CLEWS Your Home for Historic True Crime

I have solved a 175-year-old murder mystery - Praslin!

Le mystère de Praslin est résolu. Après des années d'études aboutissant à un coup de génie, j'ai découvert le véritable mobile des crimes impliquant Théobald de Choiseul-Praslin, duc de Praslin et Fanny Sebastiani-Praslin, duchesse de Praslin. Cette nouvelle théorie du cas répond aux questions centrales. Cela concorde avec toutes les preuves. Cela explique complètement la conduite de tant de personnes qui, pendant si longtemps, nous ont tous déconcertés. Je parie mes dents de devant que la majorité des lecteurs du livre que je termine actuellement seront d'accord. J'attends mon passeport pour visiter les Archives Nationales de France et tout lire dans cinq cases marquées Praslin, CC 808 à 812. Je veux tout relire une dernière fois avant de publier la solution. L'une des énigmes psychologiques les plus complexes de l'histoire du meurtre a maintenant été résolue après 175 ans.

The Mystery of Praslin is solved. After years of study culminating in a stroke of genius, I figured out the  true motive behind the crimes involving Theobald de Choiseul-Praslin, Duke of Praslin and Fanny Sebastiani-Praslin, Duchess of Praslin. This new theory of the case answers the central questions. It is consistent with all of the evidence. It completely explains the conduct of so many that for so long baffled us all. I will bet my front teeth that a majority of readers of the book I am finishing now will agree. I am waiting for my passport so I can visit the French National Archives and read everything in five boxes marked Praslin, CC 808 to 812. I want to reread it all one last time before I publish the solution. One of the most complex psychological puzzles in the history of murder has now been solved after 175 years.

 

Legends of True Crime Reporting: Bernard O'Donnell

Bernard O'Donnell was a true crime essay writer whose work appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world in the middle of the 20th century. I recognized his name when I found this tattered old 1950s paperback collection of his essays.

What fantastic cover art! The artist is identified as Lou Marchetti.

I found this gem at John King Books in Detroit, which is a reliable source of true crime wonders. The book is The world's worst women (Pyramid Books 1956). 

I haven't found out much more about O'Donnell yet. He was born in 1885. I have now read and liked two books he wrote, the other was The Old Bailey and its Trials, so I am looking for the rest -- Crimes that made news, Cavalcade of Justice, Should women hang, The world's strangest murders,  and a chapter of The black murders.

All I can add right now is that I think he's a fantastic writer, and his essays are fairly reliable, although he never cites his sources. I get the impression he was American but spent a lot of time in Europe, based on his language and subject selection. But I'm guessing. 

In this book, he offers us essays on a bevy of deadly beauties, some obscure and therefore doubly interesting to me. Included are the stories of Martha Wise, the housewife from Hardscrabble, Ohio, who poisoned seventeen; Ilse Koch, the Red Witch of Buchenwald and her evil twin Irma Grese of Belsen; Katherine and Philomene Schmidt and their attorney Sarret of France; they were Bavarian sisters living in Marseilles. They are credited here with the invention of the acid bath method. 

Other, familiar female fiends include Jeanne Weber (Ogress of Paris), Grete Beier, Belle Gunness, Antoinette Scieri (a poison nurse), Dr. Zeo Zoe Wilkins, swindler Editha Loleta Jackson, Countess Marie Tarnowska, Marie Becker (Belgium's answer to Anna Hahn), and my favorite, Vera Renczi of Yugoslavia, who hoarded corpses. Thirty-five of them. They were her lovers. She embalmed them alive with arsenic. 

I'm ready to let go of this book, which I have worn to tatters, and put it back into circulation, and I will be happy to send it to the first person to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope. Email me at schotzzie at gmail dot com!

When, where, and why women kill: The Stats

"In revenge and in love woman is far more barbarous than man." - Nietzsche

It is interesting to pull back from the study of individual cases to look at the broad patterns of crime and put the individuals in context. When women kill (SUNY Press 1996) by Coramae Richey Mann [Amazon ...  SUNY Press] from the SUNY Series in Violence reviews the research from the 1950s to the 1990s on female homicide offenders.  The author also did original research, studying hundreds of female murderers in six U.S. cities. Interesting patterns emerge that do not change much over time.  

Of course, no human society has ever produced women who kill as often as their men. Women are roughly 15 percent of those arrested for violent crime. That number does not seem to change much over the generations. They commit the same types of homicides (justifiable, excusable, vehicular, negligent, intentional). Their motives are the same as men (self-defense, accident, defense of others, alcohol, mental illness, rage, jealousy, revenge, robbery).  

Where there are differences: women tend to kill in their own home or the victim's home (or both) (70 percent). The female homicide offender has an average age of 31.  Women become murderers at an older age than men. Women are more likely to kill at night than during the day. Women usually kill in anger in the kitchen with a knife or in jealousy or rage in the bedroom with a gun. 

Female-on-female homicide is extremely rare; women usually kill men or children. When a woman kills her lover, it's usually in the bedroom (22 percent), sometimes the den or the yard, the driveway, the alley behind the pub. Lizzie Borden aside, axes or hatchets are rarely chosen by women as weapons. Poison is unheard-of today. Guns are used in the majority of cases and a knife a third of the time. Usually there is a single gunshot or stab wound.

This book also examined the punishment of female offenders, such as it is; women do get preferential treatment, no question of it.

A woman can call the police, announce her murder plans, and kill a man in public view of his entire set and more or less get away with it. The studies say so (though some outlier studies say otherwise) but -- the anecdotes in the book are shocking. Here is one to end this review and prove the point:

At about 2:20 on a Sunday morning, Amy, twenty-seven. here, min why was ten years her senior, in the walkway to her parent. Although both had been drinking for hours prior to the murder, they had not been drinking together. Earlier that Saturday the couple had argued, and Amy called the police to say that she was going to kill her lover. Witnesses later reported that the victim was beating Amy in the street that evening and hanging her head against a wall. Amy admitted going to her mother's house and obtaining a shotgun from her mother's boyfriend. When the mother's boyfriend tried to stop her, she shot in the air, reloaded the gun, and went looking for the victim at his friends' houses. Upon returning to her home, she found him waiting for her. As the victim walked toward her, Amy claimed that somehow the shotgun went off and the homicide was an accident. Despite having a prior arrest for felonious assault with a deadly weapon and another for cruelty to a child, Amy was charged with voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to one year in jail, with three years' probation plus a fine.

 

Review - My Brother the Killer

My brother the killer: a family story by Alix Sharkey [Amazon GoodReads B&N HarperCollins] is an absorbing and well-written memoir by a journalist who staggered from the blow of having his younger brother arrested for a shocking murder. The disappearance of Danielle Jones, a pretty 15-year-old girl from Essex, was traced to her uncle, Stuart James Campbell, who sits in prison today for the crime, unwilling to cooperate.

The book is riveting and brutally honest, from all indications. I was especially absorbed by the author's descriptions of a tough working class childhood, a searing and memorable portrait of his father, and painful accounts of conversations with his brother in which he looks at the man with new eyes. "If I tell the truth," Alix Sharkey states, "maybe you will, too."

Recommended for the true crime set, especially those with an interest in memoirs with unusual takes and stories to tell.

Review - A Killer by Design - Another Profiler's Story

Here is another solid entry in the bourgeoning genre of FBI profiler memoirs. A killer by design: murderers, mindhunters, and my quest to decipher the criminal mind (Hachette 2021) is by Ann Wolbert Burgess.

In an informal, at-the-next-barstool tone, she relays stories of the early days of the development of formal psychological profiling of violent sex offenders. [Amazon B&N Goodreads]

Burgess, with a background in psychiatric nursing, made a name for herself in the 1970s with groundbreaking research on rape victims and rape trauma syndrome. She was recruited by the FBI to study sexual homicide alongside such pioneers as Roy Hazelwood, John Douglas, and Robert Ressler (who in turn were building on the work of Howard Teten and Patrick Mullany, who helped found the Behavioral Science Unit in 1972, which in turn was inspired in part by early 'profiling' such as in New York's Mad Bomber case from 1956). 

Burgess tells behind-the scenes stories relating to the infamous cases of John Joseph Joubert IV, David Mierhofer, Bernadette Protti, Brian James Dugan, Jon Barry Simonis, Edmund Kemper, the BTK killer Dennis Rader, and Henry Louis Wallace.

I appreciated the author making it clear in her introduction that "I have remained faithful to the reality of events as they occurred."

There is no discussion of some of the controversies around profiling or miscarriages of justice that occasionally result, nor much discussion of the retired profilers' habit of taking up defense work. Regardless, it is an interesting collection of anecdotes for armchair G-men. 

 

 

An Insulting Read: The strange new book 'Murder at Teal's Pond'

If there were a literary award for genre outliers, I might nominate Murder at Teal's Pond [Amazon Goodreads B&N] for the Barely True Crime Award because it manages to flout so many genre conventions in one short book. 

The premise is an interesting one. The television phenomenon Twin Peaks had as its central question, who killed Laura Palmer? There was a real-life Laura Palmer whose murder inspired the show. The murder victim's name was Hazel Drew. 

The TV show Twin Peaks was inspired by a 1908 case in which a pretty, young, single woman from Sand Lake, New York was found in a pond, murdered. The case was never solved. Not even close. It was apparently never really investigated, because there weren't many clews. The official records are long gone. Utterly undaunted, authors David Bushman and Mark T. Givens offer a case history. The book does begin with a fascinating introduction in which Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost explains how a case he heard about from his grandmother's gossip "lodged in a corner of my mind". Years later, that mysterious local woman found floating dead in a pond would become 'Laura Palmer', the mysterious murder victim (also inspired by the noir film Laura), the main character in Twin Peaks. 

If only Mark Frost had written the entire book.... 

After the introduction, the book about Hazel Drew's case takes a strange turn. The authors begin with a list of characters, Dramatis Personae. Am I supposed to read this? It's full of spoilers! It feels like homework.

They then launch into the story by describing their research process and some false trails. This is a test of the reader's patience.

These authors then steal fiction techniques, narrating a portion of the story from the victim's point of view, which is very rare in the true crime genre, but they soon abandon this Capote-esque device and get about the story, thereafter manufacturing extensive passages of dialogue among secondary characters, once again rarely seen in the true crime genre. 

What follows are 250 pages of names -- of everyone ever mentioned in the matter. Detectives, family, friends of the victim, every witness with any remote connection, the men in her life. The list is dizzying. At one point, this remarkable sentence appears: "After the detectives had talked to the Hoffays and followed up with the Rollmans and Gundrum, Powers returned to Troy, leaving Ulmer behind in the country." Got that?

These authors promise early on that they have solved the unsolved mystery. The authors state, "We do... believe we've uncovered the murderer, and we make a pretty strong case for the prosecution. The solution is explosive. Read on to find out who - and why." But they didn't. And that is a literary true crime. Promising readers a strong and explosive solution to an unsolved murder, and then failing to deliver, is a misdemeanor assault upon the intelligence of the reader. 

Claiming that your book is "a brilliantly researched reinvestigation" when it has no footnotes and its only sources are newspapers and books on local history is another insult.

Moreover, it seemed to me while reading this story that the case of Hazel Drew is not very mysterious. She was probably a prostitute, although that did not occur to these authors.

But the clews were there.

She was last seen alive walking down a country road at night (and why do poor single women do this?). Various witnesses saw her walking on Taborton Road (a busy road, then). Her family seemed secretive and indifferent to her fate... She knew half the men in town... all those men denied knowing her... she was often seen hanging around the train station.... she was strangled.

And yet these authors conclude that the murder of Hazel Drew is "a cautionary tale about the dangers of walking through the foreboding woods of Taborton on dark summer nights." That is almost poetic, when in truth, the murder of Hazel Drew is a cautionary tale about the dangers of walking through the foreboding woods of prostitution. This book might have been more interesting if it had stated the obvious, or delved into why the fictional version of Hazel Drew was cleaned up for television. 

In real life, Hazel Drew was the daughter of an unemployed alcoholic layabout. On TV, Laura Palmer was the daughter of a prominent attorney. 

I might go on, but there is a pile of books at my elbow that promises more conventional true crime fare. I agree with the Kirkus review that this book is best left to fans of Twin Peaks. It was obviously not written for true crime fans, who can barely stomach it. 

Review - Crimes of Passion by Howard Engel - Art Requires Blood!

Howard Engel, an award-winning mystery writer, studied true crime stories for years. Eventually his notebook reached a critical mass, resulting in this interesting book of curated true crime stories. The book is Crimes of passion: an unblinking look at murderous love (Buffalo, New York: Firefly Books 2002).

I like this book for its full-throated defense of the true crime genre and its odd collection of cases known and obscure.

True crime must be faithfully reported, the author reminds us as he explores the well-plowed fields filled with the likes of Ruth Ellis, Jean Harris, Juliet Hulme (Anne Perry), Yvonne Chevallier, Dr. Crippen, Snyder & Gray, Thompson & Bywaters, OJ Simpson, Lizzie Borden, Susan Smith, Elizabeth Workman,  etc.

Some of his essays are very amusing (Lorena Bobbitt) and some are ridiculous and I would recommend this book for its storytelling alone. He does have a bibliography, but I winced when I saw it, as I recognize that there are some prolific true crime encyclopedia writers who are reliably unreliable. 

Anyway, Howard Engel mentions some obscure crimes, mostly European, with a murder connoisseur's good eye for the interesting (Cyril Belshaw, Peter Hogg, Jean Liger, Ralph Klassen, Kenneth Peacock). 

The author also explores the intersection of true crime and high art and literature - Shakespeare, Dante. 

To prove the point, he begins with the case of Francesa de Rimini, who fell in love with her husband’s handsome younger brother Paolo but was alas caught with him in flagrante delicto. Her husband killed them both at once. The case has inspired everyone from Dante (Inferno) to Tchaikovsky.

Without true crime, there is no Carmen or Hamlet. Or any crime fiction worth a fig, as the finest crime fiction writers recognize, at length.

 

Review - Murdered by His Wife (Bathsheba Spooner)

Murdered by his wife: An absorbing tale of crime and punishment in 18th-Century Massachusetts by Deborah Navas (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) tells the story of black widow Bathsheba Spooner.  It is one of my all-time favorite case studies and a classic in the true crime genre. The author's meticulous research and thoughtful yet concise narration make this a quick, interesting read about an important case.

The author stated her commitment to making the record "as accurate as possible" to "do justice to the empirical truth in facts, as they come to be known, in order to intuit the far more profound, disturbing, and mysterious truths of the heart." 

Bathsheba Spooner's case is one of the most infamous murder cases in the history of New England, set against the backdrop of the American Revolution. It is the story of a fatal love triangle, the apex of which was a beautiful 32-year-old mother of three married to an abusive drunk. She fell for a passing soldier and then fell pregnant, with fatal consequences for her husband.

The twists in the old triangle tale included (a) Bathsheba and her lover enlisted the aid of two passing British soldiers for the dirty deed and (b) they were all four hanged together -- make that five, because Bathsheba was five months along. She had "Pleaded her Belly," in the old vernacular, but corruption and vengeance and conflicts of interest explain the outcome. The consequences of the hanging of a woman in mid-term have reverberated through the case law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ever since. 

This book from 1999 remains the best and last and only authoritative account of the case of Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a book published since this one came out 22 years ago, not a non-fiction book anyway -- there are at least four fiction novels about Bathsheba.

The true crime book proved to be an inspiration for several fiction writers. For that, the author of the true crime narrative deserves a nod for the longevity and influence of her impressive work. 

Review - Advocates of Murder

Advocates of Murder by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson (New York: Collier Books, 1962) is derivative; the authors did not cite their sources and added fictional flourishes, and their essay on a case I know well is full of mistakes. But this book is otherwise great "true crime for connoisseurs" as promised on the cover. This book tells amazing, mostly obscure stories of ten attorneys who committed murder. If half of this stuff is true, these cases may bear further looking-into. The writing is fine and wry. For example, here is the short but devastating biography of one of the lawyers in question:

Albert T. Patrick was a New York attorney of about forty, with an indifferent practice and a staff of one: Morris Meyers, his clerk. Although the lawyer had been scratching along, picking up only a meager living, his aspirations were as grandiose as his pocketbook was bare. Some day, he believed, he would make the big killing. In one sense, his ambition was to be realized.

 The subjects of this book are:

Samuel McCue, Attorney at Law, former mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, who hired a private detective to solve his wife’s murder but was unpleasantly surprised when the detective then solved it;

Daniel Sickles, Esquire, a U.S. Congressman who killed his wife’s lover and later became “the American king of Spain.” He also formed a mutual admiration society with Harry K. Thaw, who committed the same crime;

Tom Cluverius, who drowned his pregnant mistress and then ended his own life on the gallows. The case against him was proven with a tiny gold key. It was the key to his wind-up gold watch, and he’d lost it while committing the murder at the Marshall Reservoir near Richmond, Virginia;

Albert Patrick and Charles Jones, who murdered an aged millionaire so clumsily it's amusing. (This infamous duo is also the subject of an unforgettable Edmund Pearson essay, The Firm of Patrick & Jones);

Donat Prilukov of Moscow, who conspired with Countess Marie Tarnowska to murder her fiancé (a story I have retold more than once);

Arthur Reed Pennell, Esq. of Buffalo, New York, who murdered another prominent attorney, Ed Burdick, then decided to avoid arrest;

Frank J. Egan, Public Defender of San Francisco, who arranged the murder of his friend Jessie Scott Hughes and deservedly ended up in San Quentin; 

Mark Shank, Former Justice of the Peace emeritus for Kenmore, Ohio, who got into a little trouble involving forgery and burglary, and decided to cover up his crimes by poisoning a family of five with strychnine. For the convenience of the police in Alabama, where the crime occurred, he left the half-empty bottle, clearly marked POISON, in his briefcase for authorities to find; 

The Honorable Thomas John Ley, Minister of Justice emeritus for Australia, was implicated in a London case that began with the mysterious disappearance of a bartender who was last seen getting into a limousine with a very attractive woman. Ley, who was demented by jealousy and had a fool for a client, testified in his own defense and proved himself "a pompous, arrogant, imaginative and above all a fantastic liar";

Pierre Jaccoud, President of the Bar Association of Geneva, Switzerland, was a pillar of the community until he came crashing down in a spectacular  series of scandals; then he went on a shooting spree on May 30, 1958. The trial that followed was a sensation in Europe and gave the Swiss one of their most legendary murder cases. 

The list of lawless lawyers who have committed murders goes on, of course, alas, in other case studies....

"True Crime" - Some notes on the definition of the term

There seems to be a lot of confusion among authors, publishers, and audiences these days about what, exactly, is "true crime." So let's revisit the basic definition of "true crime." What is the "true crime genre" exactly? There is a proper legal definition. At least, a common-law definition that attorneys such as your correspondent would consider binding and definitive. 

For authority besides my own, I rely on an excellent book from the CLEWS library, Advocates of murder: Ten authentic cases of lawyers who murdered by Charles Boswell and Lewis Thompson, published by Collier Books of New York in 1962. It is a book by lawyers about lawyers tried for murder. You can bet that when writing a true crime book about a lawyer-defendant, you had better get your facts straight, as you are both familiar with the laws of libel. Advocates of Murder by Boswell and Thompson sets forth the definition of a "case study." And it is the "case study" that is the backbone of "true crime."

From the book: "Between the covers of this book are ten case histories of lawyers who turned lawless - who became, in fact, killers. The case histories comprise precisely what the phrase denotes. They are narratives which are not fiction, but authentic accounts of actual crimes, with the material largely taken from court records and police files, and with the dates, the incidents, and the names of localities and principal characters just as they appeared officially, true and unchanged."

In short - a true crime book needs to be, first and foremost, TRUE. There should be zero guessing, supposing, or assuming, and if there is, it should be labeled, and even so, it's unsightly. I hate it when authors make up details. Point of view errors are usually the giveaway. If I wanted to read fiction, I would read fiction. 

I recently tried to read a true crime book that was obviously fictionalized with awful results. It purported to be a case study of Carolyn Warmus, an infamous femme fatale from Michigan who is a contender for the best dressed murder defendant of all time. That's her from the cover of the book about her case. She wears peach business separates with black hose for the start of her trial for murder. Not the typical courtroom attire, to say the least. She has served her sentence now and is a free woman. She is still remembered in her home state, where she embarrasses the University of Michigan by appearing as an alumna on its rolls. Someone at a library lecture on local criminal history told me that she is still much discussed. Her family used to send out Christmas cards that said "Warmus Wishes for the Holidays." If I thought she would give me an interview, I would love to write an updated book about her. Because the only book in existence about her case is the abjectly awful Lovers of deceit by Mike Gallagher, who was doing a bad Truman Capote impression instead of a case study. I gave up on his bad writing and had to skim to the end. Well, I didn't give up until 250 pages into it, truth be told. Because hey, it's an interesting case, and even a bad true crime book is better than none. 

Review - Bizarre Beauties by Brad Steiger

“True Crime on Random” is what I call my favorite section of John King Books, a famous used book store – warehouse is more like it – the pride of Detroit. That’s where I found this old gem with its irresistible cover art. Bizarre beauties: Sixteen scintillating sirens who literally loved their men to death!  by Brad Steiger was published in 1965 by Camerarts Pub. Co. of Chicago.

It consists of short essays on some of the most infamous women of history. The writing is mediocre. The research was evidently perfunctory. The conclusions are naïve. Yet the line art inside is campy and dated and fun. And with his subject selection, a combination of the infamous and obscure, the author won my heart.

In the pages of this book, I first read about Zeo Zoe Wilkins. I ended up writing an entire book about her.  And Countess Marie Tarnowska, another I have resurrected for the current generation. This book also introduced me to other forgotten femmes fatales. Some names are being withheld to protect my Books To Write list.

Those I will name include Countess Bathory; the pirate Mary Anne Blythe; Moll Cutpurse; Elizabeth Brownrigg; Cincinnati poisoner Anna Marie Hahn; the Red Bitch of Buchenwald, Ilse Koch; French poisoner Marie de Brinvilliers; and another French poisoner, Catherine Montvoisin (who, he says, used poison to discipline her husband when she was angry with him but never killed him. This is the first time I have heard of a poisoner intentionally inflicting mere illness, and as a punishment).

I will donate this book to a thrift shop and let this art continue to delight the true crime set. I wouldn't be surprised to see it turn up at John King Books again.    

 

Review - The Last Stone by Mark Bowden

The Last Stone by Mark Bowden is a recommended study of a cold-case interrogation that took more than a year and solved the mystery. This title was my introduction to author Mark Bowden. (I'm behind on my research.) I was impressed with his approach and top shelf writing. The book takes on a case involving the kidnapping, torture and murder of two little girls, Sheila Lyon and Kate Lyon, who vanished from a mall in 1975. The author handles the most difficult case imaginable with delicacy. I like his tight storytelling very much along with expressions of deepest empathy that are not maudlin. There is a finished quality to his narrative, digested might be a better word, reflecting that the author has considered the subject in depth. And I like any author who drops a sweet vocabulary note with a word like cajolery. At times he reminds me of Joseph Wambaugh. Here is a quote from the boo The scene is the suspect being interrogated by the cold case squad and making a critical admission: 

“Now that he had admitted knowing something of what happened to Sheila and Kate, he claimed to be haunted by it – a thing he’d denied for months. Lloyd made these shifts with no apparent sense of how false they sounded. He had no ear for it. 'It’s gonna bug the shit out of me until the day I die,' he said, a comment so hollow it echoed.”

Author Bowden does not shy from mentioning some investigatory missteps, though he pulls his punches. I nitpick when I mention that I did wince a time or two at some descriptions of "hillbillies" (“Wes was a plumber, and looked like one, disheveled…”) (Some of us Midwesterners in particular maybe have protective feelings about our Appalachian cousins.)

I liked the placement of photos in this book. One picture appears at the start of each chapter. A nod to the book designer for that. Aside from the interrogation of the man who would ultimately admit his guilt, the book delves into a question that pops up halfway through and to me is even more interesting: How could an entire family perjure themselves for a child sex killer? The man who killed two little girls was aided by his kin. An entire family covered up a grotesque crime. I could have done with more details on their motives, but maybe there were no more to be had. 

Concise as well as fluid, this author's voice is impressive, and I look forward to his next foray into my end of the true crime pond.

 

Book Review: Berlin Criminal Court History.... or, For the Gold Medal in the Femme Fatale Competition, Germany Presents...

Death in the Tiergarten: Murder and Criminal Justice in the Kaiser's Berlin (Harvard Univ. Press 2004; WorldCat) is a really nice history of the courts of Berlin, Germany's capital since 1871. It stands out in the genre of court histories because it's very well written; it looks at the German capital courts from 1891-1913, the first book in English to do so; and it captures scenes and sayings of remarkable lawyers, judges, and parties in a review of the most sensational cases. 

One fascinating example is the murder of a night watchman by a pimp and a prostitute, Hermann and Anna Heinze. Their case roiled the country and raises many of the same questions we face today. Then there is the case of the millionaire banker who used procuresses to lure very young girls into his bed. He was put on trial twice. Sound familiar? But the most interesting case of all was that of Miss Hedwig Muller. She had two lovers. One was a wealthy man. The other proved a pest. Guess which one she shot in the head? Tried for the crime, she turned the heads of those who judged her. The verdict? "Strikingly Beautiful!"

Based on archives, court records, and newspapers, this book is original and as interesting as a dense legal history can get, a treat for those of us who are into such things, and for that - dem Autor sagen wir - Danke!

Honest Abe for the Femme Fatale

Some of the finest trial lawyers known to world history appeared in the defense of a murderess. Some were made famous by doing so. Others were already famous when they represented a femme fatale only to become forever famous (Hypereides, Samuel Leibowitz, Sir Edward Clarke, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens). 

 

And then there's Abraham Lincoln, whose name belongs on the rolls of those who came to the rescue of a damsel in legal distress of her own making. The story is detailed in The Case of Abraham Lincoln: A Story of Adultery, Murder, and the Making of a Great President by Julie M. Fenster (Palgrave MacMillan 2007)  

 

Yes, that's right, Abraham Lincoln, Esquire, father of the Republican Party, father of American democracy, was also the father of a very unpopular verdict in favor of a certain lethal lady and her paramour. Abraham Lincoln, Esquire, was one of half a dozen trial lawyers who appeared for the defendants in a love triangle murder.

 

Mrs. Jane Anderson was the apex of a triangle with her husband and his handsome nephew. The circumstantial evidence suggested they tried to poison Mr. Anderson with strychnine, and when that didn't work, they bashed in his head. Springfield, Illinois rose up against her. In that time and place, adultery in particular was reprehensible, wicked, and abominated by the public. Married ladies were not to be frolicking with boarders.

 

At the same time, Abraham Lincoln was leading the formation of the Republican Party. These passages of the book are dry and disappointing. Slavery was the question of the day. Not whether it should exist, but whether it should be expanded geographically. The rhetoric is limited and does not remotely touch on the evils of slavery. There are too many details that could have been moved to footnotes that make some chapters feel like homework because there isn't much to appreciate here, morally or even politically, which explains why the formation of the Republican Party is not more widely studied. There are few lofty sentiments to be quoted. 

 

There is an interesting early example of what we could call "identity politics." Once while giving a speech to some farmers, who were all recent German immigrants, Lincoln declared, "God Bless the Dutch!" Oops. The Germans took it in good humor. 

 

One interesting description of Lincoln's physicality, his speaking style is fascinating. Lincoln was of course born in Kentucky and moved in search of good soil to Illinois. He transformed himself from farmer to self-taught attorney. But he was very tall, thin, and at the time widely considered "the ugliest man in Illinois." Yet his speaking style was legendary in Illinois even before he entered party politics. He probably heard thousands of sermons in his lifetime, and you see that reflected, but there is something else. As a political speaker, his "mode of speaking was new," as one observer noted. It was said that he arose with great dignity, like an Episcopal minister, and wore Southern clothes, black with a large white choker of spotless linen; quite cool, but very earnest; beginning very slowly, then building, and per a witness "from time to time, as he reached some climax in his argument, he would advance to the front of the platform as he spoke, and with a peculiar gesture hurl the point, so to speak, at his audience; then as the audience rose to their feet to cheer, he would walk slowly backward, bowing and glancing at the (note) card he held in his hand, again he would resume his speech, making his points in the same manner and with like effect."

 

It would be fascinating to hear Lincoln in defense of Anderson, but alas the transcript of Mrs. Anderson's case did not survive, so the facts we have are skeletal. Her story, and this book, leave us to wonder why Honest Abe added his voice to either of these campaigns, but they are interesting footnotes for the serious student of wicked women and their advocates. The book did leave me tantalized. I would read Mrs. Anderson's biography, even if fictionalized. I'll wait...  

Which Ann Rule book was set in Buffalo? A little literary mystery

In our recent interview with Harold Schechter on the true crime genre, a book by Ann Rule came up in the conversation. The book was about a case in Buffalo. I can't remember anything else about the story, and Google isn't helping. Does anyone know the name of the book?

 

 

A true crime quarantine book list to like

I liked the recommendations of this young true crime fan  who put together a fantastic true crime reading list.... while simultaneously amusing me with the idea that the popularity of true crime is a new phenomenon. Ha!

"Since the mid-2010’s, the true crime boom has been growing and growing with no sign of stopping," says Mariah Koeneke. That's true except I would change the year to 1621 and say, "Since 1621, the true crime boom has been growing and growing with no sign of stopping!"

But I nitpick. Here is a great list written by Mariah Koeneke for the Gateway (student newspaper) of True Crime Books to Get Next. The first book is one we have all heard of, but the rest are new to me at least:

(1) I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara;

(2) Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek, M.D., and T.J. Mitchell;

(3) Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark;

(4)  Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill with Dan Piepenbring. They all sound interesting -- and should go a long way toward making me feel caught up in this fast-moving genre. 

 

Art: Execution of Ann Hibbins in New England. Public domain.From Lynn and Surroundings, by Clarence. W. Hobbs, Lynn, Mass.: Lewis & Winship Publishers, 1886.: 52. Artist: F. T. Merrill

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/generic.html