In March 1856, a dead body washed onto the shore of the Mississippi River. Nothing out of the ordinary. In those days, people fished corpses from the river with alarming frequency. But this body, with its arms and legs tied to a chair, struck an especially eerie chord. The body belonged to a man who had been a passenger on the luxurious steamboat known as the Ohio Belle, and he was the son of a southern planter. Who had bound and pitched this wealthy man into the river? Why? As reports of the killing spread, one newspaper shuddered, "The details are truly awful and well calculated to cause a thrill of horror." Drawing on eyewitness accounts, Murder on the Ohio Belle uncovers the mysterious circumstances behind the bloodshed. A northern vessel captured by secessionists, sailing the border between slave and free states at the edge of the frontier, the Ohio Belle navigated the confluence of nineteenth-century America's greatest tensions. Stuart W. Sanders dives into the history of this remarkable steamer -- a story of double murders, secret identities, and hasty getaways -- and reveals the bloody roots of antebellum honor culture, classism, and vigilante justice.

In 1919, the first trans-Atlantic flight in world history occurred, the Volstead Act was passed (later on repealed), the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and Babe Ruth set a record for most consecutive scoreless innings pitched in a world series, a record that lasted until 1961. In Marion, Ohio, Mrs. Rose Belle Scranton was found dead at a coal pile, west of the Erie roundhouse on January 29, 1919. Up to this day, the murder case is still unsolved despite the wealth of evidence and information gathered and presented. Phil Reid extricates the 1919 Marion murder case almost a century later in The Mystifying Murder in Marion, Ohio. Reid comes up with an amplified and detailed work in The Mystifying Murder in Marion, Ohio, spanning a brief history of a little town to newspaper articles covering the Scranton murder. Several angles were look into based on the clues gathered and recorded witness accounts, including robbery and domestic trouble. The series of events following the murder, like a portent of worst things to come, heated things up in Marion: racial discord, exodus of the colored laborers out of town, and multiple arrests, including that of Mrs. Scranton’s husband. Authorities are baffled-- just when they are about to decipher the mystery behind the crime, a witness or evidence pops out contrary to the supposedly solved case.

Prosecuting attorney Bell Elkins and her estranged teenage daughter, Carla, try to protect their town and each other in the aftermath of a shocking triple murder committed by an unknown shooter whose identity is gradually realized by Carla.

They have no witnesses. They have no case. With this blunt observation, Mariann Colby--an attractive, church-going Shaker Heights, Ohio, mother and housewife--bet a defense psychiatrist that she would not be convicted of murder. A lack of witnesses was not the only problem that would confront the State of Ohio in 1966, which would seek to prosecute her for shooting to death Cremer Young Jr., her son's nine-year-old playmate: Colby had deftly cleaned up after herself by hiding the child's body miles from her home and concealing the weapon. Thus, this "highly intelligent" woman, as she would be described at her trial, had hedged a little on her wager. Not only were there no witnesses to the crime, but there was not a shred of physical evidence to pin the slaying on her. Under the usual forensic standards, her wager was spot on; the probabilities were that she would get away with it. But as the Shaker Heights police found themselves stymied by an investigation that was going nowhere, Mariann Colby upped the ante a bit. Under intense questioning, she broke down, claiming the gun had accidentally discharged. The state thought it had its capital murder case, but Mariann Colby's bet against it would be right on the money. As her trial unfolds in the book, the imprecision of her insanity defense confounds the judges, and psychiatrists disagree about her diagnosis. To make matters worse, the panel of judges that initially tried Colby was so confused by what they'd heard that they did not reach a decision consistent with the law of the state. This led to a second trial and more conflicting psychiatric opinions, another controversial judgment, and clashing trial outcomes. After reading The Insanity Defense and the Mad Murderess of Shaker Heights, readers--and the many childhood friends of the slain boy whose painful reminiscences are set forth in the book--will contemplate whether Mariann Colby did indeed get away with murder. In addition, those interested in legal history will find much of value in Tabac's discussions of the case and its use of an insanity defense strategy.

On November 6, 1936, 40yearold Verna Garr Taylor of LaGrange, KY, was found dead in a soggy ditch just over the Henry County line. Her companion that night, 60yearold Henry H. Denhardt, the sitting adjutant general of the Kentucky National Guard and recent lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, insisted that Verna had spontaneously committed suicide with his gun on the same night she tried to return his engagement ring. Because of a series of macabre, bizarre, and sometimes laughable events, the Iron General would never be held legally responsible for the murder of this beautiful, honorable widow and businesswoman. But that does not mean that Denhardt was innocent.

The Agatha Award–nominated account of Northeast Ohio’s most chilling unsolved crimes from the author of Wicked Women of Ohio. Cold case files litter the desks of authorities all across Northeast Ohio. Louise Wolf and Mabel Foote, Parma teachers, were on their way to school one winter morning when a maniac sprang from the bushes and bludgeoned them to death. When young Melvin Horst went missing on his way home from playing with friends in 1928, many thought he was kidnapped or accidentally killed by a bootlegger’s car. Charles Collins’s death looked like suicide but was proved otherwise by two preeminent surgeons and has remained a mystery for more than one hundred years. Author Jane Ann Turzillo recounts eight unsolved murders and two chilling disappearances in Northeast Ohio’s history. Includes photos!