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The Nastiest Saloon in Iowa
9781467170826
Regular price $24.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%"Wickedest place in the wickedest section of Des Moines” —Des Moines Register
In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloon proprietor Erastus Wallace Scott of Des Moines—with his cousins in the infamous Carter Gang—operated a campaign of murder, fraud, corruption, and prostitution from his bar on East Court Avenue. In 1908, the local paper denounced the neighborhood as “given up almost entirely to houses of prostitution. At one end stands a notorious saloon, the scene of many crimes, even murders, and for years a harbor for criminals and a plotting place for the evil minded."
That reviled enterprise was none other than Scott’s seedy shack of sin. Initially, Scott gained the most notoriety, due to a slaying, numerous assaults, and sex trade associated with his establishment. But a subsequent murder brought cousin Will to the forefront. A land fraud scheme involving all three Carter brothers followed, including grand theft and even more deaths.
Authors David and Rose Donovan recount the long-forgotten story of a crime family’s nefarious reach beyond the red-light district.
Murder in Salem, Massachusetts
9781467171298
Regular price $24.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Without reservation, she opened the door. Without hesitation, she hopped into the car, adjusting the skirt of her summer-weight navy blue suit to keep it unwrinkled as she sat down.
And just like that, 19-year-old Frances Cochran jumped into the void.
On July 17, 1941, in Lynn, Massachusetts, attractive nineteen-year-old Frances Cochran stepped off a commuter bus and into a mysterious black automobile. Three days later, police discovered her mutilated body in a Salem lovers' lane.
Her murder made national headlines on the eve of World War II. Investigators checked twelve thousand cars and interviewed almost two thousand witnesses. They scrutinized a “Peeping Tom” men’s club. Despite leads that spanned the continent, decades passed and the killer was never caught. Like a poisonous vine, the death of Frances Cochran is tangled with other unsolved murders, including the 1947 Los Angeles Black Dahlia case.
As local author Rob Fitzgibbon reveals, it is also a story shrouded in the "Salem Factor,” the odd and inexplicable coincidences that occur in an area notorious for witchcraft and hauntings.
