Download or read book Murder in the Heartland Book One written by Harry Spiller and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For 16 years, Harry Spiller worked as a deputy sheriff, investigator, and sheriff in a place where murder isn't suppose to happen- Southern Illinois. Investigating murder cases mainly in Williamson County and assisting in other counties, he learned the hard reality that murder is all around us. The act is swift for the victim and can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. It doesn't matter if you live in a big city or a small county, with brick-front towns, small farms, white church houses, lakes and ponds, the Shawnee National Forest, and the muddy rivers. All too often, victims fall prey in places that we think are safe to raise our families, places where we take walks on hot summer nights, where our children play in the park without concern, where we fish in the local pond hoping to land the big one, and where we leave our doors unlocked at night. In this book, Murder In The Heartland, there are 20 case files.
Download or read book The Starved Rock Murders written by Steve Stout and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Murder in Mchenry written by and published by . This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Murder and Mayhem in Southwestern Illinois written by John J. Dunphy and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southwestern Illinois experienced a plethora of violence during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Settlers and Native Americans clashed at the Wood River Settlement, while Abraham Lincoln dueled on a Mississippi River island. Racial strife led to the lynching of a Black schoolteacher in Belleville in 1903 and a deadly riot in East St. Louis fourteen years later. Benbow City was a latter-day Wild West town of saloons, gambling dens and brothels, and Pere Marquette State Park screened a cache of Nike missiles. From the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr.'s killer to the mystery surrounding Jean Lafitte's grave, John Dunphy examines the bloody ledger of southwestern Illinois.
Download or read book Too Politically Sensitive written by Michale Callahan and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former Illinois State Police Investigations Commander Michale Callahan recounts his review of the wrongful convictions of Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock for the 1986 murder of newlyweds Dyke and Karen Rhoads in Paris, Illinois, and ongoing attempts on the part of officials to impede Callahan's investigation.
Download or read book Murder Mayhem in Rockford Illinois written by Kathi Kresol and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rockford rightly prizes its prosperous heritage, earned by manufacturing concerns like the Rockford Watch Factory and the Manny Reaper Company. But the town once named Midway also harbors a history of crime and calamity. Gunfire broke out in the streets when networks of Prohibition informants slid sideways. In 1893, John Hart forced his own sisters to drink poison. Three years later, James French shot down his wife in the street. Over the years, a courthouse collapsed, a factory exploded and trains collided. Join local historian Kathi Kresol as she explores the mayhem milling about in Rockford's past.
Download or read book Heartland Serial Killers written by Richard Lindberg and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lindberg, an accomplished local historian and true crime writer, presents a fascinating story of two contemporaneous serial killers, both weaving marriage and murder in and around Chicago during the 1890s and 1900s. Johann Hoch was a debonair bigamist and wife killer who boasted of having perfected a "scientific technique" to romance and seduction. Belle Gunness was a nesting "Black Widow" whose sprawling farm in Northwest Indiana was a fatal lure for lonely bachelors seeking the comforts of middle-age security by answering matrimonial advertisements placed by Gunness. Notorious in his own day, Hoch had faded into the dark background of Chicago crime history. But, in Heartland Serial Killers, Lindberg brings back vividly the horrors of one of Chicago's first celebrity criminals and uncovers new evidence of a close connection between Hoch and H.H. Holmes, the "Devil in the White City." Unlike Hoch, Belle Gunness, likely the most prolific and infamous female serial killer of the twentiethe century, has remained fascinating to the public. Here, Lindberg presents the most comprehensive and compelling study of the Gunness case to date, including new information regarding ongoing DNA testing of remains found at the site of Gunness' farm in LaPorte, Indiana, which may serve to resolve once and for all the mystery surrounding Gunness' death. Told in alternating chapters and rapidly paced, this book is true crime at its best—gripping, pulpy, and full of sharp historical tidbits. True crime fans, history buffs, and those interested in local lore will delight in this chilling tale of two ruthless killers.
Download or read book Lies Told Under Oath written by Beth Lane and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1912, a prosperous Illinois farm family Charles; his wife, Mathilda; their fifteen-year-old daughter, Blanche; and boarding schoolteacher Emma Kaempen were brutally murdered, the crime concealed by arson, and the family's surviving son, handsome Ray Pfanschmidt, arrested. He was convicted by the press long before trial. In Lies Told Under Oath, author Beth Lane retells the story of the murders, the trial, the verdict, and the aftermath. Using information culled from actual trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, Lane presents the day-to-day testimony as Ray's battle for his life surged through three courtrooms the drama complicated by brilliant attorneys, allegations of perjury, charges of rigged evidence, jailhouse informants, legal loopholes, conflict over the large estate being inherited by the alleged murderer, and appeals to the state supreme court. The remaining family became divided over Ray's guilt while his fiancée staunchly stood by him. Lies Told Under Oath provides a fascinating, historical account of the times and the people when science was in its infancy, telephones meant shared party lines, bloody evidence was contested (or contrived), and automobiles competed with bloodhounds and buggies. It captures the essence of an emotional crime that rocked this small Illinois community.
Download or read book Survived by One written by Robert E. Hanlon and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle’s sentence to natural life. The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Odle. Prior to the commutation of his death sentence, Odle lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution associated with his death sentence, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality. A future. As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family. He reached out to Dr. Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr. Hanlon engaged Odle in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book. Hanlon tells a gripping story of Odle’s life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Odle’s unadorned reflections of his childhood, finding a new family on death row, and his belief in the powers of redemption. As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.
Download or read book Litchfield written by Wm Stage and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2018-08-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LITCHFIELDA TOWN GRIPPED BY TERROR ...May 8, 1993: In the Central Illinois town of Litchfield, the nude, headless body of a woman is discovered in a pile of burning brush. Same time, same campground, several people take note of a mysterious red van. Seventy miles away, in St. Louis, a 35-year-old bank teller, Lynne Matchem-Thomas, is reported missing and presumed dead. Sixteen months pass before Illinois homicide investigators piece together the puzzle of events that connect the two cases. With the body identified, a new investigation begins: the search for the killer. Lynne's husband, Curtis, soon finds himself in the crosshairs of scrutiny by detectives in two states. But Curtis, the last known person to see his wife alive, has been despondent over her disappearance--or was that an act? The evidence against Curtis is all circumstantial except for the word of a jilted girlfriend who claims he confessed the murder to her. Throw in a big city defense lawyer, a small town prosecutor, and a droll cast of real-life characters, and you've got one hell of a story. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, Litchfield is a psychological study of a brutal murder and its aftermath.
Download or read book Shattered Sense of Innocence written by Richard C Lindberg and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2016-07-20 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In October 1955, three Chicago boys were found murdered, their bodies naked and dumped in a ditch in Robinson Woods on the city’s Northwest Side. A community and a nation were shocked. In a time when such crimes against children were rare, the public was transfixed as local television stations aired stark footage of the first hours of the investigation. Life and Newsweek magazines published exclusive stories the following week. When Kenneth Hansen was convicted and sentenced for the murders, the case was considered solved—until questions were raised about Hansen’s presumed guilt. Shattered Sense of Innocence: The 1955 Murders of Three Chicago Children tells the gripping story of the three murdered boys—thirteen-year-old John Schuessler, his eleven-year-old brother, Anton, and thirteen-year-old Bobby Peterson—and the quest to find and bring to justice their killer. Authors Richard C. Lindberg and Gloria Jean Sykes recount the bungled 1955 police investigation, the failures of multiple law enforcement agencies, and the subsequent convictions of Kenneth Hansen, in 1995 and 2002, and present new information concerning two suspects overlooked by police for five decades. The authors deftly examine all sides of this tragic story, drawing on exclusive interviews with law enforcement agents, with horse trainers affiliated with the so-called horse mafia, and with the man convicted of the murders, Kenneth Hansen. This intensely intimate account offers a rare glimpse into one community and examines how these atrocious crimes altered public perceptions nationwide. Shattered Sense of Innocence, which is also a story of political controversy, a determined federal agent’s quest for justice, and a community’s loss of innocence, includes fifty illustrations.
Download or read book Murder in Canaryville written by Jeff Coen and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The grandson and great-grandson of Chicago police officers, Chicago Police Detective James Sherlock was CPD through-and-through. His career had seen its share of twists and turns, from his time working undercover to thwart robberies on Chicago's L trains, to his side gig working security at The Jerry Springer Show, to his years as a homicide detective. He thought he had seen it all. But on this day, he was at the records center to see the case file for the murder of John Hughes, who was seventeen years old when he was gunned down in a park on Chicago's Southwest Side on May 15, 1976. The case had haunted many in the department for years and its threads led everywhere: Police corruption. Hints of the influence of the Chicago Outfit. A crooked judge. Even the belief that the cover-up extended to &“hizzoner&” himself—legendary Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. Sherlock, expecting to retire within a year, had a dream assignment: working cold cases for the Chicago office of the FBI. And with time for one more big investigation, he had chosen this stubborn case. More than forty years after the Hughes killing, he was hopeful he could finally put the case to rest. Then the records clerk handed Sherlock a thin manila folder. A murder that had roiled the city and had been investigated for years had been reduced to a few reports and photographs. What should have been a massive file with notes and transcripts from dozens of interviews was nowhere to be found. Sherlock could have left the records center without the folder and cruised into retirement, and no one would have noticed. Instead, he tucked the envelope under his arm and carried it outside.
Download or read book Mary Jane s Ghost written by Ted Gregory and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2017-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summer 1948. In the scenic, remote river town of Oregon, Illinois, a young couple visiting the local lovers’ lane is murdered. The shocking crime garners headlines from Portland, Maine, to Long Beach, California. But after a sweeping manhunt, no one is arrested and the violent deaths of Mary Jane Reed and Stanley Skridla fade into time’s indifference. Fast forward fifty years. Eccentric entrepreneur Michael Arians moves to Oregon, opens a roadhouse, gets elected mayor, and becomes obsessed with the crime. He comes up with a scandalous conspiracy theory and starts to believe that Mary Jane’s ghost is haunting his establishment. He also reaches out to the Chicago Tribune for help. Arians’s letter falls on the desk of general assignment reporter Ted Gregory. For the next thirteen years, while he ricochets from story to story and his newspaper is deconstructed around him, Gregory remains beguiled by the case of the teenaged telephone operator Mary Jane and twenty-eight-year-old Navy vet Stanley—and equally fascinated by Arians’s seemingly hopeless pursuit of whoever murdered them. Mary Jane’s Ghost is the story of these two odysseys.
Download or read book Death of Innocence written by Mamie Till-Mobley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mother of Emmett Till recounts the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of the civil rights movement—with a foreword by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old African American, Emmett Till, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. The killers were eventually acquitted. What followed altered the course of this country’s history—and it was all set in motion by the sheer will, determination, and courage of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose actions galvanized the civil rights movement, leaving an indelible mark on our racial consciousness. Death of Innocence is an essential document in the annals of American civil rights history, and a painful yet beautiful account of a mother’s ability to transform tragedy into boundless courage and hope. Praise for Death of Innocence “A testament to the power of the indestructible human spirit [that] speaks as eloquently as the diary of Anne Frank.”—The Washington Post Book World “With this important book, [Mamie Till-Mobley] has helped ensure that the story of her son (and her own story) will not soon be forgotten. . . . A riveting account of a tragedy that upended her life and ultimately the Jim Crow system.”—Chicago Tribune “The book will . . . inform or remind people of what a courageous figure for justice [Mamie Till-Mobley] was and how important she and her son were to setting the stage for the modern-day civil rights movement.”—The Detroit News “Poignant . . . In his mother’s descriptions, Emmett becomes more than an icon; he becomes a living, breathing youngster—any mother’s child.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Powerful . . . [Mamie Till-Mobley’s] courage transformed her loss into a moral compass for a nation.”—Black Issues Book Review Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition • BlackBoard Nonfiction Book of the Year
Download or read book Murder in the Heartland Book Two written by Harry Spiller and published by Murder in the Heartland. This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a place where murder isn't supposed to happen--rural Missouri and Southern Illinois--deputy sheriff and investigator Harry Spiller learned the hard reality: murder is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you live in a big city or small county with farms and churches--murder is swift and can happen to anyone, anywhere, and any time. All too often, victims fall prey in places we think are safe to raise our families, where we take walks on hot summer nights, where our children play in the park or yard without concern, and where we leave our doors unlocked at night. Murder in the Heartland, Book 2 tells the stories of innocent victims in these seemingly innocent places. From his research and investigations of ten murder cases, Spiller recounts the gruesome details of a fraternity hazing gone deadly, teen killings, and even murders by those living and working with the victims. As much as we like to think we're safe, murder can happen even in rural America--and it does. Join Spiller in the second installment of his three-book series of these horrifying murders in the heartland.
Download or read book Gruesome Illinois written by Nick Vulich and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When I came out [of prison], I wanted blood--anybody's blood. I wanted to kill people and see it run," said Chicago serial killer Henry Spencer. The penitentiary gave him ten dollars when they turned him loose. He spent eight dollars on a pistol and started robbing people. "I have been killing people...ever since. I liked it in a way. When I robbed anyone, it was a sort of satisfaction to clean up the job by shutting the victim's mouth forever." "After my first stretch in the penitentiary, I became cold-blooded, and for five cents would kill a man and drink his blood," said Spencer. "The treatment I received down there was enough to drive a man crazy. They would beat me and hang me up by the fingers for some slight infraction of the rules." "I've always had a natural hatred for women. I killed them as I would so many flies." "Whenever I felt like killing anyone, I'd hit them with a hammer or shoot them, whichever happened to be handiest." Henry Spencer murdered as many as 29 people between 1900 and 1912, and yet no one alive today knows who he is. Henry Bastian killed nine people on his Milan Murder Farm in as many years, but like Spencer, he's fallen through the cracks and disappeared to history. Gruesome Illinois is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book - such as the Monmouth Ax Murders and Chicago serial killer H. H. Holmes have ever made it into print. Except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Read them now, if you dare!
Download or read book The Hanging of Betsey Reed written by Rick Kelsheimer and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1845 twenty thousand people gathered in Lawrenceville, Illinois, to witness the hanging of Betsey Reed for poisoning her husband. Considered a witch by some, a victim by others; this is her story.
