Download or read book Memphis Murder Mayhem written by Teresa R. Simpson and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey through Memphis’ troubled past: the shocking crimes and the brutal killings that led to it being dubbed the “Murder Capital of the World.” With its alluring hospitality, legendary cuisine and transcendent music, Memphis is truly a quintessential Southern city. But lurking behind the barbeque and blue suede shoes is a dark history checkered with violence and disarray. Revisit the mass murder of 1866 that took more than fifty lives, the infamous Alice Mitchell case of the 1890s and a string of unthinkable twentieth-century sins. Author and lifelong Memphian Teresa Simpson explores some of the River City’s most menacing crimes and notorious characters in this riveting ride back through the centuries. Includes photos!
Download or read book The Blood of Innocents written by Guy Reel and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the events surrounding the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, and the trials of the three teens who were convicted of the crime.
Download or read book Murder in Memphis written by Dorris D. Porch and published by Berkley. This book was released on 2005 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts a family's attempts to solve the murder of one of their kin, a Memphis woman named Deborah Watts, in a case stretching over twenty years, from 1977 to 1997.
Download or read book Main Street Mayhem written by Erik J. Wright and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Main Street Mayhem: Crime, Murder & Justice in Downtown Paragould, 1888 - 1932 explores some of the forgotten episodes of explosive violence in an Arkansas railroad town. Through extensive investigations by award-winning historian Erik Wright, numerous stories are uncovered from the escape of Arkansas murder suspect James Trammell to Australia to the fumbled highway robbery and murder of young Lewis Reynolds. 2018 revised second edition includes a 20-page chapter on outlaw Frank "Jelly" Nash. Illustrated with sources and a foreword by Dan Stidham, Main Street Mayhem is sure to please the scholar and the casual reader.
Download or read book Devil s Knot written by Mara Leveritt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-10-21 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning investigative journalist takes readers deep inside the 1993 slayings of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, revealing the overzealous prosecution that may have improperly convicted three teenagers.
Download or read book Memphis Mayhem written by David A. Less and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memphis gave birth to music that changed the world — Memphis Mayhem is a fascinating history of how music and culture collided to change the state of music forever “David Less has captured the essence of the Memphis music experience on these pages in no uncertain terms. There's truly no place like Memphis and this is the story of why that is. HAVE MERCY!” — Billy F Gibbons, ZZ Top Memphis Mayhem weaves the tale of the racial collision that led to a cultural, sociological, and musical revolution. David Less constructs a fascinating narrative of the city that has produced a startling array of talent, including Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Al Green, Otis Redding, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Justin Timberlake, and so many more. Beginning with the 1870s yellow fever epidemics that created racial imbalance as wealthy whites fled the city, David Less moves from W.C. Handy’s codification of blues in 1909 to the mid-century advent of interracial musical acts like Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the birth of punk, and finally to the growth of a music tourism industry. Memphis Mayhem explores the city’s entire musical ecosystem, which includes studios, high school band instructors, clubs, record companies, family bands, pressing plants, instrument factories, and retail record outlets. Lively and comprehensive, this is a provocative story of finding common ground through music and creating a sound that would change the world.
Download or read book Alice Freda Forever written by Alexis Coe and published by Millbrook Press. This book was released on 2019-08-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alice + Freda Forever is a gut-wrenching story of love, death, and the dangers of intolerance."—Bustle In 1892, America was obsessed with a teenage murderess, but it wasn't her crime that shocked the nation—it was her motivation. Nineteen-year-old Alice Mitchell had planned to pass as a man in order to marry her seventeen-year-old fiancée Freda Ward, but when their love letters were discovered, they were forbidden from ever speaking again. Freda adjusted to this fate with an ease that stunned a heartbroken Alice. Her desperation grew with each unanswered letter—and her father's razor soon went missing. On January 25, Alice publicly slashed her ex-fiancée's throat. Her same-sex love was deemed insane by her father that very night, and medical experts agreed: This was a dangerous and incurable perversion. As the courtroom was expanded to accommodate national interest, Alice spent months in jail—including the night that three of her fellow prisoners were lynched (an event which captured the attention of journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells). After a jury of "the finest men in Memphis" declared Alice insane, she was remanded to an asylum, where she died under mysterious circumstances just a few years later. Alice + Freda Forever recounts this tragic, real-life love story with over 100 illustrated love letters, maps, artifacts, historical documents, newspaper articles, courtroom proceedings, and intimate, domestic scenes.
Download or read book Murder Mayhem in the Crescenta Valley written by Gary Keyes and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pleasant neighborhoods of the Crescenta Valley offer no hint of the many violent and heinous crimes that have occurred between the San Gabriel and Verdugo Mountains. But ties to such macabre episodes as the Onion Field murder and the search for the Hillside Strangler left lasting scars here. Infamous criminals such as mafia boss Joe "Iron Man" Ardizzone, red-light bandit Caryl Chessman and accused yacht bomber Beulah Overell have left a black eye on La Cresecenta's history--not to mention the "Rattlesnake Murder," "Female Bluebeard" and "Santa Claus Killer." Join historians Gary Keyes and Mike Lawler as they expose the crimes and criminals that have inflicted murder and mayhem in Glendale, La Crescenta, Montrose and La Canada Flintridge.
Download or read book Untying the Knot written by Greg Day and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 5, 1993, second-graders Christopher Byers, Stevie Branch, and Michael Moore disappeared from their West Memphis, Arkansas, homes. The following afternoon, their nude, beaten, and bound bodies were discovered in a drainage ditch less than a mile away. After a troublesome confession, three local teenagers, later dubbed the "West Memphis Three," were arrested, tried, and convicted in early 1994. Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley received life sentences, while ringleader Damien Echols went to death row. Three years later, the documentary film "Paradise Lost" premiered on HBO, and the effect on viewers was dramatic. Many became skeptical of the verdicts and also felt one of the fathers of the victims was a better suspect-John Mark Byers. In Untying the Knot, author Greg Day tells the true story of John Mark Byers and the about-face he made to free the men convicted of the crime. Day exposes the propaganda campaign used to convince a gullible public that Byers was complicit in the deaths of his wife and son. Based on court transcripts and hours of personal interviews, Untying the Knot explores all the case evidence while interweaving dialogues and statements. It traces the life of Byers from his roots in rural Arkansas, to his son's murder and the death of his wife, to his ultimate imprisonment in 1999. It reveals a man redeemed by prison and whose change of heart changed his life. "Day has captured the essence of a towering personality engulfed by an impossible situation. John Mark Byers is an immensely complex character, and Untying the Knot pulls no punches in revealing the man in all his seeming contradictions." -John Douglas, Mindhunter
Download or read book Abomination Devil Worship and Deception in the West Memphis Three Murders written by William Ramsey and published by William Ramsey. This book was released on 2013-12-06 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abomination: Devil Worship and Deception in the West Memphis Three Murders provides a detailed, time-lined analysis of the murder that shocked the nation: the heinous killing of three eight year old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas on May 5th, 1993. A wall of deception has led the American public to erroneously believe that the three men were falsely accused and convicted for the crime. Unfortunately, this is not true. William Ramsey, author of Prophet of Evil: Aleister Crowley, 9/11 and the New World Order, provides shocking insights into the lives of the convicted murderers and their involvement with witchcraft. Relying on actual court and police records, William Ramsey shows that the evidence abundantly points to the guilt of the West Memphis Three.
Download or read book Hostage Murder in Memphis written by Terrence Schultz and published by Xlibris. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The more I investigated, the more the story took on a more meaningful purpose to me. The horror that was Shannon Avenue was a story that needed to be told. What began as a project to tell a story became a labor of love. I wondered, at the time of the occurrence, how a team of police officers could stand idly by while their brother officer was being held hostage and do nothing. I was determined to find out. What I found was that every officer there was a victim. The tragedy touched more lives than I could ever imagine. This is their story
Download or read book Savage Appetites written by Rachel Monroe and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “necessary and brilliant” (NPR) exploration of our cultural fascination with true crime told through four “enthralling” (The New York Times Book Review) narratives of obsession. In Savage Appetites, Rachel Monroe links four criminal roles—Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. From a frustrated and brilliant heiress crafting crime-scene dollhouses to a young woman who became part of a Manson victim’s family, from a landscape architect in love with a convicted murderer to a Columbine fangirl who planned her own mass shooting, these women are alternately mesmerizing, horrifying, and sympathetic. A revealing study of women’s complicated relationship with true crime and the fear and desire it can inspire, together these stories provide a window into why many women are drawn to crime narratives—even as they also recoil from them. Monroe uses these four cases to trace the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. Combining personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the 20th and 21st centuries, Savage Appetites is a “corrective to the genre it interrogates” (The New Statesman), scrupulously exploring empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of crime.
Download or read book St Louis Noir written by Scott Phillips and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “St. Louis gets a turn to show its dark side . . . [A] spirited, black-hearted collection” including a story from New York Times–bestselling author John Lutz (Kirkus Reviews). A vibrant Midwest metropolis, St. Louis has a rich, multicultural history of art and literature—both high and low. That duality is embraced here in an anthology that spans the reaches of noir, from violent criminality to bad luck and bad attitudes. St. Louis Noir includes stories by bestselling authors John Lutz and Scott Phillips, a poetic interlude featuring Poet Laureate Michael Castro, and more tales from Calvin Wilson, LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, Paul D. Marks, Colleen J. McElroy, Jason Makansi, S.L. Coney, Laura Benedict, Jedidiah Ayres, Umar Lee, Chris Barsanti, and L.J. Smith. “The stories here are uniformly strong. Regular readers of the Noir series know what to expect: tightly written, tightly plotted, mostly character-driven stories of murder and mayhem, death and despair, shadow and shock.” —Booklist “Thirteen tales of grim homicidal happenings (plus one poetic interlude) set in the streets of the St. Louis area.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Download or read book Blood on Black written by Gary Meece and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-26 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They did it. The West Memphis 3 are guilty. They are guilty despite what the documentaries, books and news stories have said over and over. Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr. killed three 8-year-olds, Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Stevie Branch, on May 5, 1993, in a wooded area in West Memphis, Ark. The murders were thrill kills, according to Echols himself. But they were much more than that. Police were struck by the ritualistic aspects. Local dabblers in the occult immediately came under suspicion. Under questioning, Echols, already acknowledged as a witch, flaunted his knowledge of the occult, his theories of how the killings could have "magickal" implications and his insights into how the killer would think and feel. He demonstrated special knowledge about the case beyond the little publicly known. He gave out signals that he was a prime suspect; a series of witnesses further implicated him. A confession broke open the case. The widely accepted WM3 storyline is that inept police and prosecutors, with a howling mob of religious fanatics to placate, somewhat arbitrarily picked out three innocent boys to blame for horrific murders because Damien and his best pal Jason wore black T-shirts, listened to heavy metal music and had funny haircuts and because the third boy, Little Jessie, was practically retarded and thus easily manipulated. Almost every element in that storyline has little relation to reality. The weirdness that drew the attention of authorities stemmed from bad choices by the suspects rather than clothing, haircuts or rocking out to Megadeth. The West Memphis police did their duty in a diligent if imperfect manner. The investigation was professional and painstaking. Detectives took many statements, followed strange and unpromising leads and administered the polygraph dozens of times. All three of the teens from the trailer parks were convicted. The convictions held up on appeal. Eventually, thanks to Hollywood celebrities and misleading documentaries that left out crucial evidence, the killers who became the West Memphis 3 walked free. No exonerating evidence, despite many years of investigation and a defense fund in the millions of dollars, has been produced. None of the three has a credible alibi. The mainstream media bought into the premise that "those boys were innocent." By putting the focus on mullet-headed rednecks, drawling overweight cops and righteously angry Christians, the media played upon the most egregious stereotypes of Southern whites, while positioning a murdering sociopath as a hip kid who was just too cool for the uptight hometown idiots. The West Memphis 3 myth was made to order for the familiar narrative of the perceptive young outsider that every hipster and aspiring artist imagines himself to have been. Among the sensitive souls who found a doppelganger of their teen selves in Echols were professional outsiders - such as Johnny Depp and Henry Rollins. In Aleister Crowley's "magickal" system, which Echols embraced in his preteen years, orgasm and ecstasy are equated with death and sacrifice and the sexual fluids are often represented as blood or water. Echols felt he was in transition to a state of being a god, something other than human; he believed that drinking blood invested him with spiritual energy. Echols and "blood brother" Jason formed a pathological dyad, cultivating elaborate violent fantasies. Via the ritual torture, killing and eating of dogs, cats and other animals, they educated themselves in the curriculum of occult murder. The lurking allure of a "thrill kill" finally became irresistible when the killing time coincided with sunset, the rise of a full moon and the pagan holiday of Beltane.
Download or read book She Is Evil written by Judith A. Yates and published by WildBlue Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true crime story of an immigrant’s success, an abusive wife, and a grisly murder from the award–winning criminologist author of When Nashville Bled. Ejaz Ahmad was handsome, charismatic, and a self-made businessman. He arrived in the United States from Pakistan determined to fulfill his mother’s dying wish: to come to America, complete his education, and make his mark in the world. Settling in Memphis, Tennessee, Ejaz became owner of several businesses, father to a handsome boy, and a devout Muslim. The only thing missing in his life was a wife, someone special to protect, honor, and love. Leah Ward was a pretty girl, but a prison parolee with a history of drug charges, petty crime, and a questionable past. She led a flotsam life, drifting from town to city to state. When she was introduced to Ejaz Ahmad, she believed she had found the ultimate answer: a place to live, someone to take care of her, and money to spend. But what began idyllic soon became abusive and then dangerous for Ejaz. His friends and family warned him. And in May of 2003 Ejaz paid the ultimate price when family members found his mutilated body in a shed. She Is Evil is a story of trust, abuse, religion, and murder. Of a kind man who tried to help a troubled woman and became the victim of abuse and, eventually, a heinous murder.
Download or read book A Massacre in Memphis written by Stephen V. Ash and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unprecedented account of one of the bloodiest and most significant racial clashes in American history In May 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Memphis erupted in a three-day spasm of racial violence that saw whites rampage through the city's black neighborhoods. By the time the fires consuming black churches and schools were put out, forty-six freed slaves had been murdered. Congress, furious at this and other evidence of white resistance in the conquered South, launched what is now called Radical Reconstruction, policies to ensure the freedom of the region's four million blacks-and one of the most remarkable experiments in American history. Stephen V. Ash's A Massacre in Memphis is a portrait of a Southern city that opens an entirely new view onto the Civil War, slavery, and its aftermath. A momentous national event, the riot is also remarkable for being "one of the best-documented episodes of the American nineteenth century." Yet Ash is the first to mine the sources available to full effect. Bringing postwar Memphis, Tennessee to vivid life, he takes us among newly arrived Yankees, former Rebels, boisterous Irish immigrants, and striving freed people, and shows how Americans of the period worked, prayed, expressed their politics, and imagined the future. And how they died: Ash's harrowing and profoundly moving present-tense narration of the riot has the immediacy of the best journalism. Told with nuance, grace, and a quiet moral passion, A Massacre in Memphis is Civil War-era history like no other.
Download or read book Monster City written by Michael Arntfield and published by Little A. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-before-told true account of the serial killers who terrorized Nashville's music scene for decades--and the cold-case Murder Squad determined to bring an end to their sadistic sprees. Nashville--a haven for aspiring musicians and a magnet for country-music fans. By the time Pat Postiglione arrived there in 1980, it was also the scene of an unsolved series of vicious sex slayings that served as a harbinger of worse to come. As Postiglione was promoted from street-beat Metro cop to detective sergeant heading Music City's elite cold-case Murder Squad, some of America's most bizarre, elusive, and savage serial killers were calling Nashville home. And during the next two decades, the body count climbed. From Vanderbilt University to dive bars and out-of-the-way motels, Postiglione followed the bloody tracks of these ever-escalating crimes--each enacted by a different psychopath with the same intent: to murder without motive or remorse. But of all the investigations, of all the monsters Postiglione chased, few were as chilling, or as game changing, as the Rest Stop Killer: a homicidal trucker who turned the interstates into his trolling ground. Next stop, Nashville. But Postiglione was waiting.
