Books for the Armchair Detective in Your Life

Name: Oregon Moonshine
Brand: Bruce Haney
SKU: 9781467153027
Price: 17.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Inside some of the mildest people we know is a penchant for reading dark stories of small-town murders, or chilling serial killers. Why not arm the armchair detective in your life with true crime books from every dark corner of the American dream? Here are fascinating stories of unsolved cases, organized crime, historical murders, detective memoirs, epic manhunts, and everyday small-town murder. For the true crime fan in your life, we offer these gripping cases served hot, cold, strange, and straight – so go ahead, throw the book at them!

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Oregon Moonshine

$23.99 $17.99 Save 25%

The Murder of Sheriff W. W. Withers and Other Historic Eugene Cases

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

Murder & Mayhem in the Willamette Valley

$23.99 $17.99 Save 25%

Oregon State Penitentiary

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

Tragedy at Southern Oregon Tunnel 13

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

Murder in Linn County, Oregon

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

Portland on the Take

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

Oregon Moonshine

9781467153027

$23.99 $17.99 Save 25%

Moonshining is deep-rooted in the history of Oregon.

In 1844, when it was still Oregon Territory, one of the first moonshiners, James Conner, challenged a lawman to a duel for busting his illegal operation. The McKenzie River Bandits had better luck hiding from the law and produced bootleg booze for nearly five years before their arrest. It wouldn’t be the last time they were caught. Over the years, outlaw moonshiners engaged in car chases, shootouts and even attempted an assassination to protect their hidden distilleries—and way of life.

Join author Bruce Haney as he chronicles the intoxicating history of Oregon Moonshine.

The Murder of Sheriff W. W. Withers and Other Historic Eugene Cases

9781467158800

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

Same Crime, Different Time

Oregon gained statehood in 1859, but law and order had a harder time gaining a foothold in the West. Born and raised near Eugene, popular Lane County Sheriff W.W. Withers was shot while investigating a horse theft. The trial for his murder would end in the county’s last official hanging. Convicted killer Claude Branton, desperate to escape prison, went so far as to try to hold up the guards with a potato carved into the shape of a gun. The risk of death in the logging industry was high, and even technological advancements like electric streetlights posed a hazard for locals.

Author Jennifer Chambers brings to life the love, greed and madness of early Eugene.

Murder & Mayhem in the Willamette Valley

9781467151740

$23.99 $17.99 Save 25%

Beneath the bucolic scenery of Oregon's Willamette Valley lies a dark and sinister past. Beneath the bucolic scenery of Oregon's Willamette Valley lies a dark and sinister past.
The 150-mile swath of vineyards, farmland and idyllic towns has hosted its fair share of murderers, bootleggers, and even a serial killer. Moonshiners like the Sutherland family used the wooded hills to hide their operations, skirting the law until it cost one cop his life. A chain of restaurants served as the public face of The Children of the Valley of Life, a cult with members who hid in hand-dug caves to escape the authorities. The Molalla Forest Killer, who committed multiple gruesome murders, stalked the byways.
Join author Jennifer Byers Chambers as she uncovers the grim and deadly secrets of the Willamette Valley.

Oregon State Penitentiary

9781467132213

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

As the only maximum-security prison in the state, the Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP) has housed some of the most violent criminals on the West Coast, including brutal serial killers Charley Panzram in 1915 and Jerry Brudos in 1969. Sixty men have been executed inside OSP. The prison was originally built in Portland in 1851 but moved to Salem 15 years later, after Oregon became a state. From that time forward, the Oregon State Penitentiary grew from 23 prisoners in 1866 to 1,912 by 1992. The penitentiary suffered several serious fires and riots. On March 9, 1968, the most expensive riot ever experienced in the United States flared inside the walls, causing over $2.5 million in damages. Numerous escapes plagued the prison until 1970, when security measures were tightened. The most famous escape involved Harry Tracy and David Merrill in 1902.

Tragedy at Southern Oregon Tunnel 13

9781626193468

$24.99 $18.74 Save 25%

The DeAutremont brothers were looking for a big score. They brought dynamite, guns and a getaway car. On October 11, 1923, at the summit of the Siskiyou Mountains in southern Oregon, the three young men held up a passenger train, with disastrous consequences. Their rash actions resulted in the tragic deaths of three Southern Pacific trainmen and one U.S. Mail clerk, unleashing a public outcry that still rings through Oregon's history. In this riveting account, rail historian Scott Mangold draws on interviews, in-depth research and previously unpublished maps and photographs to document the events at Tunnel 13. Join Mangold as he chronicles the resulting four-year manhunt and eventual conviction of the DeAutremonts and provides insight into the lives derailed by the robbery's bitter legacy.

Murder in Linn County, Oregon

9781467135221

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

On June 21, 1922, Linn County sheriff Charles Kendall and Reverend Roy Healy drove out to the town of Plainview to arrest a moonshining farmer named Dave West. By the end of the day, all three men were dead. First responders found Sheriff Kendall facedown with his pistol still holstered. The court appointed William Dunlap as the new sheriff, but within a year, someone killed him, too. Author and journalist Cory Frye delivers a riveting, detailed account of these shocking and tragic crimes that haunted Linn County for decades.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland:

9781467119535

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a report on corruption in the city government. Authors JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy unearth the salacious details of Baker's crooked administration in a revelatory account of prohibition in the Rose City.

Portland on the Take

9781626197497

$21.99 $16.49 Save 25%

In an era when Portland's shipyards thrived, so, too, did corruption. The Red Scare that followed the 1934 Waterfront Strike allowed gangsters to gain control of some of the city's unions. Working in cahoots with high-ranking city officials, criminals like Al Winter and James Elkins gained power and influence, often using goon squads of union men and hired criminals to enforce their will. Now authors JD Chandler and JB Fisher bring Portland's days of civic corruption and hidden murders out of the shadows. With unprecedented access to the police investigative files of the Frank Tatum murder of 1947 and the detective notebooks and tape recorder transcripts of Multnomah County sheriff's detective Walter Graven, the authors shed new light on Portland's turbulent mid-twentieth-century past.