a former Louisiana governor and senator, a prominent Ohio banking family, the partner of a famous railway tycoon, and a sleazy district court judge from New Orleans. ""The Adventuress"" offers a Gilded Age soap opera that seems too far-fetched to be what it is - true. A substantial contribution to crime history, ""The Adventuress"" is a welcome addition to any true crime reader's collection.

The unfortunate victim of a frightened city desperately in need of a scapegoat. Though Murder Has No Tongue tells the story of Frank Dolezal, the only man actually arrested and charged with the infamous "Torso Murders" in Cleveland, Ohio, during the late 1930s. Dolezal, a fifty-two-year-old Slav immigrant, came to the attention of sheriff 's investigators because of his reputation as a strange man who possessed a stockpile of butcher knives. According to rumors, he threatened imagined transgressors and had a penchant for frequenting bars in the seedy neighborhood where the dismembered bodies of victims had been discovered. Dolezal was arrested in July 1939 and never saw freedom again.Convinced that they had captured the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," sheriff's deputies interrogated Dolezal for two days under harsh conditions. Sheriff Martin O'Donnell called a press conference and announced that the long hoped-for break in the torso killings had finally come: Dolezal had admitted to the January 1936 murder and dismemberment of Flo Polillo, one of the early victims of the Mad Butcher. During the next six days, Dolezal was questioned further, given a lie detector test, beaten, and generally mistreated. Ultimately he was arraigned on firstdegree murder charges that were quickly dropped because he was denied legal representation.At his second arraignment in July, Dolezal was bound over on manslaughter charges. Within a month, he was dead—found hanged in his cell. His mysterious death was ruled a suicide. But was it?In Though Murder Has No Tongue, James Jessen Badal tells a gripping tale of justice gone wrong. It is also a modern story of forensic analysis as compelling as an episode of CSI. Using police and sheriff reports, inquest testimony, autopsy and archival photographs, unpublished notes from the primary investigators, and analyses from some of today's top forensic anthropologists and medical examiners, Badal establishes the facts, dispels rumors, and presents a thorough examination of the real reasons behind Frank Dolezal's mysterious death.

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER GOLD MEDAL WINNER 2012 IN TRUE CRIME FINALIST, FOREWORD BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDSA small-time hoodlum who became the most hunted man in AmericaStanley Barton Hoss was a burglar, thief, and local thug from the Pittsburgh area. In eight short months in 1969, however, he became a rapist, prison escapee, murderer, and kidnapper; the subject of an intense nationwide manhunt; and one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.In Born to Lose, author James G. Hollock traces Hoss from his earliest misdemeanors at the age of fourteen to a daring rooftop escape from the Allegheny Workhouse in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, where he was being held on a rape charge, to his killing of police officer Joseph Zanella in Oakmont, Pennsylvania, to the kidnapping near Cumberland, Maryland, and his ultimate murder of Linda Peugeot and her two-year-old daughter Lori in the autumn of 1969. Their bodies have never been found.Although indicted for the Peugeot kidnappings, these charges were later dropped because it was determined his constitutional right to a speedy trial was denied. Hoss was, however, convicted of the murder of Officer Zanella and initially sentenced to death, and that sentence was subsequently commuted to life in prison. But his killings didn't end there. In December 1973, while incarcerated at Western Penitentiary, Hoss conspired with two fellow white inmates in the savage murder of the popular and well-respected corrections officer Lieutenant Walter Peterson, one of the first African Americans hired by the Pennsylvania prison system. As a result of this final homicide, Hoss was transferred to an isolation facility in Philadelphia where in 1978 he hanged himself.By consulting previously sealed state and federal archives and interviewing sixty individuals who witnessed or had significant knowledge of Hoss's series of felonies, James G. Hollock vividly re-creates the crimes, police dispatches, and court proceedings in this gripping narrative. He poignantly characterizes the players involved, especially those who suffered either directly or indirectly at the hands of Stanley B. Hoss.

Murder and miscarriage of justice in a rural community The townsfolk of Logan, Ohio, a mined-out area of the Appalachian foothills, cheered as an innocent man was convicted and sent to death row. The occasion was the conviction of Dale N. Johnston. His trial ended nothing; the tragedies had just begun. What really happened on that bitter cold day in January 1984 was the total collapse of the local criminal justice system. It began with a lovers’ quarrel. On October 4, 1982, Johnston’s stepdaughter Annette Cooper Johnston—an 18-year-old beauty contestant, horsewoman, and aspiring computer programmer—fought and quickly made up with her 19-year-old boyfriend, Todd Schultz. They were last seen walking together on the C&O Railroad tracks, crossing a trestle bridge over the Hocking River. Ten days later their mutilated torsos were found floating in the river. The next day their heads and limbs were found buried in a cornfield between the river and the tracks. Dale Johnston was the sole suspect from the beginning. It took a year, but investigators and prosecutors built a case against him, alleging he had kidnapped the victims near downtown Logan and killed them in the presence of his wife and his other stepdaughter at their mobile home ten miles outside of town. He was accused of butchering the corpses and carting them back to Logan for burial and disposal. The state’s case was built on rumours of an incestuous relationship between Johnston and Annette and was bolstered by a hypnotised “eyewitness” and a disputed footprint expert. Most of what was presented at the three-week trial was based on fabrications, melodramatic fiction, and forensic fairy tales. As a reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, author Bill Osinski covered the trial and was shocked by the guilty verdict. After five years on death row, Johnston was released on appeal. Prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges, but Johnston and the rest of his family remained under a cloud of presumed guilt for nearly two more decades. In 2008 two other men were indicted for the murders of Todd and Annette. True crime buffs, historians, legal professionals, and readers who enjoy an extraordinary story will find Guilty by Popular Demand a compelling addition to true crime literature.

In 1936, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. Almost all of America believed Hauptmann guilty; only a few magazines and tabloids published articles questioning his conviction. In the ensuing decades, many books about the Lindbergh case have been published. Some have declared Hauptmann the victim of a police conspiracy and frame-up, and one posited that Lindbergh actually killed his own son and fabricated the entire kidnapping to mask the deed. Because books about the crime have been used as a means to advance personal theories, the truth has often been sacrificed and readers misinformed.Hauptmann's Ladder is a testament to the truth that counters the revisionist histories all too common in the true crime genre. Author Richard T. Cahill Jr. puts the true back in true crime, providing credible information and undistorted evidence that enables readers to form their own opinions and reach their own conclusions.Cahill presents conclusions based upon facts and documentary evidence uncovered in his twenty years of research. Using primary sources and painstakingly presenting a chronological reconstruction of the crime and its aftermath, he debunks false claims and explodes outrageous theories, while presenting evidence that has never before been revealed.Hauptmann's Ladder is a meticulously researched examination of the Lindbergh kidnapping that restores and preserves the truth of the crime of the century.

The brutal murder of Julia Wallace in 1931 became one of Britain’s great unsolved murders. People began arguing about the case almost immediately and continue to do so to this day.Julia was the middle-aged wife of a mild-mannered Liverpool insurance agent, William Herbert Wallace. By all accounts they were a quiet, unassuming, devoted couple. In January 1931 William Wallace received a telephone message to come to an address in Liverpool the following evening to discuss an insurance policy. Unable to find the house after searching for hours, Wallace determined there was no such address and returned home. There he found Julia bludgeoned to death on the parlor floor. In addition to the terrible shock and his unbearable loss, Wallace was accused of the crime and ultimately convicted.Using original sources, Jonathan Goodman re-creates Wallace’s trial, witness by witness. Through his meticulous reconstruction, it becomes evident that the police and the medical examiner went out of their way to twist and even manufacture evidence. Their attention to proving Wallace guilty ignored a lead to a likely suspect given to them by Wallace. The man was a fellow insurance agent, whom Goodman identifies in the book as Mr. X. The police ignored the suggestion.In 1969, when The Killing of Julia Wallace was first published in the United Kingdom, Goodman had picked up on the lead the police disregarded.As a result, he was convinced that Wallace was unjustly convicted. In 1981 Goodman revealed the name of the suspect, who was by then deceased. The suspect had a long record of criminal charges that had been dropped or dismissed due to his family connections—his father and uncle were local officials; his father’s secretary was the daughter of the police superintendent.True crime fans will welcome the return of this classic unsolved mystery by the inimitable Jonathan Goodman.

They have no witnesses. They have no case. With this blunt observation, Mariann Colby—an attractive, church-going Shaker Heights, Ohio, mother and housewife—bet a defense psychiatrist that she would not be convicted of murder. A lack of witnesses was not the only problem that would confront the State of Ohio in 1966, which would seek to prosecute her for shooting to death Cremer Young Jr., her son’s nine-year-old playmate: Colby had deftly cleaned up after herself by hiding the child’s body miles from her home and concealing the weapon. Thus, this “highly intelligent” woman, as she would be described at her trial, had hedged a little on her wager. Not only were there no witnesses to the crime, but there was not a shred of physical evidence to pin the slaying on her. Under the usual forensic standards, her wager was spot on; the probabilities were that she would get away with it. But as the Shaker Heights police found themselves stymied by an investigation that was going nowhere, Mariann Colby upped the ante a bit. Under intense questioning, she broke down, claiming the gun had accidentally discharged. The state thought it had its capital murder case, but Mariann Colby’s bet against it would be right on the money.As her trial unfolds in the book, the imprecision of her insanity defense confounds the judges, and psychiatrists disagree about her diagnosis. To make matters worse, the panel of judges that initially tried Colby was so confused by what they’d heard that they did not reach a decision consistent with the law of the state. This led to a second trial and more conflicting psychiatric opinions, another controversial judgment, and clashing trial outcomes.After reading The Insanity Defense and the Mad Murderess of Shaker Heights, readers—and the many childhood friends of the slain boy whose painful reminiscences are set forth in the book—will contemplate whether Mariann Colby did indeed get away with murder. In addition, those interested in legal history will find much of value in Tabac’s discussions of the case and its use of an insanity defense strategy.

Affluenza leading to bad behavior among the youth of an earlier century—ultimately ending in murderAt the turn of the 20th century, many affluent Brooklyn teens and young adults were bucking the constraints of their immigrant parents and behaving badly: drinking, having sex, staying out all night, stealing, scamming local businesses—and even more serious activities. The culmination for twenty-year-old Walter Brooks was being murdered in a seedy Manhattan hotel in 1902.The ensuing court case was front-page news throughout the country. The hearings featured testimony about these young people's secret lives, which shocked parents and inspired much editorial commentary in the newspapers. From start to finish, the case was viewed as a cautionary tale for parents, for boys who could be led astray, and for girls who risked their reputations to be popular.Set against the colorful backdrop of Coney Island, roadhouses, forbidden dance halls, and vaudeville, The Belle of Bedford Avenue follows the young woman at the heart of the case from her trial for the murder of Walter Brooks to her adulthood.The crime itself, interestingly, occurred in the location of Ground Zero and today's September 11 memorial. The trial was conducted by William Travers Jerome, who went on to become a legendary New York City prosecutor.

As Ted Bundy was to the 20th century, so Carlyle Harris was to the 19th. Harris was a charismatic, handsome young medical student with an insatiable appetite. His trail of debauched women ended with Helen Potts, a beautiful young woman of wealth and privilege who was determined to keep herself pure for marriage. Unable to conquer her by other means, Harris talked her into a secret marriage under assumed names, and when threatened with exposure, he poisoned her. The resulting trial garnered national headlines and launched the careers of two of New York’s most famous prosecutors, Francis L. Wellman and William Travers Jerome. It also spurred vigorous debate about Harris’s guilt or innocence, the value of circumstantial evidence, the worth of expert testimony, and the advisability of the death penalty. Six Capsules traces Harris’s crime and his subsequent trial and highlights what has been overlooked — the decisive role that the second-class status of women in Victorian Era culture played in this tragedy. The Harris case is all but forgotten today, but Six Capsules seeks to recover this important milestone in American legal history.

A sensational murder, trial, and a young woman’s execution in Depression-era New YorkAt first glance, the 1932 Easter morning murder of Salvatore 'Sam' Antonio had all the trademarks of a gang-related murder. Shot five times, stabbed a dozen more, Antonio was left for dead. His body was rolled into a culvert on Castleton Road outside of Hudson, south of Albany, New York. It was only by chance that the mortally wounded Antonio was discovered and brought to the hospital. He died in the emergency room without ever naming his assailant.William H. Flubacher of the New York State Police arrived at the hospital minutes after Antonio succumbed and immediately began his investigation by questioning the victim’s wife, Anna Antonio. The vague details she offered, coupled with her utter lack of shock or grief upon hearing of her husband’s brutal murder, convinced Flubacher that something was amiss. Soon, as James M. Greiner tells us in this absorbing book, Anna was accused of hiring two drug dealers, Vincent Saetta and Sam Feraci, to kill her husband.In Greiner’s description of the trial itself, he seeks to show how flaws in the judicial system, poverty, and prejudice around the Italian American community in Albany all played a part in Anna’s conviction and death sentence. Perhaps no other woman on death row endured the mental anguish she experienced; her execution was postponed three times―once when walking to the electric chair.The first complete history of this historically significant case, A Woman Condemned draws upon newly discovered New York State Police records, volumes of court transcripts, and period newspapers, leading readers to wonder if justice was really served.

Emma Molloy ― temperance revivalist, prohibitionist, and accessory to murder.In the summer of 1885, ex-convict George Graham bigamously married Cora Lee, foster daughter of nationally known temperance revivalist Emma Molloy, and the three took up residence together on the Molloy farm near Springfield, Missouri. When the body of Graham’s first wife, Sarah, was found at the bottom of an abandoned well on the Molloy farm early the next year, Graham was charged with murder, and Cora and Emma were implicated as accessories. As Larry E. Wood notes, this sensational story made headlines across the country and threatened Mrs. Molloy’s career as a prominent evangelist and temperance revivalist.Although Graham confessed, taking sole blame for the murder, he inflamed the scandal surrounding Emma Molloy when he claimed that he’d carried on a passionate affair with her while simultaneously courting her foster daughter. When Graham was lynched by a mob before he could come to trial, critics of Mrs. Molloy even suggested that she and her friends in the temperance movement had instigated the hanging to silence him. Although Cora Lee was eventually acquitted of being an accomplice in Sarah Graham’s murder and the charges against Emma Molloy were subsequently dropped, many of Mrs. Molloy’s detractors remained convinced that she was, at the least, a very indiscreet woman. Her reputation was irreparably tarnished, and she never fully recovered her status as one of the country’s most noted female orators.

Justice is blind, they say, but perhaps not to beauty. In supposedly dispassionate courts of law, attractive women have long avoided punishment, based largely on their looks, for cold-blooded crimes. The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial gathers the true stories of some of the most infamous femmes fatales in criminal history, collected by attorney and true crime historian Laura James.With cases from 1850 to 1997, these 32 examples span more than a century, across cultures, ethnicities, and socioeconomic status. But all were so beautiful, as James demonstrates, that they got away with murder.When Madeline Smith, a Glasgow socialite, tried to end a relationship with one man to date another, her jilted lover proved difficult to shake. She solved the problem, James writes, with arsenic-laced chocolates. And in Warrenton, Virginia, mild-mannered heiress Susan Cummings gunned down her polo-playing husband, Roberto, following a disagreement. While these two women lived in different centuries and on different continents, both of their lawyers argued that they were too beautiful to be killers. And in both cases, the juries bought it.In telling the stories of Madeline Smith and Susan Cummings—and 30 others—James proves the existence of the so-called Beauty Defense and shines a spotlight on how gender bias has actually benefited femmes fatales and affected legal systems across the world.

Albin Ludwig was furious. He had caught his wife, Cecilia, with other men before; now, after secretly following Cecilia one evening in 1906, Albin was overcome with suspicion. Albin and Cecilia quarreled that night and again the next day. Prosecutors later claimed that the final quarrel ended when Albin knocked Cecilia unconscious with a wooden potato masher, doused her with a flammable liquid, lit her on fire, and left her to burn to death. Albin claimed self-defense, but he was convicted of second-degree murder.Newspaper coverage of the dramatic crime and trial was jarringly explicit and detailed, shocking readers in Indiana, where the crime occurred. Peter Young of the South Bend Times wrote that the murder's "horrors and its shocking features . . . have never before been witnessed in Mishawaka." The story was front-page news throughout northern Indiana for much of a year.For several generations, the families of both Cecilia and Albin would be silent about the crime—until Cecilia's great-grandson, award-winning journalist Gary Sosniecki, uncovered the family's dark secret. As he discovered, wife beating was commonplace in the early 20th century (before the gender-neutral term of "domestic violence" was adopted), and "wife murder" was so common that newspapers described virtually every case by that term. At long last, The Potato Masher Murder: Death at the Hands of a Jealous Husband unearths the full story of two immigrant families united by love and torn apart by domestic violence.

How the forgotten case of murder while sleepwalking changed history After creeping out of bed on a frigid January night in 1832, teenage farmhand Abraham Prescott took up an ax and thrashed his sleeping employers to the brink of death. He later explained that he'd attacked Sally and Chauncey Cochran in his sleep. The Cochrans eventually recovered but - to the astonishment of their neighbors - kept Prescott on, somehow accepting his strange story.This decision would come back to haunt them. While picking strawberries with Sally in an isolated field the following summer, Prescott used a fence post to violently kill the young mother. His explanation was again the same; he told Chauncey he'd fallen asleep and the next thing he knew, Sally was dead. Prescott's attorneys would use both a sleepwalking claim and an insanity plea in his defense, despite the historically dismal success rates of these arguments. In the two murder trials that followed, Prescott was convicted and sentenced to death both times.Prescott's crime has landmark significance, however, notably because many believed the boy was mentally ill and should never have been executed. The case also highlights the discriminatory role class plays in the American justice system.Using contemporaneous accounts as well as information from other insanity and sleepwalking defenses, author Leslie Lambert Rounds reconstructs the crime and raises important questions about privilege, societal discrimination against the mentally ill and the disadvantaged, and the unfortunate secondary role of women in history.

An extraordinary look at race and policing in late nineteenth-century BaltimoreIn 1875 an Irish-born Baltimore policeman, Patrick McDonald, entered the home of Daniel Brown, an African American laborer, and clubbed and shot Brown, who died within an hour of the attack. In similar cases at the time, authorities routinely exonerated Maryland law enforcement officers who killed African Americans, usually without serious inquiries into the underlying facts. But in this case, Baltimore's white community chose a different path. A coroner's jury declined to attribute the killing to accident or self-defense; the state's attorney indicted McDonald and brought him to trial; and a criminal court jury convicted McDonald of manslaughter.What makes this work so powerful is that many of the issues that the antipolice brutality movement faces today were the very issues faced by black people in nineteenth-century Baltimore.Both Brown and McDonald represented factions in conflict during a period of social upheaval, and both men left home to escape dire conditions. Yet trouble followed both to Baltimore. While the conviction of McDonald was unique, it was not a racially enlightened moment in policing. The killing of Brown was viewed not as racial injustice, but police violence spreading to their neighborhood. White elites saw the police as an uncontrolled force threatening their well-being. The clubbing and shooting of an unarmed black man only a block away from the wealthy residences of Park Avenue represented a breakdown in the social order-but Jim Crow in Baltimore was not in danger.Prior to 1867 a Maryland statute barred African Americans from testifying against whites in proceedings before police magistrates or in any of the state's courts. During the trial of McDonald, the press described the Baltimore police as "blue coated ruffians," and there was a general distrust of the police force by both blacks and whites. Brown's wife, Keziah, gave damning testimony of Officer McDonald's actions. The jury could not agree on verdicts of first- or second-degree murder, and after an attempt to reach a compromise verdict of second-degree murder failed, the majority acquiesced to the manslaughter verdict.The Uncommon Case of Daniel Brown adds to the historiography of policing and criminal justice by demonstrating the pivotal role of the coroner's inquest in such cases and by illustrating the importance of social ties and political divisions when a community addresses an episode of police violence.

Thomas Riha vanished on March 15, 1969, sparking a mystery that lives on 50 years later.A native of Prague, Czechoslovakia, Riha was a popular teacher at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a handsome man, with thick, graying hair and a wry smile. After his disappearance, the FBI and the CIA told local law enforcement and university officials that Riha was alive and well and had left Boulder to get away from his wife. But, as Eileen Welsome convincingly argues, Riha was not alive and well at all. A woman named Galya Tannenbaum, she concludes, had murdered him.Galya-a mother of four, a talented artist, and an FBI informant-allegedly went on to murder two more people in Denver as the trail to find Riha ran cold. Her weapon of choice? Cyanide. Galya was a chameleon, able to deceive businessmen and experienced investigators alike. But she had an Achilles' heel: she couldn't spell. She consistently misspelled words, such as "concider" and "extreemly."For the first time, Galya's signature misspellings are linked to documents once thought to be written by Riha and two other murder victims, as Welsome reexamines the facts and evidence of the case. She argues that these misspellings prove that Galya forged the documents and committed other murders. Her conclusion is buttressed by a wealth of additional information from police reports, depositions, and court testimony. During the Cold War era, the Riha case had an extraordinary ripple effect that reached even the highest levels of government. When the local district attorney in Colorado threatened to subpoena intelligence officials to find out who was behind the "alive and well" rumors, the CIA's representative in Denver claimed the information originated with the FBI. Director J. Edgar Hoover was infuriated by this assertion and actually cut off relations with the CIA. Presenting a compelling cast of characters in an era of intrigue and with astounding attention to detail, Eileen Welsome demonstrates why Galya Tannenbaum's alleged crimes continue to fascinate-even as her motivations remain mysterious.

Innocent or guilty, or a more nuanced truth, in this Ripper-style killingShortly after NYPD Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrnes publicly criticized the London police for failing to capture Jack the Ripper, he received a letter purportedly from Jack himself saying New York was his next target. Not long after, Byrnes was confronted by his own Ripper-style murder case in the death of Carrie Brown, a.k.a. "Old Shakespeare," a colorful character who worked as a prostitute and had a penchant for quoting Shakespeare. Given the near-hysteria surrounding this vicious murder soon after the Jack the Ripper murders in London, people were worried that Jack might have actually come to America.The detective bureau finally arrested Amir Ben Ali, an Algerian immigrant. The newspapers, however, immediately criticized Byrnes for moving too quickly, suggesting that he had tried to save face by pinning the crime on an easy target. When the verdict of murder in the second degree was announced, the papers erupted in anger and disbelief. With the aid of the French consulate, they embarked on a 10-year campaign to have Ben Ali pardoned and finally won his release by producing new evidence. Immediately upon Ben Ali's departure for France, fresh evidence of his guilt surfaced.Was Ben Ali falsely convicted or falsely exonerated? And if he did not commit the murder, then who did? Issues of false convictions, fake news, illegal immigration, police corruption, and racial prejudice are common tropes in today's news cycles. The East River Ripper demonstrates that these are not simply matters of recent vintage and seeks to answer such questions in trying to determine whether and in what way justice miscarried.