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One Deadly Time in the Old Dominion

Violence and lawlessness plagued late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Virginia, and with no bureau of investigation or state police force, the Old Dominion relied on the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to solve a multitude of crimes.

Formed by William G. Baldwin and Thomas L. Felts, the agency, headquartered in Roanoke, was charged with investigating some of the state’s most sensational murder cases. Among these were the brutal killing of Fannie McCue, wife of the former mayor of Charlottesville; the slaughter of a mountain family in Buchanan County; the shotgunning of Louise Beattie, the young wife of a wealthy Richmond playboy; and the unprecedented shootout in the Carroll County courthouse that left five dead.

Author and historian Phillip Andrew Gibbs recounts how the Agency’s detectives who worked these cases succeeded in bringing some of the state’s most heinous criminals to justice.

Flung down a well. Buried alive in the backwoods. Gunned down in broad daylight.

Not what you’d expect from a place flocked to by influencers for its cozy aesthetic and iconic fall foliage. 

Whether the crimes were intricately plotted or born of passion, Vermont’s history is filled with lawlessness, depravity, and murder. 

Some culprits struck just once, some went on a spree, while others using opportunism and cunning menaced entire regions for years. 

From the place Vermont calls “The Kingdom” to its “Marble City,” Thea Lewis, author of True Crime Stories of Burlington, Vermont, offers up more than a century of mayhem, with double lives, serial killers, and a plot to slay a beloved pop star with a global fan base. 

Join her as she peels back the region’s reputation for wholesomeness and rural charm to show you the darker side of the Green Mountain State.  

Explore a true crime mystery from the Tube City.

Local socialite La Roux Soles’s hometown of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, spoke her name in whispers. She and her husband, Bob, a charming war hero and successful businessman, lived it up with boozy Prohibition-era parties in their mansion perched high above the National Tube Works, the industrial heart of the gritty town. Behind the facade, Bob harbored secrets that shattered them both, drove her mad, and pushed her to commit the ultimate act of desperation—or was it murder? Like grime from the steel mill cloaking their mansion's windows, the real story of that warm June night in 1933 was obscured. The mysterious events left a scar on McKeesport that never quite healed and soon captured the nation’s attention.

Local author and historian Lisa Speranza exhumes the heart of the scandal, unraveling an almost century-old story that time nearly forgot.

On a cold February morning in 1990, a commuter driving Georgia Highway 190 near Pine Mountain made a discovery that would haunt Harris and Meriwether Counties for years: a young man, barely alive, abandoned on the roadside with brutal injuries that didn’t match any “accident.” What first looked like a hit-and-run quickly unraveled into something darker—an organized act of violence tied to the cocaine trade, barroom power, and a crew that believed fear was currency. Follow the death of Paul McKeen Jr. from the first 911 call through the long, grinding years of false stories, intimidation, and silence. As investigators dug past staged explanations, witnesses began to crack: ex-girlfriends, ex-wives, frightened associates, and reluctant insiders finally admitted what they heard, what they saw, and what the men involved bragged about afterward. The case became a test of whether justice can survive when physical evidence is thin—but human truth keeps surfacing. Author Clay Bryant traces the path from roadside mystery to indictments, pretrial strategy, and a high-stakes trial built on testimony, pattern, and motive.

Explore the true story of a famous crime that inspired Anatomy of a Murder

Just after midnight on July 31, 1952, U.S. Army Lieutenant Coleman A. Peterson walked into the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay, Michigan, and shot Mike Chenoweth in retaliation for an assault on his wife. This revenge killing rocked the small lumber town in the Upper Peninsula, and the trial that followed inspired a best-selling novel and an Academy Award–nominated motion picture, Anatomy of a Murder.

Using the testimony taken from trial transcripts, the police investigator, and the killer, author Patrick J. Baker shares the real story of a sensational murder trial that captivated the Midwest and the aftermath that drew the eyes of the nation.

The infamous 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden have captivated New Englanders for more than one hundred years. But the story doesn’t end in Fall River. Far beyond the locked doors of the Borden household, there is a wider web of people, places, and histories connected to the case. From the investigators who shaped the trial and the reporters who sensationalized it to the key locations that marked Lizzie Borden’s life and lingering legacy, there is a multifaceted history behind one of America's most enduring true crime stories. There are the lives of other remarkable—and often overlooked—figures linked to the Borden bloodline. Among them are Innocent Borden, the recently discovered daughter of Thomas Cornell, a man who was executed in 1673 for the alleged murder of his mother in colonial Rhode Island. And then there’s Sarah Maria Cornell, a millworker and distant cousin of Lizzie, whose mysterious death sparked scandal when a prominent Methodist minister was accused of her murder. By weaving these parallel tales of crime, gender, and societal upheaval into the central narrative, local author Sam Baltrusis takes a deep dive into the ultimate whodunit—placing Lizzie’s story within a broader historical and cultural context of rumors, power, and the shifting expectations of women in American society.

Evil on the Edge of the Edwards Plateau

Darkness lurks in the shadows of the seemingly unspoiled country around Devils River. A sadistic murder of a Mexican American teenager in 1953 and the demented slaughter of a Mexican American family in 1968 have remained unsolved for decades. Both vicious slayings were linked by geography, prejudice, and perversity. Both atrocities were committed at the intersection of race, class, and entitlement. The community and key law enforcement personnel avoided accountability and looked the other way. As a result, the victims’ memories and the identities of the depraved perpetrators were confined to whispers.

A reckoning is long overdue, and award-winning author E.R. Bills's investigative efforts deliver the impetus. The devils were simply in the details.

Dark history lives beneath Georgia’s southern charm. In this gripping work of Georgia true crime history, veteran journalist Neely Young investigates the Peach State’s most chilling stories of crime, corruption, racial violence, and injustice. Blending narrative journalism with deep historical research, this book reveals the hidden side of Georgia history—where power, prejudice, and profit often collided with law and conscience.

Travel to July 11, 1964, when U.S. Army reservist Colonel Lemuel Penn became the victim of a shocking Ku Klux Klan murder on the Broad River Bridge, an act of civil rights era racial terror that helped galvanize national outrage. Step back to 1873 and the violent world of Reconstruction-era Georgia, where a young Doc Holliday was linked to deadly clashes long before becoming the legendary gunfighter of Tombstone fame. Through stories of mob vigilantism, political corruption, backroom deals, lawmen, outlaws, and unsolved crimes, Young uncovers the events that shaped the state’s darker legacy.

Perfect for fans of Southern true crime, American crime history, and historical crime nonfiction, this book offers a compelling look at real crimes that influenced culture, justice, and memory. Readers interested in civil rights history, historical murders, and true crime books about the American South will find a powerful blend of investigative storytelling and historical insight.

From hidden archives to notorious crime scenes, these unforgettable accounts show how the echoes of Georgia’s violent past still resonate today.

From the author of Murder in Victorian Western Michigan and Victorian Southwest Michigan True Crime comes more thrilling stories from the Wolverine State's past.

As the Michigan Central Railroad company became a juggernaut, the nineteenth-century rail line also devolved into a bastion for crime as morality was often set aside for profit. In 1850, a grand jury indicted fifty men in Jackson County for conspiracy to commit arson after a freight depot in Detroit was set ablaze. When two Grand Trunk locomotives collided in Battle Creek in 1893 killing twenty-seven people, a conductor and an engineer each accused the other, avoiding conviction. A Mineral Ridge train robbery of $70,000 in payroll money destined for miners on the Keweenaw Peninsula was exposed by a former railroad worker involved in the heist, allowing him to escape prosecution and sending four others to prison.

Author Michael Delaware unfolds dark stories of corruption and crime from Michigan’s Victorian age.

Read about the crime The Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana called "the most reckless holdup and murder ever committed within the boundaries of Lake County.”

It all started with a haphazard robbery in a popular roadhouse halfway between Cedar Lake and Crown Point. Close to midnight, a hardened crew of bootleggers from the South Side of Chicago stalked into the crowded barroom. Fifteen terrifying minutes later, bullet holes cratered the walls, patrons were left bloody and dazed, and a prominent Lake County attorney lay dying. The mayhem would spark a furious and desperate police response, an unprecedented trial, and even more brutal murder.

Author James Haniford takes readers back to Prohibition-era Indiana for a front-row seat to the unbelievable true story of big-city crime in a small resort town.

November 13, 1925, marked the third miserably cold and dreary day on the campus of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Early that morning the girls at Park House made a horrible discovery. A senior girl, Jeanne Robeson, lay dead on the floor of her kitchenette, the apparent victim of gas asphyxiation.

Later that afternoon, a second tragedy loomed as the girls at Clark House became aware that one of their housemates was missing. Alice Corbett of Utica, New York, walked away from Clark House and simply vanished. Her disappearance was front-page news in every paper in the northeast. 

With the death of one girl on campus and the disappearance of another, the press at first speculated that the two cases were somehow connected. The police, on the other hand, had other theories to investigate: was the Alice Corbett case a suicide, a runaway or an elopement? Did she suffer a nervous breakdown due to academic difficulties, or was her personal life dealt a staggering blow by a onetime boyfriend? 

Join author James M. Greiner as he unravels the details behind this cold case. 

A Baffling and Brutal Case

Sunday, July 18, 1965, started out like any other hot summer day in Texas. Shirley Ann Stark and Susan Rigsby, Chi Omega sorority sisters at the University of Texas at Austin, left their Dallas homes early and drove together in Shirley’s Corvair to Austin. Little did they know the fate that awaited them later that afternoon as they visited the apartment of a friend and fellow UT student. The following day, the women were reported missing. A twelve-day nationwide search ensued, ending with the discovery of their bodies in a north Austin field. As one Associated Press reporter would later write, “The story held all the elements of a classic murder case: Campus beauties, youth, mystery, terror, and social standing.’’ Author Alan Burton revisits the forgotten, gruesome, and tragic double homicide that shook the Lone Star State. 

A True Crime Mystery Four Decades in the Making

On the cold night of January 27, 1976, twenty-two-year-old college student Kyle Clinkscales vanished after leaving his bartending shift at the Moose Club in LaGrange, Georgia. His disappearance baffled investigators and devastated his parents, John and Louise, who spent decades chasing rumors, suspects, and false leads in one of the South’s most haunting cold cases.

For years, Kyle’s story became a staple in true crime circles, a case that blended small-town secrets, whispers of foul play, and the agony of parents who refused to give up. Then, in 2021, a shocking discovery was made: Kyle’s car submerged in an Alabama creek, with his remains inside. Suddenly, the case once thought frozen in time was thrust back into the spotlight.

Was Kyle’s tragic end the result of a simple accident? Or was it a carefully staged cover-up, concealing a brutal murder that eluded justice for nearly half a century? With modern forensic analysis and renewed investigative efforts, this chilling mystery raises more questions than answers.

Dive deep inside the twists and turns of Kyle Clinkscales’s disappearance and discovery—exploring law enforcement missteps, local rumors, and the enduring fight of a family unwilling to surrender hope. More than just a Southern true crime story, Kyle’s case helped inspire legislative reform for families of the missing, proving that even decades-old mysteries can change lives.

Author James B Longshore details the forty-plus-year ordeal.