The History Press

Daring raids, sporadic gun fights, and midnight chases filled the headlines in 1920s Delaware.

Prohibition attempted to kill John Barleycorn, the personification of intoxicating drinks, but in Delaware the notice of his death was premature. Government agents tried in vain to stop bootleggers and rumrunners who fed the speakeasies that quenched the thirst of the people of the First State. Against the backdrop of the Roaring '20s, bootleggers sped up and down the new Du Pont Boulevard while enforcement agents, such as the bible-thumping Three Gun Wilson, tried in vain to stop them. The stock market crash and the Great Depression ended dry laws and brought about Barleycorn's resurrection.

Local author and historian Michael Morgan recounts dramatic tales of rumrunners, bootleggers, dry laws and wet politicians.

A Story of Hard Spirits and Defiant Souls

Franklin County, Virginia has long been known as the Moonshine Capital of the World. That history can seem romantic, but the county has a dark and violent past. The descendants of the Scots-Irish who settled its rugged mountains openly defied the law and employed their own notions of justice to defend their traditions and livelihood. During Prohibition, the production of moonshine skyrocketed, but the liquor didn’t stop flowing from the mountains when the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. County and state officials struggled to maintain order in a region where unsolved murders, strange disappearances, and senseless killings were a way of life. The peak came in 1978, with nine murders linked to moonshine and drugs in the county.

Historian and Virginia native Phillip Andrew Gibbs tells story of that horrific year and the history behind it.

South Dakota’s Mathis Family Murders brought death and deception to the heartland.

It was perhaps the most infamous murder case in state history. Ladonna Mathis was shot twice in the head at point-blank range inside the family’s metal shed serving as their makeshift home. Two of her three children, ages 2 and 4, were also shot in the head. The brutality of the killings shocked the state and set off a frenzy of law enforcement activity. Despite its intensity, the investigation never found the murderer or the murder weapon. Though charged with the crime, the husband was acquitted, leaving the door open for endless speculation about what really occurred on that late summer morning of Sept. 8, 1981.

With renewed insight from those involved, veteran South Dakota journalist Noel Hamiel explores this cold case of murder and mystery that still haunts the Mount Rushmore state.

“The story of May Walker Burleson’s murder of her ex-husband’s second wife . . . A meticulously researched work, [it] captures its era perfectly.”—Galveston County Daily News

Jennie May Walker Burleson was envied for having everything a woman of her time could want—the privileged upbringing, the dazzling good looks, the dashing war hero husband. She was admired for demonstrating that a woman could want more, from the front of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession to the bottom of a Mesoamerican archaeological dig. But as she stood over the body of her husband’s second wife, gun in hand, society’s envy and admiration quickly hardened into pity and scorn.

T. Felder Dorn examines the complicated trajectory of May's life as socialite, suffragist and shooter.

“Dorn’s book gives small glimpses of history, especially on the 1913 Suffragist parade in Washington, DC. Plus, May was sent to Waverly Hills Sanatorium reputed to be one of the most haunted places in the U.S. One of the best features of the book is the historical photos interspersed with each chapter.”—Forgotten Winds

Uncover the details of the most murderous times in Birmingham Alabama's history.

A reign of terror swept the streets of Birmingham in the 1920s. Criminals armed with small axes attacked immigrant merchants and interracial couples, leaving dozens dead or injured over the course of four years. Desperate for answers, police accepted clues from a Ouija board, while citizens clamored for gun permits for protection. The city's Italian immigrants formed their own association as protection against the Black Hand, an organized band of brutal criminals. Eventually, the police turned to a dangerous and untested truth serum to elicit confessions. Four black men and a teenage girl were charged and tried, while copycat killers emerged from the woodwork. Journalist Jeremy Gray tackles one of the most curious and violent cases in Magic City history.

Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

The state, though, was not immune to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the first half of the twentieth century. Former vaudevillians Arthur H. Bell and his wife used the tactics of public theater to advertise and recruit for the organization. At a massive riot in Perth Amboy, thousands of immigrants besieged a few hundred Klansmen, tossed them out of building windows, burned their cars and ran them out of town. The allying of pro-Nazi German Bund groups and the Klan in the lead-up to World War II marked the end of the Klan’s foothold. Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

A kidnapping, a brutal murder, an international manhunt, and a diabolical priest… This is the true story of the murder of eight-year-old Alma Kellner.

On a bitterly cold day in December of 1909, young Alma Kellner simply disappeared from the altar of St. John’s Church in Louisville. Her body was found four months later near the site of the church, and news of the murder rocked the city. The manhunt for the suspect Louisville police Captain John Carney eleven thousand miles across the country, and even to South America, to return the killer to justice.

While a man was tried and convicted to life in prison for the crime, suspicion lingers that the true culprit was the murderous and maniacal Catholic priest Hans Schmidt, the only priest to have ever been executed in the United States.

Author Shawn M. Herron details the fascinating story of a tragedy that still remains a source of mystery to this day.

Passion, Greed, Murder, Corn Flakes

At the convergence of the Battle Creek and Kalamazoo rivers lays Cereal City, USA. Named after a bloody battle between natives and land surveyors, Battle Creek is most famously the home to the Kelloggs, a family of eccentric inventors and entrepreneurs who would go on to rule the world of breakfast foods. But before their worldwide fame came the sanitarium. And the questionable deaths. And the fires. And after their downfall came the complicated legacy that would result in tragedy for decades to come.

Author and podcaster Jenn Carpenter reveals how cereal, Battle Creek’s lifeblood, also served as the root cause of bloodshed in the city many times over.

On February 5th, 1946, the Ferguson brothers were concluding a night out celebrating Charles Ferguson’s reenlistment in the Army...

Charles, wearing his military uniform, walked with his brothers Alphonso, Joseph, and Richard towards the Freeport Bus Terminal to go home. A provisional Freeport police officer named Joseph Romeika stopped the brothers over a disorderly conduct complaint. Words were exchanged, and Officer Romeika killed Charles, Alphonso and shot Joseph within minutes of the initial stop. Following the unarmed shooting, Romeikia was acquitted despite changing stories of eyewitnesses.

Discover how the shooting became a catalyst for civil rights efforts and immortalized in a Woody Guthrie protest song.

In 1988, Judge Joe O'Kicki was regarded by his peers as one of the most brilliant legal minds in the United States. He was newly re-married, sworn in as the president judge of a Pennsylvania county and on the fast track to a federal bench....

Silently, however, a state police vice unit was in the midst of covert operation into O'Kicki's personal affairs. The judge would be accused of soliciting bribes, frequenting brothels and running the county as if he were a “battleship commander.” Later he'd concoct a plan to flee the country and exact revenge on his enemies.   

Set in the aftermath of the 1977 Johnstown flood and including courtroom testimony, the memos of whistleblowers, contemporary interviews and excerpts from O'Kicki's unfinished tell-all memoir, “Jailing the Johnstown Judge” is a fresh examination of the extraordinary Western Pennsylvania case that attained international infamy.

Delve into a world of cold cases, serial killers, and false confessions pulled straight from the archives of the San Diego Police Department.

From a rash of attacks in Balboa Park to the slayings of two police officers that remain unsolved to this day, detectives have investigated several vexing and violent cases over the years. In 1931, the murder of ten-year-old Virginia Brooks was initially linked to serial slayer Gordon Stewart Northcott, later hung for his crimes, while the mysterious death of young Dalbert Aposhian languished for seventy-two years before modern forensics closed it.

Join author Steve Willard as he pulls back the curtain on San Diego’s dark side.

Enduring mysteries from the Hoosier State

Crime and tragedy have all too often disturbed the peace and stained the memory of Indiana’s bucolic countryside. The small town of Dupont was thrust into the nation's spotlight in 1947 after a series of suspicious deaths were blamed on a well-known local housekeeper—suspected serial killer Lottie “Tot” Lockman. On a fall day in 1976, a Benton County farmer found an unusual package in his cornfield—a corpse. Dubbed “The Box Lady of Benton County,” her identity remains a mystery. On September 13, 1989, Joseph Bova was killed outside of his Merrillville home when a pipe bomb rigged to his truck’s ignition exploded. With no witnesses, suspects, or motive, his case remains unsolved.

Author Autumn Bones explores some of Indiana’s least-known unsolved cases.

Explore the international headlines and the little-known crimes, the solved and the wrongly solved, in these tales of the North Carolina mountains.

Western North Carolina is known for mountain vistas and wild, rocky rivers, but remote wilderness and quaint small towns can have a dark side. Learn the truth behind the famous murder ballad Tom Dooley. Delve into the criminal history of moonshine, and the tales of two unexpected bombers in idyllic Mayberry.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist’s eye to Western North Carolina’s crime stories that define the sinister—and quirky—side of the mountains.

On December 26, 1910, Oscar Chitwood lay lifeless on the courthouse lawn in Hot Springs, his wrists shackled together, and his body torn by bullets. The deputies on the scene claimed that masked men had lynched their prisoner and that the lawmen were innocent bystanders to the carnage. Newspapers everywhere proclaimed this killing another example of vigilantism run rampant. Within days, however, the official story fell apart, and these deputies were charged with cold-blooded murder. Authors Guy Lancaster and Christopher Thrasher tell the little-known story of accused outlaw Oscar Chitwood, the authorities he dared defy, and the mysterious resort town of Hot Springs, a place where the Wild West met the epitome of civilization, and where the boundaries between lawman and outlaw were never all that clear.

Spellbinding cases of mayhem from the Great Lake State

Blanketed by forests, dotted by lakes, crisscrossed by rivers and surrounded by Great Lakes, Michigan is a good place to hide secrets, bury bodies and stash evidence. Dig deep enough, and you will unearth something sinister. Is the suicide note of a prominent Detroit physician also a confession to murder? Were inmates unlawfully released from Jackson State Penitentiary to carry out a contract killing on a politician before he could turn State's evidence? Who silenced a fiery radio personality known as "the voice of the people'?? Did a notorious serial killer stalk women in Lansing during the 1970s?

Join true crime author Tobin T. Buhk as he excavates some of the most vexing unsolved crimes in Michigan history.

From 1917 to 1919, terror struck the streets of Akron. As soldiers marched off to World War I and Spanish influenza ravaged the community, police officers faced a sinister threat.

Murderous kingpin Rosario Borgia placed a bounty on officers' heads for interfering with his criminal enterprises. Gangsters gunned down seven cops, killing five, in a series of brazen attacks over fifteen months. Author Mark J. Price chronicles the crimes, victims, gangsters and the relentless pursuit of justice.

A gay love triangle, drug deals, and a murder. Just another night in West Palm Beach in 1984?

Jeffrey Heagerty was like most young gay nineteen-year-olds in South Florida in the 1980s, commonly finding himself and his friends at the popular Kevin’s Cabaret in West Palm Beach on Saturday nights. On one of those Saturday nights in 1984, Jeff vanished from the club, leaving his friends behind even though he was their ride home. His body was found in a canal the next morning and his car was missing, only to be found a month later, abandoned on the other side of town. Rumors of a love triangle, drug dealings and sexual encounters snarled police efforts at solving the case. The investigation stagnated and the case grew cold until the solution came from two unexpected sources: overlooked details in police photographs of Jeff’s car and a mysterious letter from an inmate in the Palm Beach County Jail.

Four decades after Jeannette DePalma's tragic death, authors Jesse P. Pollack and Mark Moran present the definitive account of the shocking Springfield township cold case.

As Springfield residents decorated for Halloween in September 1972, the crime rate in the quiet, affluent township was at its lowest in years. That mood was shattered when the body of sixteen-year-old Jeannette DePalma was discovered in the local woods, allegedly surrounded by strange objects. Some feared witchcraft was to blame, while others believed a serial killer was on the loose. Rumors of a police cover up ran rampant, and the case went unsolved - along with the murders of several other young women.

The disappearance of Horace Marvin, Jr. became a national sensation.

In early March 1907, young Horace, just a few weeks shy of his fourth birthday, was playing in the yard of his father's new farm in a sparsely populated area near Dover, Delaware. The family had just moved from Iowa and this was the first day Horace had to explore their new home. In the farmyard with Horace were his brother John and cousin Rose, all visible to neighbors helping the previous owner move off the farm. Then Horace disappeared without a trace. Within two weeks this heartbreaking event was being reported to hundreds of other families in newspapers across the country and around the world.

Horace's disappearance would be the most publicized missing child story until the Lindbergh kidnapping exactly twenty-five years later. Local author Brian G. Cannon tells the full story of this tragedy for the first time.

Death on the Turnpike

Discover the bloody story of John Wesley Wable's 1950s killing spree that rocked Western Pennsylvania, and left truckers and drivers alike frightened of the turnpike. After a series of murdered truck drivers and a high-speed interstate chase, Wable's gruesome criminal story also involves a thrilling court case and unresolved mysteries to do this day.  

Author Richard Gazarik details the incredible true crime narratives of the man dubbed the Pennsylvania Turnpike Phantom Killer.

Take a tour of Buffalo, NY's mobster and mafia history. Local mob expert reveals gangsters' stories, hangouts and more.

Buffalo has housed its fair share of thugs and mobsters. Besides common criminals and bank robbers, a powerful crime family headed by local boss Stefano Magaddino emerged in the 1920s. Close to Canada, Niagara Falls and Buffalo were perfect avenues through which to transport booze, and Magaddino and his Mafiosi maintained a stranglehold on the city until his death in 1974. Local mob expert Michael Rizzo takes a tour of Buffalo's mafia exploits everything from these brutal gangsters' favorite hangouts to secret underground tunnels to murder.

In 1974, one of San Francisco’s most horrific unsolved serial murder cases began.

In less than two years, the man police called “The Doodler” took at least five lives, terrorized the LGBTQ community, and left three survivors forever changed. Initial reports claimed the murderer didn’t approach his victims with the knife he used to kill them, but that the suspect shared skilled drawings—sketches of faces and animals—before leaving a string of gay men to bleed out on the sands of Ocean Beach. Police investigations and activist efforts to uncover the killer led to several suspects, but no definitive identification of the artist of death.

Author Kate Zaliznock shines a light on this riveting cold case.

American’s First Drug Runner

In 1886, five men met at San Francisco’s luxurious Baldwin Hotel to discuss a most profitable business: opium smuggling. The exploits of Will Whaley and his partners became the stuff of legend, with tales of landing contraband on deserted shores by the light of the moon, voyages across the Pacific, typhoons, and shipwrecks. Their co-conspirator was the notorious Halcyon, a schooner that novelist once Jack London admiringly wrote “sailed like a witch”.

Join author and career law enforcement agent John Madinger as he uncovers the danger, betrayals, and mysterious deaths of America’s first organized drug trafficking ring.

Author Amy Petulla uncovers the curious case that left two men dead and the incredible story still surrounded by controversy, speculation and myth.

In 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock made a visit to notorious Corpsewood Manor under the pretense of a celebration. They brutally murdered their hosts. Dr. Charles Scudder and companion Joey Odom built the castle in the woods in the Trion forest after Scudder left his position as professor at Loyola. He brought with him twelve thousand doses of LSD. Rumors of drug use and Satanism swirled around the two men. Scudder even claimed to have summoned a demon to protect the estate. The murders set the stage for a trial vibrant with local lore.

In the summer of 1967, 19 year old Brenda Joyce Holland disappeared.

A mountain girl who had come to Manteo to work on The Lost Colony, Brenda’s body was found three days later, floating in the Sound. This riveting narrative, built on unique access to state investigative files and multiple interviews with insiders, searches for the truth of the unsolved murder. This island odyssey of discovery includes séances, a suicide, and a supposed shallow grave.

Journalist John Railey cuts through the myths and misdirections to finally arrive at the long-hidden truth of what happened to Brenda Holland that summer on Roanoke Island.

Author Dale Richard Perelman tells the tragic story of the 1978 murders and the mystery surrounding them.

In the summer of 1978, a mother and her four-year-old were stabbed to death in the quiet town of New Castle. Police suspected the husband, Lou Kadunce, but were unable to find either a weapon or a motive. Sitting in a Lawrence County jail in 1981, convicted serial killer Michael Atkinson accused Frank Costal - a carny, petty thief and Satanist - of having an affair with the Kadunce husband and participating in the murder. A series of intense trials ensued as Costal was convicted of the homicides and a jury found the husband not guilty. Questions surrounding the case gripped the region and grabbed headlines in the Pittsburgh Press.

More than four decades after it occurred, the murder of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley remains notorious… and unsolved.

The only eyewitness said a man attacked Lindsley with a machete in broad daylight on the front steps of her white mansion. Gossip swirled that neighbor Frances Bemis knew who killed Lindsley and would notify authorities. Bemis was later murdered on her nightly walk. Author Elizabeth Randall puts the rumors to rest through research culled from over one thousand pages of depositions, records, official county documentation and interviews.

Join author Denise Parkinson for an intimate look at a Depression-era tragedy.

The once-thriving houseboat communities along Arkansas' White River are long gone, and few remember the sensational murder story that set local darling Helen Spence on a tragic path. In 1931, Spence shocked Arkansas when she avenged her father's murder in a DeWitt courtroom. The state soon discovered that no prison could hold her. For the first time, prison records are unveiled to provide an essential portrait. The legend of Helen Spence refuses to be forgotten--despite her unmarked grave.

Social scientist and crime writer James A. Buccellato explores Detroit's struggle with gang violence, public corruption and the politics of vice during the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century.

Though detectives denied it, the Italian mafia was operating in Detroit as early as 1900, and the city was forever changed. Bootleggers controlled the Detroit River and created a national distribution network for illegal booze during Prohibition. Gangsters, cops and even celebrities fell victim to the violence. Some politicians and prominent businessmen like Henry Ford's right-hand man, Harry Bennett, collaborated closely with the mafia, while others, such as popular radio host Gerald Buckley, fought back and lost their lives.

Well known for its picturesque setting, Napa Valley is also home to crimes perpetrated in the name of greed, love and rage.

Shocking incidents have rocked the small communities nestled among the vineyards, like that of greedy young Billy Duvall, who killed his parents as they slept, and Bob Edwards, who suffocated his beloved wife in a misguided attempt to keep a promise. Two victims of domestic violence came to very different ends--one murdered and the other offered a second chance at life after a jail sentence.

Join author and retired Napa Superior Court judge Raymond A. Guadagni as he offers his unique perspective on these notorious court cases and the criminal justice system.

Untangle the complex conspiracy that led to the tragic deaths of Charlotte Kay Elliott and Kevin Edwin Frase on the banks of the Rio Grande.

On the night of July 13, 1980, a hitman fired a high-powered rifle into the crowd at Pepe's On the River, an outdoor bar in Mission, Texas. He missed his target, a witness in the Loop 360 drug case, but killed two young bystanders. While state court prosecutions for capital murder inexplicably faltered, a federal court gave the assassin a life sentence for attempted murder of a grand jury witness. A member of the judge’s staff who was present throughout the trial, author John W. Primomo revisits the dramatic twists and turns surrounding this murder on the Rio Grande.

A notorious case of terror and extortion in the Buckeye State

In the early 1900s, a criminal society known as the Black Hand became feared across the United States as it extorted hard-working immigrants. In 1908, Agostino Iannarino received a series of threatening letters and when he refused to pay, a bomb exploded at the entrance of his Columbus home. His family fled to Sicily only to continue receiving threats. The following year, U.S. Post Office Inspectors learned that a Black Hand gang called the Society of the Banana was headquartered in Marion, Ohio, and authorities attempted to put an end to the violent outrages occurring across the Midwest.

Revealing twenty-four extortion letters written by members of the Society of the Banana, author Shane W. Croston details factual and fatal accounts of the Black Hand.

The saga of The Montana Stranglers in Dakota Territory embodies the violence and vigilantism of the Old West

In the early 1880s, desperate characters left over from the fur trade began robbing arriving settlers in the wilderness of Eastern Montana and Northwestern Dakota Territory. Gangs of horse thieves sprang out of camps from the Musselshell in Montana, along the Missouri into Dakota Territory, up into Mouse River-Dogden Butte country and ending at Turtle Mountain. Cattlemen and homesteaders formed vigilance committees, including Granville Stuart’s Montana Stranglers, resulting in the violent death of fifty-four people from September 1883 to December 1884. They weren’t all guilty and there were probably more. Author Ron Berget shares this thoroughly researched, true story of the Montana Stranglers’ bloody pursuits throughout the northern plains.

Organized crime was born in the back of a fruit store in Marion. Before America saw headlines about the Capone Mob, the Purple Gang and Murder Inc., the specter of the Black Hand terrorized nearly every major city.

Fears that the Mafia had reached our shores and infiltrated every Italian immigrant community kept police alert and citizens on edge. It was only a matter of time before these professed Robin Hoods formed a band. And when they did, the eyes of the world turned to Ohio, particularly when the local Black Hand outfit known as the Society of the Banana went on trial. Authors David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker unfold this first and nearly forgotten chapter on crime syndicate history.

The shocking murder of railroad laborers in nineteenth-century Pennsylvania—and the coverup that followed—is revealed in this true crime history.

In June 1832, railroad contractor Philip Duffy hired fifty-seven Irish immigrant laborers to work on Pennsylvania's Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad. They were sent to a stretch of track in rural Chester County known as Duffy's Cut. Six weeks later, all of them were dead.

For more than 180 years, the railroad maintained that cholera was to blame and kept the historical record under lock and key. In a harrowing modern-day excavation of their mass grave, a group of academics and volunteers found evidence some of the laborers were murdered.

Authors and research leaders Dr. William E. Watson and Dr. J. Francis Watson reveal the tragedy, mystery, and discovery of what really happened at Duffy's Cut.

On a cold morning in December 1960, sixty-year-old Laura Mutch was found strangled behind a house in downtown Erie....

The city was reaching new heights, including a triumphant run for the coveted “All-American City” award, yet the incident created pandemonium. As investigations progressed, attacks on women continued, sending citizens and seasoned investigators to the brink of chaos. Seventy-two-year-old Clara Carrig was brutally stabbed, and Helen Knost narrowly survived an attempted killing. Mary Lynn Crotty, Eleanor Free and Marian Graham were found murdered, all by strangulation. Women throughout the region locked their doors and avoided the streets at night. The case attracted nationwide attention after the arrest of truck driver John Howard Willman in 1963 yet many questions remain unanswered.

Author Justin Dombrowski charts the harrowing attacks, investigations and mystery surrounding Erie’s 1960s reign of terror.

Discover the untold story of the Windy City’s Ghost Shadows.

Even in a town notorious for gangsters like Al Capone, much of Chicago’s lawless lore has remained uncharted. Chicago’s Chinatown, in particular, was home to a vast criminal enterprise, strictly bound by old country rituals, rules and traditions. Few know of Moy Dong Chew, aka “Opium Dong,” one of Chinatown’s original godfathers, much less Frank Moy, his fedora-wearing predecessor. While incidents like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre dominated newspaper headlines, the Tong Wars were being waged in the shadows. Author Harrison Fillmore relates the long and sordid history of Chinatown’s underbelly from the early 1880s to the late 1980s when a Federal Indictment essentially ended organized crime’s grip on their good citizens

Author William L. Tabac describes the extraordinary legal proceeding with the twists and turns of a modern television drama and the fall of a prominent attorney.

Tommy Osborn's star was rising. The young Nashville lawyer led a band of Tennessee reformers to victory in a landmark Supreme Court case. Hailed by Chief Justice Earl Warren as the most important of his career, Baker v. Carr's one man, one vote mandate revolutionized how Americans chose their representatives. Osborn was hired by Jimmy Hoffa to take on Bobby Kennedy for the fourth time. Unfortunately, the young lawyer met his match in Walter Sheridan, Kennedy's top aide and brilliant spymaster.

The true story behind a Jazz Age crime that shook the Chicago region and shaped the fates of three very different men. 

On the morning of April 14, 1926, the Inland Steel payroll delivery was hijacked in Indiana Harbor. Later that afternoon, Will County deputy sheriff and Mokena resident Walter Fisher died in a hail of gunfire just outside Orland Park. That night, the bullet-riddled body of Santo Calabrese turned up on a Broadview road.

The exact sequence of events remains uncertain, but a jury was able to trace enough of the day’s violent trajectory to send Daniel Hesly on the path to Alcatraz.

Author Matthew Galik leaps into a drama of high-speed pursuit and mistaken identity that shocked the jaded sensibilities of Prohibition-era Chicago and plunged the town of Mokena into mourning.

Nearly two decades after the fact, tragedy meets justice.

One day in 1987, Fred Wilkerson up and vanished in Troup County, Georgia. It was a mystery beset with suspicious circumstances, but the evidence never led anywhere, and the case went cold, Wilkerson’s whereabouts unknown. That is, until a remarkable set of circumstances allowed author and investigator Clay Bryant to breathe life back into the case nearly two decades later. Diving into what had previously been overlooked, Bryant was able to locate and recover Wilkerson’s remains and successfully prosecute the killer, who’d crafted a calculating plot to take everything the victim had and murder him in order to keep it. The story concludes with the Wilkerson Family finally getting closure and the killer getting sentenced to life in prison. Join Byrant as he unravels this West Georgia cold case.

In the late 1990s, the Akron Vice Squad began Operation Red Light to investigate two local escort services. Little did they expect the political and legal storm their actions would unleash.

Soon everyone wanted to know who was on the list of clients. Were the defense lawyers on the list of false names given by men hiding their identities? Was a prostitute’s murder covered up to protect a judge who had taken her into the courthouse for sex and drugs, and did an undercover police officer use public money to fund an abortion for an escort who claimed he was the father? Were bogus racketeering charges used to seize money for cars and expenses for the police?

Progressing step by step through the evidence, presiding judge Jane Bond goes behind the scenes and into her courtroom to see if justice can be done.

Award-winning author and historian Kerriann Flanagan Brosky uncovers some of the most ghastly and fascinating historical crimes committed on Long Island.

Beyond the idyllic countryside and suburban communities of Long Island lies a murky history of murder and mayhem. A Victorian romance went awry in Huntington when wealthy farmer Charles Kelsey was tarred, feathered and murdered in 1872. Thirty-five years before the famous witch trials of Salem, East Hampton had its own Puritan hysteria among charges of witchcraft. The 1937 kidnapping of wealthy heiress Alice Parsons shook the quiet town of Stony Brook and remains a mystery to this day.

“A roving, shiftless fellow…”

That’s how the newspapers described Jesse C. Walker, who in 1908 was served with an arrest warrant by Brunswick County sheriff Jackson Stanland, with tragic results. Little did Walker know that he was about to set off on twenty-five years of headline-grabbing exploits. Two murders, two wives, three prison escapes, and thousands of miles of travel across eight states are only the surface of the adventures of this North Carolina desperado.

Local author Mark W. Koenig relates the untold saga of a man who rocketed to notoriety in the first years of the twentieth century and found atonement decades later.

When romance was met with murder… Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder were young and unafraid, but their love was doomed. He was black, she was white, and this was Virginia in 1880. When Elvira became pregnant, the couple fled Fauquier County to live in Maryland. But her father found them and recruited neighbors to help kidnap them. Four nights later, a mob dragged Arthur from the county jail in Warrenton and lynched him. Elvira, taken to a hotel in Williamsport, Maryland, was never heard from again. Stories of lynching are all too common in the postbellum South, but this one tells a unique tale of a couple who were willing to sacrifice everything to be together—and did./Author Jim Hall tells a classic tale of forbidden love, one of hope crushed by hate.

The last Public Enemy No. 1 of the Depression era, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis reportedly compiled a record of fifty-four aliases, fifteen bank robberies, fourteen murders, three jailbreaks and two kidnappings.

His criminal career came to an end when J. Edgar Hoover and his famed G-Men apprehended the man they wanted more than any other in New Orleans. From there, Karpis found himself confined on Alcatraz Island, where he spent nearly twenty-six years - more than any inmate in the prison’s history. Historian Julie Thompson tells the true story of Karpis’s life and career, a riveting tale taking readers from rural Kansas and Ohio to the bustling streets of the Big Easy and into the bleak innards of “the Rock.”

The rich history of the Wolverine State has a serious dark side.

In the Detroit area, the Black Legion outdid the Ku Klux Klan in hate but remained secret until one of its leaders was implicated in a murder. John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek was equal parts physician and quack. Then there were the state's two self-proclaimed kings—James Jesse Strang, the leader of a Mormon group on Beaver Island, and Albert Molitor, the reputed illegitimate son of German royalty who established his own kingdom on Presque Isle.

Michigan author and historian Norma Lewis present a gallery of the state’s most despicable criminals, crooks, conmen and more.

“An in-depth look at the 1971 trial of a serial killer who’s been mostly forgotten — except to those who were forever impacted.”-The Seattle Times

In 1969, the body of a young woman was discovered in the woods of Renton, rocking the communities along Puget Sound.Three more brutal murders followed, drawing the attention of multiple police agencies as they tried to piece together the meager clues left behind.The seemingly unrelated cases challenged detectives, who struggled to realize they were all connected to one man: Gary Gene Grant.Before the term “serial killer” was even coined, Grant stalked his prey, destroying lives and families while walking unseen among the masses.Decades later, his crimes have all but been forgotten.

Join author and homicide investigator Cloyd Steiger as he uncovers the story of the murderer who slipped through the cracks of history.

“Recounts all the twists and turns of the case . . . two jury trials, a surprising appellate court ruling . . . and, decades later, a shocking development” (Visalia Times Delta).

One October morning in 1979, a stamp and coin dealer was gunned down in his Visalia shop. There were no witnesses. Persistent police efforts across jurisdictional lines connected it to another death. Two months earlier, the body of a Fresno coin dealer was found locked in the trunk of his car. The trail of evidence led to a most unlikely suspect.

Author Ronn M. Couillard, retired judge and former Visalia district attorney, lays out the facts in this compelling case from the investigation to the court proceedings and the surprise that almost derailed the conviction.

Steubenville Ohio, a mecca of murder was nicknamed Little Chicago with gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging running rampant for over one hundred years.

Steubenville's Water Street red-light district drew men from hundreds of miles away, as well as underage runaways. The white slave trade was rampant, and along with all the vice crimes, murders became a weekly occurrence. Law enforcement seemed to turn a blind eye, and cries of political corruption were heard in the state capital. This scenario replayed itself over and over again during the past century as mobsters and madams ruled and murders plagued the city and county at an alarming rate.

The stories in FBI Case Files Michigan are good enough to have been ripped straight from the headlines—and many were!  

Across the Mitten and through the Upper Peninsula, the Wolverine State has witnessed some thrilling and historic federal cases. In Detroit, FBI agents took point investigating the kidnapping (and safe return) of a GM executive's son and in a manhunt for an armed killer in the north woods near Escanaba. The Bureau was called in to discover who poisoned patients at the Ann Arbor Veterans Hospital and for a grisly double homicide solved by a persistent and determined fingerprint examiner. Michigan agents spearheaded the first ever investigation and prosecution of an internet threat, and legendary football coach Bo Schembechler inspired an epic international undercover operation targeting the illegal distribution of steroids. Local agents also helped identify the notorious Unabomber and played a hand in the bizarre fall of a Michigan militia movement founder.  

Retired Special Agent Greg Stejskal recalls these stories and others from more than thirty years as a G-man in Michigan.

Drawing on never-before-seen materials, author John E. Kinville unfolds the complex legacy of Women's Klan no.14 aka the Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls.

In the xenophobic atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, Ku Klux Klan activity spiked in Wisconsin and gave rise to Women’s Klan no. 14, also known as the Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls. Against a national backdrop that saw the male and female Klan hurl its collective might into influencing presidential elections and federal legislation, quotidian matters often stole the attention of the Grey Eagles. For every minute spent upholding Prohibition and blocking Catholic Al Smith’s path to the White House, they spent two raising funds for their order and helping neighbors in need. What unfolds in Kinville's work is the complex legacy of these Chippewa Falls women who struggled to balance their noble intentions against the malicious ideology of the Klan.

While men commit most of Alabama’s crimes, women have written some of the darkest chapters in state history.

Poisoners who murdered dozens. A mob icon who captivated millions. A grandmother cocaine queen. An anti-government cop killer. A madam whose courage lifted her from shame to legend. A mummified woman shrouded in mystery. Whether they enjoyed the spotlight or weaponized their status as unlikely suspects, these infamous women left scandal and misery in their wake. Journalist Jeremy W. Gray digs into the sordid mess left behind by some of the most notorious women in Alabama history.

Explore Boise’s Bloody History!

Shortly after the nearby discovery of gold in 1862, outlaws and ruffians from all over began to congregate in newly platted Boise City.  One of the city's only recorded pistol duels settled a dispute between a covetous husband and the lover of a young damsel--both happened to be lawyers. After getting busted running a long con, the King of Boise's Underworld was sent to the penitentiary. What could be called the area's first mass shooting occurred when an Alaskan gold miner sought revenge against the young woman who stood him up. A local postmaster found himself in a notorious case of a love triangle gone wrong. And, a death cult returned the mummy of one of its followers to Boise. Authors Mark Iverson and Jeff Wade go beyond the traditional histories to gain an appreciation for the lives often willfully removed from history's pages and thus forgotten.