Boorn Again One of New England's most famous murder trials involved two brothers 
facing the gallows in 1819 for murdering their brother-in-law, a charge most conclusively disproven when the victim actually showed up -- alive and well and living in New Jersey!
The case has moved many to write, including Wilkie Collins, who wrote The Dead Alive, an 1874 mystery based on the case. Scott Turow calls it the first legal thriller.
Wilkie Collins is still remembered as author of the first modern mysteries, including The Moonstone and The Woman in White. Now The Dead Alive is coming back to life in a special reprint from, of all places, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. The executive director of the center, Rob Warden, explains his fascination with the Boorn case.
A summary of the case appears on the center's website. The art at right comes from the first edition of The Dead Alive.
An interview with an Axe Murder Expert Author H. Paul Jeffers collected more than a dozen examples of axe murders from 1831 to 1998 and calls the compendium With An Axe: 16 Horrific Accounts of Real-Life Axe Murders. An interview with the author appears on a tourism website for the state of New Hampshire, the site of a horrific and infamous axe murder on Smuttynose Island. The author weighs in on the Smuttynose controversy and many other abiding mysteries (and I happen to agree with his conclusions).
Marriage in the Second Degree According to his agent's site, well-known true crime author Carlton Smith is writing a book on the murder of 70-year-old psychologist Felix Polk. It's an interesting and well-known case to select: the man was stabbed to death by his wife Susan Polk -- whom he once counseled when she was a troubled teen (Dateline summary). That tale falls under one of my favorite true crime themes, spousal murders. Something tells me this marriage had 'Bound to End Badly' written all over it from the get-go.
Lavergne on Lavergne All true crime nuts know Gary Lavergne's name; he's told the stories of many a Texas maniac, his most famous book being Sniper in the Tower, about spree killer Charles Whitman. A student magazine at the university where Lavergne works wrote a fascinating profile of the author. Lavergne on Whitman: "People think he was an honor student and a wonderful young man," Lavergne says. "His GPA was 1.9 and he beat his wife."
Atwood on the Worst Maid in Canadian History Many in the true crime set don't know that literary phenom Margaret Atwood, best known for The Handmaid's Tale, based one of her best fiction novels, Alias Grace, on a true murder mystery from Ontario and a young accused murderess. It's a book I read long ago and very much enjoyed. Salon.com has posted an interview with Atwood in which she discusses the attractions of the story of Grace Marks.
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