True Crime

Before Butch Cassidy, there was Patrick Coughlin.

It began with the theft of some strawberries from a street peddler in Park City, Utah Territory, in 1895. By the time it was over, two lawmen were dead, and Patrick Coughlin was facing a firing squad. The young gunslinger, in a desperate bid to escape the punishment for his initial crime, caused one of the most thrilling manhunts in the state’s history. The outlaw and his sidekick went on a crime spree, escalating from stealing horses to gunfights, all with the posse tailing them, ending in a shootout at a remote cabin. When Patrick Coughlin was finally recaptured and tried, he would become the first prisoner sentenced to death in the state.

Join author and lawyer Brian Craig as he recounts the thrilling story of Patrick Coughlin, Utah’s original desperado.

Revel at the tales of these locals boys from Southwestern Pennsylvania going west to seek their Sin City dreams.

As turmoil rocked New Castle in the 1970s, a group of young men completed their military service and came home to a bleak future. Without college degrees or marketable skills, they found few options in Western Pennsylvania. Looking for a better life, they turned their eyes west.

Las Vegas promised women, gambling, excitement, and the chance to make a buck. Over their decades on the floors of Sin City’s casinos, they would rub shoulders with gangsters and stars and keep a sharp eye out for opportunity—and for card counters.

Based on hours of exclusive interviews, author Dale Perelman unfolds this cavalier group’s frolicking adventures as they navigated their way from the belly of the downtown Golden Gate to some of the Strip’s premier casinos, all while teetering along the right side of the law.

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.