True Crime

Prohibition Glenview made many people rich, some angry, some sad, and some dead.

Today, Glenview is one of the safest places to live in Illinois, but during Prohibition, speakeasies, saloons, and “ice cream parlors” hijacked the small farming town. Good men and women, trying make a few bucks, opened scores of taprooms and lounges along Waukegan Road. Beloved institutions like Hackney’s restaurants, Meier’s Tavern, and Grandpa’s Place were originally supplied by a bootlegging operation that was both local and friendly. Then the Chicago Outfit moved in. Author Jill Crane traces the path the resilient citizens of Glenview took in carving a thriving community out of the tumult of Prohibition.

The murders that shocked Michigan

In the early morning of Tuesday, August 11, 1931, a Washtenaw County farmer found the smoldering remains of a car. Inside were the bodies of four teens, burned almost beyond recognition. Police immediately began an investigation, even tapping Harry Bennett, head of the Ford Motor Company Service Department, for assistance. Three killers stood trial two days later as a mob gathered outside the Ann Arbor Courthouse clamoring for a lynching. With the mob held back by the Michigan National Guard, Bennett delivered the killers to Jackson Prison by midnight Thursday. At the time, the so-called Torch Murders were deemed the most gruesome act of homicide in Michigan’s history—and perhaps the nation’s.

Peeling away myth from truth, author James Mann tells the story in full for the first time ever.

Local author Rena Glover Goss unfolds the intricacies of the murder that rocked Jefferson County.

In 1899, the Cramblett and Gosnell families lived on Perrin Run. Quincy Cramblett, romantically involved first with Elva Gosnell and later with her sister Cora, frequently proposed marriage. Both girls declined because of their father’s objections to the young man. Growing desperate, Quincy proposed that he and Cora commit suicide. She refused. Weeks later, their father, James Gosnell, was fatally shot. Immediately suspected, Quincy was indicted for murder after a brief hearing. Over the course of two trials in 1900, local critics differed vehemently about his guilt or innocence, and crowds packed the courtroom to witness the drama. Qunicy was acquitted, but none one else was ever questioned or indicted for James Gosnell’s murder.

The Memphis Underworld King  

Diggs Nolen’s name was the byword for crime in 1920s Memphis. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a swashbuckling outlaw. He turned his back on a promising career, his family and consorted with the worst elements of society. Under the tutelage of train robber Frank Holloway, Nolen became a notorious con artist. Later, he and his gun-slinging wife built an empire out of selling narcotics and trafficking stolen goods. Law enforcement caught Nolen, but they could not hold him. Nolen escaped from Leavenworth Prison, led the largest jailbreak in Memphis history and confounded prosecutors with legal wranglings. Author Patrick O’Daniel details Nolen’s quixotic quest for criminal fame that earned him the title King of the Memphis Underworld.

A history of betting on the East Side. Making it as a professional gambler in the first part of the twentieth century was a long shot, but wagering on the wide open scene of East St. Louis could help even the odds. Folks who were feeling lucky enough might grab a copy of Louis Cella’s racing form, or get the inside scoop from turf men like Barney Schreiber. Students of the art of bookmaking had plentiful mentors in local legends like Adam “Mulepole” Fritz. But even then, a hot streak could attract the attention of a representative of the Chicago Outfit such as Frank “Buster” Wortman. The nephew of Vic and Jim Doyle, who built the Ringside Casino into the Midwest's largest casino, author James Doyle connects the dice rolls of bygone St. Louis Kingpins to high stakes players in New York and New Orleans.

Lake Erie is known for its beauty and tranquility, but a dark, deadly undercurrent lurks beneath its surface.

Bordering four states and two countries, the inland ocean offers the perfect getaway for criminals of all kinds. The bandits who held up the Ashtabula National Marine Bank as well as Ontario’s most elusive conman used the lake to avoid capture. Pirate Joseph Kerwin relied on his knowledge of the shipping industry to evade the law. Narene Mozee’s murderer quietly slipped away after completing his heinous deed on a luxury cruise ship, and when a lighthouse keeper found a corpse floating in the shallows near his post, all signs pointed to the killer fleeing by boat.

Local author Wendy Koile wades into the depths of this great, but deadly lake.

Award-winning true crime author Jane Turzillo brings together the strippers, gangsters, robbers, shady politicians, and more from Cleveland's rough and rowdy past.

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.

Explore the investigative intricacies and courtroom drama of crimes of passion, greed, and revenge in Stark County, Ohio.

Rendered in painstaking detail, accounts of high-profile killings and courtroom intrigue filled the pages of Stark County's early newspapers. The triple hanging of three teenage boys in 1880 seized the attention of the entire community. When George Saxton, notorious womanizer and President McKinley's brother-in-law, was shot dead on the front lawn of his widowed lover in 1898, the whole nation looked on. For the brutal slaying of his wife, James Cornelius became the first local prison inmate executed in the electric chair in 1906.

Using contemporary local newspaper accounts, Kim Kenney, author of Canton's Pioneers in Flight and coauthor of Stark County Food tells the story of eight Stark County murders, unfolding the grisly details while honoring the lives cut short by violence.

The Most Haunted City in Kansas

Atchison is a town where the migration West started and proudly calls itself the “most haunted city in Kansas.” Many former residents are still present longing to be heard and seen. Hannah Jo Cusack leaves pennies for the living to make her presence known. Another woman is perhaps still looking for her ride home walking the woods in the shadows of night. In the Sallie House, something seems to dislike the men visiting, while a ghost named Goldie still sits in her rocking chair scowling at all those who enter the home, but especially the women. Join Brooke Montoya as she shares the incredible stories and harrowing hauntings in Atchison.

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.

A sad and shocking story of love betrayed

The murder of Bessie Little and the trial of her murderer rocked Victorian Dayton. Believing herself pregnant and desperate to save her reputation, young Bessie tried to force her boyfriend, Albert Frantz, to marry her quickly. Instead, he took her out for a buggy ride, shot her twice in the head and dumped her body in the river. When she was discovered, he tried to convince everyone that she committed suicide. The dramatic trial brought to light details of Bessie and Albert’s secret trysts, and Albert’s sanity became a point of contention.

In her third historical book about Dayton, Sara Kaushal delves into a tale of scandal and betrayal to discover the truth.

Investigate the mysteries surrounding the horrifying murder of Battle Creek’s Daisy Zick. A must-read for fans of true crime and Michigan history enthusiasts.

On a bitterly cold morning in January 1963, Daisy Zick was brutally murdered in her Battle Creek home. No fewer than three witnesses caught a glimpse of the killer, yet today, it remains one of Michigan's most sensational unsolved crimes.

The act of pure savagery rocked not only the community but also the Kellogg Company, where she worked. Here, Blaine Pardoe artfully takes the reader into this true crime thriller. Utilizing long-sealed police files and interviews with the surviving investigators, the true story of the investigation can finally be told.

Who were the key suspects? What evidence does the police still have on this five-decades-old cold case? Just how close did this murder come to being solved? Is the killer still alive? These questions and more are masterfully brought to the forefront for true crime fans and armchair detectives.

Join local historian Tim Crumrin as he reveals the blackguards, rogues and swindlers of Terre Haute’s rough and rowdy past.

For more than a century, Terre Haute earned its reputation as a sin city. One of the most notorious red-light districts in the Midwest, the West End, housed sixty brothels and nearly one thousand prostitutes at its height in the 1920s. Across this sordid scene strode the stylish and indomitable Edith Brown, the city’s most famous madam. When Prohibition made the city bootlegger central, violence erupted as rival gangs vied for turf. Gamblers flooded in from all corners of the country, making Terre Haute’s Wire Room second only to Las Vegas. Through it all, corrupt politicians like Mayor Donn Roberts profited handsomely from grift and deception.

Wicked Akron, Ohio takes the reader on a journey through the seedy underbelly of the city's history.

Akron is known as "the rubber capital of the world'? and home to Goodyear. But look beneath those tires and you will find dirt…a lot of dirt! Explore Akron's darkest days, when citizens burned city hall to the ground and members of the Ku Klux Klan called the shots from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Meet a grave robber who became a political leader, a mobster who ordered police murders and a beloved bootlegger turned bail bondsman. Say hello to Frank Hurn, a flashy, frenetic, fast-talking con man who was looking for suckers to invest in the Vulcans, an NFL team he promised to bring to Akron. From city saloon to suburban hideout, this is an alternative history lesson of the sometimes dicey coexistence of the well-heeled and the workers, men and women who lived big lives during Akron's fledgling days as a canal port, its pre-Depression heyday and zenith as a Midwestern industrial success story.

Author Kymberli Hagelberg, an award-winning journalist and native Northeast Ohioan, takes the reader on a morbidly-entertaining tour of the shadowy corners of Akron's history. With stories including mobsters and body snatchers, con men and Klansmen, plagues and fires, there is truly something for fans of local history and true crime stories.

"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.

Lovers of true crime and Ohio history will find themselves riveted by these crimes of passion.

There is a thin line between love and hate, and when intense passion threatens that border, blood will flow. Northern Ohio has had its share of people who felt that line snap. In Canton, the Phantom-Flapper Killer shot down her lover in cold blood after he threatened to expose her infidelity to the world. In Toledo, Dorothy Brown’s married boyfriend brutally attacked her when he learned that she was expecting. Max Amerman of Medina was willing to kill for the girl of his dreams, and when Cleveland’s Matilda Waldman believed that her husband was cursed by a witch, she took out the she-devil by way of a pistol.

Author Wendy Koile examines these relationships once bound by love, unraveled by lies, and cut off by murder.

The safe and sedate Fox Cities have seen their share of horrible crimes. A must-read for fans of true crime and Wisconsin history.

Cold Blooded murder, kidnapping, prostitution, organized crime and other misdeeds shocked and appalled not just the community known as the Fox Cities, but the entire state of Wisconsin. Murderer Porter Ross tried to commit suicide by eating bedsprings. Wenzel Kabat mutilated and burned a man in order to take over his farm. The Appleton Butcher left dismembered human remains on a playground for children to find.

In this volume, crime writer and leading expert on the Milwaukee Mafia Gavin Schmitt turns his magnifying glass on the dark underbelly of small-town America. Revisit these skeletons in suburban closets that will have you looking over your shoulder as you read.

The first century of the wilderness-born Missouri capital was filled with villainous escapes from the state’s only prison, resulting in theft, abuse and even murder. The grandest of escape attempts ended with the city’s only triple hanging. The capital city had plenty of entrepreneurs willing to sidestep the federal Volstead Act, which attracted Ku Klux Klan activity and culminated in the election of a “law and order” sheriff, whose deputies broke laws to enforce them. Many other tragedies grieved the community, including the South Side murder of a German immigrant by a teen-aged deputy, who had been caught sleeping with the victim’s daughter. Author Michelle Brooks has collected a sample of some of the shocking events of Jefferson City’s first century.

Malice, Menace and Mendacity

The cast of characters coloring the Black Hills’ raucous past has inspired memorable Hollywood productions. Al Swearengen, “Wild Bill” Hickok and Calamity Jane have become celebrities, but many of the most malevolent moments did not produce household names. One of the more bizarre and unsolved murders was the Chinatown killing of a beautiful and rich woman named Di Lee. In 1894, Lakota Sioux warrior Chief Two Sticks was hanged for his band’s involvement in the brutal slayings of several cowboys and a few policemen at the Isaac Humphrey Ranch. Swearengen’s Gem Theater often played host to violence involving prostitutes, performers and patrons. Soiled dove Kitty Clyde was the victim of her spurned lover Charles Wilson, while “Banjo Dick” murdered his lover’s ex-husband in supposed self-defense. Author Deborah Cuyle combed local archives to tell the unvarnished accounts of Deadwood’s most daring and dastardly denizens.

A fascinating historical tour of this Midwestern city’s crimes, scandals, and shady characters.

Dubbed the “Athens of the Prairie” for its array of stunning modern architecture, Columbus, Indiana, nevertheless endured its share of unsavory citizens, crime-ridden neighborhoods, and tales of woe in its past. Many residents avoided the infamous slums of Smoky Row and Death Valley, while others gave in to the allure of Lillian “Todie” Tull’s famed house of ill repute on North Jackson Street. Two different father-and-son hoodlum partnerships, the McKinneys and the Bells, terrorized the area in the 1800s. And a brutal fistfight between a newspaper editor and the mayor sparked a scandal in 1877.

In this book, enlivened by photos and illustrations, journalist Paul J. Hoffman guides you on a wild ride through the city’s salacious side.

Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever and misunderstood female criminals.

Queen of the Underworld Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders in city history. Mother Elinor L. Mason, High Priestess of the Flying Roller Colony, was no holy roller but a criminal chameleon who changed personas as easily as some people change clothes. And a feud between Delray madams Julia Toth and Annie Smith exposed widespread graft in the thriving red-light industry and led to one of the worst police scandals in Motor City history. These stories and more await in this deliciously entertaining collection.

The Professor & the Coed documents the history of this Ohio University scandal—an illicit affair and murder.

In the sweltering summer of 1929, the people of Columbus, Ohio, were enthralled by news of the Ohio State University veterinary professor and Olympic gold medal, winning pistol shooter on trial for the murder of his twenty-four-year-old lover, who was a medical student. Local writer Mark Gribben reveals how Dr. James Howard Snook was captured and interrogated, including his gory confession of Theora Hix's death. During the trial, the details of the illicit love affair were so salacious that newspapers could only hint about what really led to the coed's murder and the professor's ultimate punishment. For the first time, read the full account of this astonishing story, from scandalous beginning to tragic end.

Haunted Hoaxes of the Hoosier State

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, newspapers were a major source of ghost stories. Paranormal experiences, no matter how mundane, were newsworthy and entertaining—even when they turned out not to be ghosts after all. A coffin holding a “talking corpse” on a train turned out to be a box of bullfrogs. An overturned automobile carrying white paint resulted in a paint-covered “ghost” wandering the streets, and a spiritualist tackled a phantom haunting a cemetery only to find that it was a fraternity pledge all along.

Revealing that the truth can sometimes be as amusing as the legend, author Ashley M. Watson gathers newspaper clippings about Indiana ghost stories that were not ghosts at all.

More than a century later, a grisly Ohio cold case murder gets new life.

The night before Easter 1905, Miranda Bricker left her sister’s house and made her way through the darkness. Her destination was her living quarters and place of employment, the Maplehurst mansion, the home of Mount Vernon, Ohio’s leading industrialist. Within sight of her destination, an attacker emerged from the darkness, rushing her from behind. Their battle cut across the Maplehurst lawn, ending in Bricker’s death before witnesses could be sure what was happening. The killer melted away into the night. The hasty investigation that followed almost resulted in an innocent Black man’s lynching before the case went cold and was forgotten.

Mark Sebastian Jordan has uncovered the roots and ripples of a story that crosses the continent and points out the possibility of a suspect 120 years later.

Bucolic hamlets or festering cesspools? The fledgling towns of Jay County were touted by early newspapers as both.

As populations thrived, so did crime and disorder. Tempers flared. Romance bloomed and faded. Political and social lines were drawn and crossed. Sensational accounts of robbery, assault, and murder grabbed the headlines. Criminals were hunted by an overworked and undertrained police force. When, and if, they were caught, alleged offenders were tried not only by the judicial system but also by the press and public opinion.

Looking beyond the headlines at the impact of crime on a small community, local author Chris Kennedy Nixon examines criminals and their victims and provides a snapshot in time of social ideals about gender, politics, wealth, and poverty.

Killing is by no means a man’s game in Missouri

Bonnie Parker has been romanticized in print and on screen since the early 1930s, when she and gangster boyfriend Clyde Barrow robbed banks and left bodies in their wake. She’s undoubtedly the most infamous murderous woman in Missouri history—although it’s uncertain whether she killed anyone with her own hand—but she’s in a crowded field of Show Me State female killers. The other women may not be etched in the public consciousness, but that makes them no less intriguing. They killed not in public with automatic rifles but in private, intimate situations with knives, pistols, and poison. Theirs are the stories of women scorned, of jealousy and love triangles, of abuse and self-defense. Join award-winning author Larry Wood as he chronicles these fascinating tales.

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.

The infamous criminal history of Iowa’s oldest county takes center stage in this true crime account of murder, robbery, and mayhem.

Scott County, Iowa has a rich and venerable history. It is where the Blackhawk Treaty was signed. It’s where the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River was built. But Scott County has a dark and history as well.

Travel down Utica Ridge Road, where young Grace Reed paid the ultimate price for spurning the affections of a local farmer. Enter the bedroom of Margaretha Nehlsen, who poisoned her children with chocolate candies. Hear the tale of Harry Hamilton, a former policeman turned career criminal who played a key part in the most notorious bank robbery in Scott County history . . .

Learn about these stories and more as Murder & Mayhem in Scott County, Iowa explores the darker side of this midwestern County and its shocking, unlawful history.

Ride Ohio's rails with some of the bravest trainmen and most vicious killers and robbers to ever roll down the tracks.

The West may have had Jesse James and Butch Cassidy, but Ohio had its own brand of train robbers. Discover how Alvin Karpis knocked off an Erie Railroad train and escaped with $34,000. Learn about the first peacetime train holdup that took place in North Bend when thieves derailed the Kate Jackson, robbed its passengers and blew the Adam's Express safe. Make no mistake--railroading was a dangerous job in bygone days.

The untold stories of the tranquil town of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, that have been swept under the rug or lost over the years.

Sheboygan deserves its reputation as a conservative city clean, quiet and law-abiding. But here are some stories that have been swept under the rug or lost overboard. Venture into the mists of the Lake Michigan Triangle that have swallowed boats, planes and entire tribes. Investigate speakeasy shootings, safes burgled by a fly swatter, poisoned Christmas candy, flaming shipwrecks and the hoax that had militiamen firing on their own cattle. Or just sit down with some bizarre anecdotes about a hometown you thought you knew, from the town's first baseball game to the man freed from jail by a jug of whiskey to the deputy sheriff who had to enforce Nicholas Hoffman's first bath in 50 years.

These are the abhorrent, the grim, the can't-look-away misdeeds and miscreants of this city's past, when bicycle messenger boys peddled through the night to link prostitutes with johns and when the bigoted masses tightened their grip on the city behind mayor and Klansman John Duvall. From the unseemly to the deviant to the disastrous, Hoosier Andrew E. Stoner brings you lives as out of control as the worst wreck at the Indy 500 with a history as regrettable as it is riveting.

There’s Spirits in them Hills

The wild and ferocious history of the Black Hills has been well documented in cinema and literature—their paranormal past and present less so. From Sturgis and Deadwood to Rapid City and Spearfish, ghastly tales litter the rugged landscape where notorious characters like Wild Bill Hickok, Potato Creek Johnny, and Jack McCall left their mark. Unsolved mysteries like Lame Johnny’s lost treasure and the legend of the Spearfish Sasquatch are shared with each generation. The spectral remnants of menace and murder linger from eerie episodes involving Big Foot Meyers, Poker Alice, and a slain Sturgis mayor.

Author Deborah Cuyle takes readers on a tantalizing tour through the spooky and supernatural side of this infamous western outpost. 

Go behind bars in the Wolverine State.

Almost every Michigan county had a jail, and if those walls could talk, they would speak of colorful sheriffs, vigilant turnkeys, and the motley population of prisoners housed in these county-run inns. St. Joseph County's “big house on the hill” nabbed headlines as the jail that held alleged Capone triggerman Fred “Killer” Burke, known as the most dangerous man alive at the time. Teenage robber Ray Rusch slipped away from the Genesee County Jail using a handful of pepper, and Ingham County Jail suffered from numerous infamous escapes in its day. Illegal hangings perpetrated by bloodthirsty mobs stained the pages of local history in Menominee, St. Clair, Shiawassee, and numerous other counties.

Author and crime historian Tobin T. Buhk leads an unforgettable tour of Michigan’s historic jails.

The murders that shocked Michigan

In the early morning of Tuesday, August 11, 1931, a Washtenaw County farmer found the smoldering remains of a car. Inside were the bodies of four teens, burned almost beyond recognition. Police immediately began an investigation, even tapping Harry Bennett, head of the Ford Motor Company Service Department, for assistance. Three killers stood trial two days later as a mob gathered outside the Ann Arbor Courthouse clamoring for a lynching. With the mob held back by the Michigan National Guard, Bennett delivered the killers to Jackson Prison by midnight Thursday. At the time, the so-called Torch Murders were deemed the most gruesome act of homicide in Michigan’s history—and perhaps the nation’s.

Peeling away myth from truth, author James Mann tells the story in full for the first time ever.

The state of Michigan is home to Great Lakes and greater mysteries.

What made Paige Renkoski abandon her running car on the side of the freeway in broad daylight? Who murdered Eddie Hollman while he slept at his parents’ home? Greg McRoberts died in a hit-and-run accident. Will a mysterious letter writer with knowledge of the crime ever come forward? Ten-year-old Valerie Bishop was murdered after visiting the corner store. Could untested evidence reveal the identity of her killer? Why did Connie Royce walk away from a busy nightclub never to be seen again?

Nina Innsted, host of the Already Gone podcast, leads a journey through the missing, the mysterious, and the unsolved in a quest for answers and justice.

Lovers of true crime and Ohio history will find themselves riveted by these crimes of passion.

There is a thin line between love and hate, and when intense passion threatens that border, blood will flow. Northern Ohio has had its share of people who felt that line snap. In Canton, the Phantom-Flapper Killer shot down her lover in cold blood after he threatened to expose her infidelity to the world. In Toledo, Dorothy Brown’s married boyfriend brutally attacked her when he learned that she was expecting. Max Amerman of Medina was willing to kill for the girl of his dreams, and when Cleveland’s Matilda Waldman believed that her husband was cursed by a witch, she took out the she-devil by way of a pistol.

Author Wendy Koile examines these relationships once bound by love, unraveled by lies, and cut off by murder.

Authors Cary O’Dell and Richard L. Sprehe lead a literary investigation of a brutal cold-case murder. 

In May 1975, in the small Southern Illinois town of Centralia, the body of one of its best-known residents, John Shakespeare, was found nearly nude, bound, and shot, execution-style, in the basement of his home. Shakespeare, sixty-nine, was a wealthy bachelor, an eccentric, an heir to the Shakespeare fishing fortune, a world-renowned collector of vintage cars, and, maybe, a possessor of a few secrets.

Despite the victim being well liked in the community, state and local police, and eventually even the FBI and Interpol, found a plethora of suspects while investigating the crime. Could it have been his longtime business associate? Or the mysterious hitchhiker seen in town just days before his body was found? Or a long-ago name from his past?

The state of Michigan is home to Great Lakes and greater mysteries.

What made Paige Renkoski abandon her running car on the side of the freeway in broad daylight? Who murdered Eddie Hollman while he slept at his parents’ home? Greg McRoberts died in a hit-and-run accident. Will a mysterious letter writer with knowledge of the crime ever come forward? Ten-year-old Valerie Bishop was murdered after visiting the corner store. Could untested evidence reveal the identity of her killer? Why did Connie Royce walk away from a busy nightclub never to be seen again?

Nina Innsted, host of the Already Gone podcast, leads a journey through the missing, the mysterious, and the unsolved in a quest for answers and justice.

Join author Tim Younkman for a wild ride into Bay City’s wicked side.

From unscrupulous lumber barons to Hell's Half Mile, Bay City history casts a sinister shadow. Pope Leo XIII was forced to intervene when rioting Catholic immigrants seized St. Stanislaus Catholic Church and battled one another in the city's streets. The police discovered prostitute Lou Hall nearly beaten to death in the Block of Blazes. And respected publishing mogul Edwin T. Bennett's secret life led to the death of a young woman in a Bay City hotel room.

Present-day Fishers, Indiana, is one of the safest places to live in the U.S., but this respectable city has a rough and rowdy past.

Starting off as a small railroad community, Fishers attracted its fair share of drifters, and the whiskey flowed like water. It may have been small, but the lawless town made national headlines on more than one occasion. A two-day bar brawl led to one death and dozens of injuries and required the Sheriff to restore order. A sensational trial exposed mass grave robberies and led to legislative changes. James Redwine became the town's first homicide victim over a Christmas turkey shootout. Author Robert Bowling explores the history of this once small town and the misdeeds that thrust it into the national spotlight.