Books for the Armchair Detective in Your Life

Murder is shocking. The savagery of Elizabeth Short's (also known as the Black Dahlia) slaying was beyond anything Los Angeles, indeed the U.S., had experienced. Short would not be the only young woman in Los Angeles during the 1940s to suffer at the hands of a brutal and sadistic killer, a killer who was never caught. Senseless murder, rape, and robbery were a common thread throughout the streets of Los Angeles of the mid-twentieth century. Men and women without much hope, and even less money, were all too often the victims and the perpetrators. However, the wealthy were not exempt. Love, rage, jealousy, and money were all reasons for the murders, mysteries, and misdemeanors covered in this book, from one end of Los Angeles to the other.

Oregon is known for its forests, lakes, and scenic beauty. But there is another side to Oregon. The pages of this book contain stories of Oregon's notorious past, including: murder victims dropped through a hole in a frozen lake; the Roseburg dentist who faked his own death, leaving behind a burnt, headless corpse; the notorious Oregon Jones who proved there was not a jail or a prison that could hold him or his brother; Oregon outlaw Harry Tracy, who was once a member of Butch Cassidy's gang; murders scheduled to take place when the astrological stars aligned; the execution-style murder of two automobile executives at Crater Lake National Park; the West Point graduate and war hero who brutally murdered a pawnbroker; and Machine Gun Kelly's ties to Medford.

In 1832, the captain of the brigantine Catalina ordered Scotsman James Black, dying of typhus, abandoned at Monterey, California. Nursed by J. B. R. Cooper's wife, Black survived to hunt the last of California's sea otters, defend San Francisco from invading Russians under General Vallejo, and drive cattle to feed gold rush miners.

Black's ranching and dairy empire, founded on a single Mexican land grant, ultimately encompassed 20,000 Marin County acres. Black, his wife, and daughter enjoyed the privileges of the landed gentry until January 1864 when his cherished wife died in their son-in-law's dental chair. An obsessive resentment, excesses of whisky, and a scheming second wife consumed Black's bereavement.

Augustina learned after her father's death that she had been written out of his will. For four years and across two counties, she fought her stepmother for a fair portion of her father's $15,000,000 estate. After multiple notorious trials, Augustina gained a partial victory¬--but would she receive the land and gold the jury awarded her?

Murder for hire plots, conspiracy to commit murder, and contract killings may seem like something that only happens in the Mafia, but Oregon has had more than its fair share of these cases. Within the pages of this book are some of the most egregious murder for hire plots that have occurred in Oregon in the past fifty years, including: a woman who killed the hitman her husband hired to kill her; the execution-style murder of two adults and two young children; a family who was placed in protective custody due to a contract on their lives; a woman who hired two hitmen to wire her husband's car with dynamite; the contract killings for two police detectives; the murder for hire of a young mother; and the conspiracy to kill the U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon.

Bordered by the ocean on one side and the desert on the other, Oregon is known for its natural beauty. But between the ocean and the desert lie many true crime stories, some of which remain unsolved. Among the stories in this book are a murderer who cut up his victims, spreading their body parts across Portland; the murder of one of our nation's most decorated war heroes; a con artist whose crimes spanned five decades; Oregon's most prolific serial killer; bank robbers who crossed two continents trying to outrun the law; a man who told detectives the fact that both of his wives disappeared and were never found was merely a coincidence; and how the use of DNA solved a forty-year-old cold case.

California is known as the "Golden State." However, it is has been said that "all that glitters is not gold." Within the pages of this book are true stories including the murder of a family for a 7.5-million-dollar inheritance, and a landlady accused of murdering seven tenants and burying them in her yard. Read about the murders of twenty-five farm workers buried in peach orchards, and a child who was murdered and buried in a pet cemetery. There is the case of the man wanted in forty-three states for passing half-a-million dollars in fraudulent checks using 350 aliases. Also, within the book are the true stories of how twenty-six children and their school bus driver were buried alive, and how a simple shoplifting incident led to a bunker hidden in the woods where forty-five pounds of charred human remains were found. California mafia figures, "The Mick" and the "Capone of Los Angeles," are featured in this book, along with an espionage case that resulted in more than a million top military secrets sold to the Soviet Union.

Before Las Vegas became the entertainment capital of the world, there was Reno. Known as the Biggest Little City in the World, Reno was the legalized gambling, prostitution, and divorce center of the universe. Naturally, there was crime—in the city and in the surrounding Northern Nevada areas as well.

Reno is now Nevada's third largest city and continues to grow. Murders Mysteries and Misdemeanors of Reno and Northern Nevada covers some of the city's, and indeed the area's, most unusual crimes—from the shocking murder of skier Sonja McCaskie, to the ingenious cattle rustler who created his own special cattle rustling shoes, to the humorous last words of convicted killer Robert White, and more.

When the body of a young female jogger was found at the bottom of a stairwell near Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square in the early morning hours of November 2, 1995, the brutality of the crime shocked the city and led to an outpouring of grief that caused the mayor to weep publicly. The victim, who came from a prominent Illinois family, had been attacked by two petty car thieves with a history of terrorizing local residents. Yet nothing in this case was what it seemed to be. The suspects claimed that their signed confessions were forced by police officers in a hurry to prosecute. DNA evidence not compatible with the killers' profiles led the sequestered jury (in a rush to go home) to declare a not guilty verdict. When a rogue attorney eager for publicity entered the picture and presented “evidence” that the killer of the jogger was really the son of a prominent city lawyer, the new charges led to a complex web of criminal types from the city's drug and prostitution underworld. The Center City jogger's death still cries out for justice.

Washington may be known as the Evergreen State but hidden amongst the evergreen trees are true crime stories spanning the past century. Come and explore the Ghoul of Gray's Harbor and discover the Floater's Fleet. Read about the Fly-In-Killer and the Longview Mystery. Learn about the "architect of crime" and the "phantom of Palouse." Find out how a chemist was able to lift a fingerprint from a shred of paper wrapped around a pipe bomb that killed a judge. Discover why foreign dignitaries traveled half way around the globe to assist with a murder trial in 1950. Join author Margaret LaPlante and explore many long-forgotten murders, mysteries, and misdemeanors that shook the otherwise idyllic state of Washington.

Southern California can be called a sunny place for shady people. Its criminal history is as rich and varied as anywhere. Old West outlaws, serial killers, gangsters and thieves have all robbed, raided, killed and died south of Sacramento. Home to the movie business, Los Angeles has long been a place of bright lights and dark deeds.

Major Raymond Lisenba, California's last man to hang, committed murder-by-rattlesnake. Fueled by a half-pint of illegal whiskey, Dallas Egan danced his way to the gallows. "Yacht Bandit" Lloyd Sampsell cruised California's coast like a latter-day buccaneer, only visiting dry land for another robbery. Joaquin Murieta terrorized the goldfields and Southern California, entering Californian history and folklore in the process.

Billy Cook entered popular culture (and San Quentin's gas chamber), inspiring The Doors' "Riders on the Storm" and classic film The Hitcher. James "Rabbit" Kendrick's execution inspired friend and fellow-convict Merle Haggard to go straight. Haggard immortalized Kendrick with country classic "Sing Me Back Home."

Some are well-remembered, others long forgotten, but all have their own place in California's chronicles of crime.

New York's criminal history is well documented, but some stories remain neglected. Others are almost entirely forgotten. William Kemmler, the first convict ever to sit in the electric chair, remains a familiar name. So does Chester Gillette, immortalized in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. The incredible tale of "Iron" Mike Malloy is part of New York legend. Others, no less important, are overlooked.
Examples include Martha Place, the first woman in the electric chair; "Paper Box Kid," Oreste Shillitoni, who shot his way out of Sing Sing Prison's notorious Death House; Doctor Robert Buchanan, who made an important contribution to forensic science; Carlyle Harris, a household name in the 1890s who rarely draws attention today; and Eddie Lee Mays, New York's 695th (and last) execution.
Crime writer Robert Walsh takes you on a journey through a rogues' gallery of some of New York's most notable crimes and criminals. Alongside them are some forgotten felons, whose stories, though less memorialized, are as fascinating as any.

The Tenderloin District of San Francisco Through Time is a brief history of a neighborhood known to early San Franciscans as St. Ann's Valley. The story of this once-placid piece of real estate provides us with a fascinating microcosm of urban history as we follow its turbulent passage from an outlying village of Gold Rush pioneers to prosperous but quiet residential respectability; its development into a hotel, entertainment, and vice district; its gradual decay into decades of mean and homeless streets; and its on-going efforts towards economic rehabilitation. Numerous photographs and images offer glimpses of its successive worlds of early settlers in the sand dunes; houses, churches, schools and mansions in a respectable middle- and upper-class neighborhood; fancy and not-so-fancy hotels and restaurants and saloons and theaters; ward politicians and political bosses, labor unions, gamblers, entertainers, high-class brothels, and petty criminals; bars, strip clubs, burlesque, and poker joints; and the politics of a decaying central city neighborhood trying to save itself.

In the nineteenth century, the art of photography revolutionized police methods of criminal identification as detectives made collections of criminal portraits in "Rogues Galleries." In this engaging collection, J. D. Chandler presents portraits of thirteen infamous criminals from Portland, illuminating the history of crime in that city. Some of them straddled the law and rose to positions of great power, like James Lappeus, Portland's first police chief; Senator John Mitchell; and Tom Johnson, the notorious Black vice-king of Portland. Some were career criminals like Dutch Pete Stroff, who created a regional crime empire based in Portland, and Little Dutch Herman, who ran a murder-for-hire ring from his nightclub, The Wigwam. Others were brutal opportunists, like Portland's most notorious woman of the nineteenth century, Carrie Bradley; mob-enforcer turned serial killer, Douglas Franklin Wright; and Alvin "Bud" Brown, Portland's forgotten serial killer. All of them lived in Portland and left their bloody mark on the city.