CLEWS Your Home for Historic True Crime

Books and links

Gold Medal Killer (Marquette Books) by Diana Britt Franklin is a recommended story, a fast and fascinating case study.

The murderer at issue is Ohio State University Professor James Snook. He distinguishes himself in the pantheon of mistress-killers by boasting an Olympic gold medal. He is the only recipient of same to be executed for murder.

Professor Snook is a classic character, the lecherous professor. As his own Dean would later say of him, he was "a delinquent who for many years had carried the title of full professor in a great university. Under the academic cloak, he carried on affairs so secretly and skillfully that not even his most intimate associates discovered them...." (Read: psychopath.)

The exceptionally brutal manner in which he killed his last young mistress is shocking even to the jaded 21st-century student of crime. No less scandalous is the admitted killer's testimony on the witness stand that in a phrase could be called the "rough sex defense." In other words, the killer himself used his testimony to savage his victim's reputation.

Needless to say this case in its day sold some newspapers and inspired some impressive allocution from the trial lawyers.

Author Franklin very much impressed me with her award-winning book The Good-Bye Door about Anna Marie Hahn, which also so happens to be the all-time best-selling book on this site. Kudos to the author for finding another fascinating story from the annals of Buckeye history.

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And some links recommended by our fellow aficionados of true crime ....

An interesting review of Monster by Allan Hall

Top 5 True Crime Reality Shows

links in the theme

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
--Emerson

I once felt bad about the size of the pile of books on my nightstand, but now I am reconciled and take comfort in the fact that I will never run out of good true crime books to read and review. When I die, I'll have a half-dozen sitting there. In the good long meantime...at least I'll never have to resort to reading the fiction books that Simon & Schuster keeps sending me over my protest. Up next are new true murder stories by Diana Britt Franklin and Harold Schechter. Here are more recommended books and links.

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One of the best essays I've ever read about psychopaths, I had to have a hard copy of this article by Ian Mulgrew for the Vancouver Sun... Multiple murderer Kembo joins the ranks of bloodthirsty psychopaths who repel but fascinate

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Amanda Knox: Seattle author talks about 'Murder in Italy' (on Candace Dempsey's book)

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The Daily Beast comes up with the Best True Crime Books

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I think the best term for this review is back-handed.

'Presumed Dead,' by Henry K. Lee (reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle)

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Convicted milk-shake murderer Nancy Kissel to be Retried - TIME

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Book by journalism professor traces birth of forensic science in Jazz Age New York

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'Flawless' - A Chronicle of a Diamond Heist - Boston Globe   

True crime award finalists and more links in the theme

"Murder may be the number one social taboo, but boy is it spellbinding."

--Mark Schatzker, Toronto Globe and Mail

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The Arthur Ellis Award gives a nod to the best Canadian true crime book of the year. And the 2010 nominees are... 

 Patick Brode - The Slasher Killings (Painted Turtle Press )

Ed Butts - Line of Fire (Dundurn)

Alex Caine - The Fat Mexican (Random House of Canada)

Terry Gould - Murder without Borders (Random House of Canada)

Jerry Langton - Biker (John Wiley & Sons)

Victor Malarek - The Johns (Key Porter Books)

Robert Remington and Sherri Zickefoose - Runaway Devil (McClelland )

Stephen Schneider - Iced (John Wiley & Sons)

Trisha Smith - Holiday in Hell ( Asteroid Publishing Inc )

John Smith - The Wolf and the Sheepdog (Author House)

Jon Wells -Post-Mortem and Vanished (John Wiley & Sons)

*I've only read the first one, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Canadian true crime aficionados are spoiled.

Chart via

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A gruesome term for a murderer even I hadn't heard before ... caesarean kidnapper. Here's an old example.

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My new favorite time-waster: "25 Best True Crime Books"

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Grace Humiston, Lady Detective, Rescued from Obscurity

CLEWS featured a bit of the story of an extraordinary female attorney in New York by the name of Grace Humiston in How the Feminine Sherlock Holmes Solved the Disappearance of Ruth Cruger. Now I am advised that a new book will feature more of her story. I received this lovely note from the author announcing a tale with Grace Humiston in a prominent role. I had never heard of the Stielow case before but it certainly sounds as though it, too, deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

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Dear Ms. James:

I remember some time ago you were bemoaning the lack of any authoritative details on the life of Grace Humiston. Thought you might like to know that my new book SLAUGHTER ON A SNOWY MORN: A Tale of Murder, Corruption and the Death Penalty Case that Revolutionized the American Courtroom (Icon Books; Amazon) helps to set the record straight.

It tells the harrowing story of Charles Stielow, an upstate New York farmhand who, in 1915, was condemned to Sing Sing's death row for a double murder that he didn't commit. He was a victim of phony expert witnesses, crooked investigators and a brutal third degree interrogation that produced an alleged confession. Stielow had four dates with the chair, once coming within 40 minutes of being executed before a stay was phoned through to the prison. Stielow's plight sparked considerable controversy and Grace Humiston was asked to investigate. Going undercover, Grace set out to find the evidence that might save Stielow.

What she and others unearthed was shocking. Ultimately their efforts provoked a gubernatorial inquiry into the case, one that resulted in Stielow being pardoned and led directly to the establishment of modern ballistics analysis. Grace Humiston's pivotal role in this landmark case if fully examined, as are details of her extraordinarily colorful life. She really was a remarkable woman. The book is being published on July 15, 2010.

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CLEWS gives its best wishes to author Colin Evans for his especially good taste in subjects.

A New Borowitz Book

One of my very favorite authors, honored true crime historian, essayist, collector, philosopher, and retired trial lawyer Albert Borowitz, has penned a book that explores the intersection of music and murder. It is of course from Kent State University Press. The book is Musical Mysteries: From Mozart to John Lennon. I'm sure already that as a read it's meticulous and...um... fun.

 

Borowitz's Blood and Ink: An International Guide to Fact-Based Crime Literature (Kent State University Press, 2002) is the best book ever written on its subject.

A Postcard from Braintree

So I received a fascinating note from author James D. Livingston (who, when not professoring at MIT, writes true crime stories and soon-to-be published Arsenic and Clam Chowder: Murder in Gilded A ge  New York, which comes out in July) who writes of Sacco and Vanzetti and Amy Bishop.

(By  James   Livingston)

      It is my luck to live in South Braintree, less than three miles from the site of the 1920 robbery/murder for which Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927. Considering the historical importance of this case, I had always been a bit surprised there was no historical marker at the site, but Braintree officials had apparently felt this was not something the town should be proud of.

One local historian had been arguing with them for over 20 years, and yesterday, on the 90th anniversary of the crime, he finally got his way. A small monument was erected, not to Sacco and Vanzetti, but in memory of the two murder victims. There was also a panel discussion of the case at the town hall last night, and an exhibit has been assembled. It includes, among many other things, the steel cage in which S & V sat during their trial and their death masks. In the panel discussion and the long Q&A following, all the experts seemed to agree that S&V did not receive a fair trial, and were probably convicted more for being gun-toting anarchists than for any clear evidence linking them to the Braintree crime.

In 1977, on the 50th anniversary of the executions, Governor Mike Dukakis issued a formal proclamation that they were unjustly convicted (but was criticized for not reaching out to the families of the victims, which Braintree has now done). The issue of whodunit still remains unclear, as it often does in cases of true crime.

Since this case of historical true crime is as least as famous as those of Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper, I thought you might be interested that Braintree is finally coming to grips with some of the darker aspects of its history. Today it is in the news again as the town in which Amy Bishop, the professor who recently shot and killed several of her colleagues at the University of Alabama, shot and killed her brother back in 1986. It was ruled accidental at the time, but the case is now being re-examined as a result of the Alabama shootings.

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On the senator who stood up to the Purple Gang - and lost

The gangland slaying of Michigan Senator Warren G. Hooper was such shocking news in 1945 that it swept war headlines from the front pages of newspapers across the Midwest. Decades later, his brutal death is still something of a mystery.

Senator Hooper, elected from Albion, had made the courageous decision to testify in a probe of rampant government corruption, a legacy of Prohibition. His was to be the critical evidence in the investigation. He was slain before he got the chance.

Warren Hooper was ambushed on his way home from the capitol in Lansing to his home near Albion. That a public servant could be taken out so brutally and blatantly by a gang of thugs seemed like something born of the nineteenth century west and was a tremendous shock at the time. The image above is from www.newspaperarchive.com and typifies the banner headlines the murder generated. (The top-of-page-one, very graphic photograph of the senator's body in situ was also typical of the time.)

A new book about this old puzzle will come out in November. It fictionalizes the case. It is To Account for Murder by William Whitbeck (New York: Permanent Press), who so happens to be Chief Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals.  Thus the author is continuing a Michigan tradition; Michigan Supreme Court Justice John Voelker (better known as Robert Traver) was the author of Anatomy of a Murder, another thinly fictionalized account of a true murder case and one of the most phenomenally successful titles of its type and time.

For more about Judge Whitbeck's book, which is already commanding attention in Michigan, see the publisher's site.

New books

New Mexico Mystery A new book by author Corey Recko has gotten much buzz.

Murder on the White Sands: The Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain [Amazon; B&N] (University of North Texas Press) has been hailed as an award-winning, impeccably researched look at an unsolved double homicide from New Mexico Territory.

The victims were a man who crusaded against cattle rustlers and his eight-year-old son. The disappearance of Albert Jennings Fountain and Henry Fountain has haunted the state and has been called its greatest murder mystery.

This title, it is said, replaces more than a century of rumor and supposing with as many facts as can be gleaned, and the author's nicely done website promises that the book reveals at least some partial truths about the mystery.

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San Francisco's Colorful Crime History is presented in photos and text in Historic Photos of San Francisco Crime [Amazon; B&N; Turner Publishing] celebrates the storied city's most infamous characters and places.

Included in the collection are photographs of some of the most infamous prisons in the world, Alcatraz and San Quentin. The cases highlighted include the notorious murder defendant Fatty Arbuckle.

Historian Hannah Clayborn culled nearly two hundred images from libraries and museums, including the Library of Congress, for a narrated visual tour of the criminal history of the city by the bay.

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Other new books getting good press are The Best American Crime Reporting 2009, edited by Jeffrey Toobin (which got a thumbs-up in a thoughtful review by the Minneapolis Star Tribune) and another that made it onto my To Get list (even though it's set in New York) with a terrific Publishers Weekly review.

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Pulitzer-winning science writer Deborah Blum was hailed as "enthralling" -- a word this genre doesn't see every day. The book follows the careers of two forensic pioneers in the Big Apple. The author "cleverly divides her narrative by poison," per the gushing reviewer in PW, which to me sounds like an interesting if unorthodox way to tell a story.

The cream of the crop

So I received a gigantic pile of brand-new true crime paperbacks for my birthday and cheerily dug in to what I thought would be weeks of good reading. Unfortunately, I got through all of them in less than a week. Almost every book was poorly done. And even that's being generous.

When I read a true crime book, I want to know three things: why, why, and why. Why did the victim make the choices s/he did? Why did the killer do what s/he did? Why did this person end up dead? Some details cast light on these questions. Alas, some authors can compose 300-page books packed with details that don't even come close to answering the fundamental query.

Most writers in the pile bored me to skimming with the wrong details. Who cares to know which brand of camera was used to take the autopsy photos? Apparently some authors think this is such an important point that they dwell on it.

Why is it necessary to write two hundred pages about the trial? That's not the story. Who cares where the judge went to law school? What time the trial began? The occupations of each juror? I really don't think any true crime fans want a long, drawn-out account of a trial. (And this is coming from a trial lawyer!)

But there was one book that did not disappoint. Suspenseful, insightful, considered, and aimed at answering the great why, the best book of the bunch, by far, was Deadly Secrets by M. William Phelps. I would call it a fatal love triangle, except I don't think that there was any love involved. The story of a manipulative psychopath, Fred Andros, and the women he destroyed is also a good cure for gullibility (not to mention the seven-year itch).

The next time my DH wants to surprise me with my favorite reading material, I think I'll nudge him with a list of authors - with this one at the top.  

True crime title cracks Amazon's Top 100 for 2009

In the Top 100 Amazon's best books of 2009 doesn't even include a true crime category. Not that Amazon's opinion on anything is worth consideration. I hate that company. Anyway, there was one true crime book published this year that managed to crack the list (at 97) of Top 100 Amazon Sellers in 2009. The book was Columbine by Dave Cullen.

Named as Notable True crime author Mardi Link's second book, Isadore's Secret, was named a Michigan Notable Book, which is a pretty big deal around here. Details!

Controversy continues The most controversial true crime book of 2009 was hands-down In the Middle of the Night by Brian McDonald, and the dust-up isn't over.

Celebrating 900,000 hits CLEWS rolled the odometer again on Christmas Day. Hm. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch would wag a finger at us all for indulging our true crime habit on that day. Commenting on MSNBC's Christmas Day true crime marathon, a columnist said "That's just wrong." What condescension! Is Bad Santa really better than Dateline? Bah, humbug! No Christmas is complete for this true crime fan without homage to John Waters.