True Crime

Name: True Crime Stories of the South
Brand: Cathy Pickens
SKU: 9781540299789
Price: 34.99 USD
Availability: InStock

The True Crime American history book series dispels the shadows surrounding the insidious true crime stories that have gripped local communities. Cut through the myths and mistakes that plagued Brenda Joyce Holland’s murder case. Join the excavation of the mass grave of fifty-five railroad workers at Duffy’s Cut. Meet the infamous gangsters of Buffalo, New York, the outlaws of Western Pennsylvania, and the morally bankrupt moguls of Cleveland’s Millionaires’ Row. Featuring evidence from law enforcement, newspaper archives, and eyewitness accounts, these true crime books will force readers to look at their towns in a new light. [View all True Crime books]

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True Crime Stories of the South

Hardcover

$34.99

Marple's Gretchen Harrington Tragedy

Hardcover

$34.99

The Murder of John Shakespeare

Hardcover

$34.99

The Original Battle Creek Crime King

Paperback

$21.99

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland

Paperback

$21.99

San Luis Obispo County Outlaws

Missouri's Murderous Matrons

Injustice on the Eastern Shore

Paperback

$23.99

Justice in the Midlands

Paperback

$24.99 $12.50 Save 50%

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True Crime Stories of the South

9781540299789

$34.99

Discover the South's Most Notorious Murders, Mysteries, and Criminal Masterminds

Journey from Texas to Virginia in this gripping collection of haunting criminal cases. Follow a relentless serial killer as he leaves a bloody trail across Louisiana and beyond, witness a cunning lonely-hearts swindler terrorize Texas, and uncover Arkansas's bizarre wave of strychnine poisonings that baffled investigators. Experience the supernatural when a West Virginia murder is revealed through dreams and meet a one-armed conjure-man whose murder-for-hire schemes shocked North Carolina.

Watch forensic science evolve as crimefighters expand their arsenal of detection tools in this compelling tour of the South's most notorious crimes, where fact proves stranger than fiction.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist’s eye to the sinister South and its defining—and quirky—crime stories.

Marple's Gretchen Harrington Tragedy

9781540299796

$34.99

In this revised and expanded edition, a harrowing new arrest in the cold case, intense trial and key developments are presented alongside the original narrative.

Friday, August 15, 1975, began as a typical summer day in the suburbs. Young children played with their friends; adults prepared for work or planned for their vacation at the Jersey Shore...

That all changed in the hours before noon, when Gretchen Harrington, the eight-year-old daughter of a Presbyterian minister and his wife, was kidnapped while walking to a Vacation Bible School less than a quarter mile from her house. Her body was found by a jogger in a state park nearly two months later. The crime forever changed the lives of the children who were about Gretchen’s age and their parents, many of whom chose to live in Marple Township because they considered it a safe refuge from the crime-ridden streets of Philadelphia.

Journalists Mike Mathis and Joanna Falcone Sullivan examine the kidnapping, murder, nearly five-decade-long investigation.

The Murder of John Shakespeare

9781540299765

$34.99

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 Original Battle Creek Crime King

9781467119290

$21.99

Adam Pump Arnold was both feared and regaled in Victorian- era Battle Creek. He was a bootlegger and a pimp, a robber and a con artist, an arsonist and a loan shark and even an assassin. Arnold faced off with the city over illegal liquor sales and flaunted his victory with a life-size statue of the mayor dressed as a hobo. Called the greatest criminal in the history of Battle Creek, Arnold was convicted in a captivating public trial for the murder of his own son. Join authors Blaine Pardoe and Victoria Hester as they explore the life and misdeeds of the unabashed criminal mastermind who rocked Battle Creek to its core.

Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland

9781467119535

$21.99

The 1917 election of Mayor George Luis Baker ushered a long era of unscrupulous greed into Portland government. While supposedly enforcing prohibition laws, Baker ordered police chief Leon Jenkins to control and profit from the bootlegging market. Baker filled city coffers and his friends' pockets with booze-soaked cash while sensational headlines like the 1929 affair between policeman Bill Breuning and informant Anna Schrader scandalized the city. Maligned in the press, Schrader executed a bitter campaign to recall the mayor. In 1933, a hired gunman murdered special investigator to the governor Frank Aiken a day before he would have filed a report on corruption in the city government. Authors JD Chandler and Theresa Griffin Kennedy unearth the salacious details of Baker's crooked administration in a revelatory account of prohibition in the Rose City.

San Luis Obispo County Outlaws

9781625859266

$21.99

California was a wild and lawless place in the 1850s, and San Luis Obispo County was no exception. Outlaws and bandits passed along the El Camino Real, now Highway 101, leaving a trail of victims. Despite attempts to stem the tide of crime with a vigilante committee and a string of executions, notorious men continued to be drawn to the central coast well into the next century. The James brothers, the Daltons and even Al Capone made their mark here, while lawmen worked to tame this piece of the western frontier. Author Jim Gregory details nefarious activities lost to time.

Richmond in Ragtime

9781596294431

$24.99

The three years from 1909 to 1911 were busy ones in Richmond, what with the misadventures of Adon A. Yoder, a muckraking
pamphleteer who gets beaten up, sued and thrown in jail; the organizing of women like Lila Meade Valentine to fight for their right to vote; the art of sculptor Ferruccio Legnaioli; the novels of Ellen Glasgow, Mary Johnston and James Branch Cabell; increased restrictions against African Americans; a public spectacle surrounding the murder trial of Henry Clay Beattie Jr.; exotic flying machines and automobile endurance contests; and the recording of Polk Miller and his Old South Quartette. Join local author Harry Kollatz Jr. (True Richmond Stories) as he revives the city of a century ago for a tour of Richmond in ragtime.

Missouri's Murderous Matrons

9781467140720

$21.99

At the turn of the twentieth century, people in Missouri experienced unexpected and horrible deaths due to arsenic. Two different women in two different areas of Missouri, and for two different reasons, used arsenic as a means to get what they wanted. Emma Heppermann, a black widow killer, craved money. Bertha Gifford, an angel of mercy, took sick people into her home and nursed them to death. Follow the trails of these women who murdered for decades before being tried and convicted. From Wentzville to Steelville, Emma left a trail of bodies. And Bertha is suspected of killing almost 10 percent of the population of the little town of Catawissa. Authors Victoria Cosner and Lorelei Shannon offer the gruesome history of Missouri’s murderous matrons.

Trial and Error

9781596290358

$24.99

The city of Georgetown, South Carolina, is situated along the Atlantic coast where the Sampit River feeds into Winyah Bay. The early wealth of the area through 1865 was derived from an agricultural economy built on the backs of slave labor. This economy and the institution of slavery collapsed with the emancipation of the black population after the Civil War. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, Georgetown remained marred with inequalities between blacks and whites despite efforts to achieve a racial and cultural balance. In Trial and Error, Tom Rubillo explores the volatile case of John Brownfield—a black man tried for shooting a white policeman in the 1900s—and the Jim Crow mentality that was imbedded in the turn-of-the-century South. The result is a stirring narrative that examines the history of race relations in Georgetown, the trial of John Brownfield and the impact of the trial through the twentieth century to the present day. With meticulous research and engaging prose, Rubillo reconstructs the case and trial that became a watershed for race relations in Georgetown. Trial and Error is an essential volume in the history of Georgetown, the South Carolina Lowcountry and indeed the South as a whole.

Murder in Visalia

9781625859808

$21.99

“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.

Injustice on the Eastern Shore

9781626199422

$23.99

Lynching rumors simmered as journalists descended on the small town of Millington, Maryland, in the spring of 1892. The frenzy focused on nine African American men and boys—some as young as fifteen—accused of murdering Dr. James Heighe Hill, who was white. Prosecutors portrayed this as retribution for the Christmas Eve slaying of Thomas Campbell, an African American, for which no one faced criminal charges. Hill's alleged assailants were tried as a group before three white judges. Although some were clearly bystanders, all but one were convicted and sentenced. Four were executed by hanging, and the rest died in prison. Using court records, contemporary accounts and newspapers, author G. Kevin Hemstock narrates the tragic and compelling story of justice denied on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Justice in the Midlands

9781467145428

$24.99 $12.50 Save 50%

The murder of Ron "Little Red'? Beasley is one of the most bizarre murder cases in Midlands history solved after 30 years. Beasley's murder was originally ruled a suicide, but his family and his friend Herman Young refused to believe. This mystery, with a background of macabre events and colorful characters, remained unsolved since 1967. Beasley's murder was originally ruled a suicide, but his family and his friend Herman Young refused to believe. And when Beasley's wife was convicted of murdering her second husband, they grew even more suspicious. Young went on to become sheriff of Fairfield County and made it his mission to find the truth. Join author Lou Sahadi as he details the gruesome details of a murder, two dramatic court trials and the untiring work of a lawman to find justice for his friend.