Albin Ludwig was furious. He had caught his wife, Cecilia, with other men before; now, after secretly following Cecilia one evening in 1906, Albin was overcome with suspicion. Albin and Cecilia quarreled that night and again the next day. Prosecutors later claimed that the final quarrel ended when Albin knocked Cecilia unconscious with a wooden potato masher, doused her with a flammable liquid, lit her on fire, and left her to burn to death. Albin claimed self-defense, but he was convicted of second-degree murder. Newspaper coverage of the dramatic crime and trial was jarringly explicit and detailed, shocking readers in Indiana, where the crime occurred. Peter Young of the South Bend Times wrote that the murder's "horrors and its shocking features . . . have never before been witnessed in Mishawaka." The story was front-page news throughout northern Indiana for much of a year. For several generations, the families of both Cecilia and Albin would be silent about the crime--until Cecilia's great-grandson, award-winning journalist Gary Sosniecki, uncovered the family's dark secret. As he discovered, wife beating was commonplace in the early 20th century (before the gender-neutral term of "domestic violence" was adopted), and "wife murder" was so common that newspapers described virtually every case by that term. At long last, The Potato Masher Murder: Death at the Hands of a Jealous Husband unearths the full story of two immigrant families united by love and torn apart by domestic violence.

An immigrant woman and her son are accused of murder and witchcraft in this powerful true crime story of corruption in 1930s Detroit. In 1931, the tensions of the Great Depression took hold of Detroit at every level—even spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the Delray boardinghouse. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded—until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case. Following the twists and turns of this shocking story, The Witch of Delray explores the tumultuous 1930s in a city notorious for corruption and reveals the truth of Detroit’s own Hex Woman.

Innocent or guilty, or a more nuanced truth, in this Ripper-style killing Shortly after NYPD Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrnes publicly criticized the London police for failing to capture Jack the Ripper, he received a letter purportedly from Jack himself saying New York was his next target. Not long after, Byrnes was confronted by his own Ripper-style murder case in the death of Carrie Brown, a.k.a. "Old Shakespeare," a colorful character who worked as a prostitute and had a penchant for quoting Shakespeare. Given the near-hysteria surrounding this vicious murder soon after the Jack the Ripper murders in London, people were worried that Jack might have actually come to America. The detective bureau finally arrested Amir Ben Ali, an Algerian immigrant. The newspapers, however, immediately criticized Byrnes for moving too quickly, suggesting that he had tried to save face by pinning the crime on an easy target. When the verdict of murder in the second degree was announced, the papers erupted in anger and disbelief. With the aid of the French consulate, they embarked on a 10-year campaign to have Ben Ali pardoned and finally won his release by producing new evidence. Immediately upon Ben Ali's departure for France, fresh evidence of his guilt surfaced. Was Ben Ali falsely convicted or falsely exonerated? And if he did not commit the murder, then who did? Issues of false convictions, fake news, illegal immigration, police corruption, and racial prejudice are common tropes in today's news cycles. The East River Ripper demonstrates that these are not simply matters of recent vintage and seeks to answer such questions in trying to determine whether and in what way justice miscarried.

A RUSA Award-winning novel! The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer.... When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case. With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…

The 1978 murder of actor Bob Crane remains unsolved. Hook retested the original blood evidence, and searched for the identity of the killer. He shows how police mistakes and missing evidence impacted the investigation, and raises new questions in the search for truth.

It was Life and Time magazines that turned a local story from Tucson, Arizona, into a national abomination. Reporters came from all over, to be sure, but on March 4, 1966, Life printed an ominous photo of the desert landscape where three girls had disappeared and the story of Charles Howard Schmid, Jr., or "Smitty," became international news. He had been arrested four months earlier on November 11, just after marrying a fifteen-year-old girl whom he'd met on a blind date. The article was published even before the juries in two separate trials had decided his fate. Dubbed "The Pied Piper of Tucson," for his ability to get girls to fall for him, he stood five feet, four inches tall, but added three more inches by padding his stack-heeled cowboy boots with rags and tin cans. He also dyed his reddish-brown hair black, used pancake make-up, whitened his lips, and applied a fake mole to his left cheek-a "beauty" mark. Arrogant and narcissistic, he came from a wealthy family, so he used the niceties he could buy to impress young high school girls. He adopted the droopy-eyed look associated with Elvis, his idol, and acquired a rock musician's mystique. His tiny house on his parents' property was the scene of many parties. Tucson society was not merely shaken by the murders of three of their young women but by what the details of those murders revealed about its adolescent population-sex clubs, drinking parties, blackmail, cover-ups for murder, and even connections with the crime underworld. Parents suddenly became more strict, more aware now that their kids weren't safe and maybe weren't even behaving properly. When kids looked to someone like Charles Schmid for answers, there was something terribly wrong.

Murder and Misfortune in Minnesota This book contains stories of early crimes of disturbing proportions -- the weapons used to commit these dastardly deeds, the proceedings of the justice system at the time, early prison conditions and treatment of prisoners during their incarceration, and the judge's sentencing of the convicted. Most slayings in the 19th century started as disagreements among farmers in the field. They struggled to make a better life and many times took the law into their own hands. Insults to one's honor were taken seriously and violence was the method of settling disputes. The knife or a bludgeoning tool were the common weapons of choice, but later on, a good pistol could do a quick job in an unfortunate situation. Farm tools could also be used as weapons -- the ax, the pitchfork, the rope, the potato masher, the bolting pin, and even strychnine, which was used to poison vermin -- these were all at the ready and highly effective when needed. This book reveals how various types of lethal weapons were used to commit murder and misfortune in rural Redwood County in the early years. Eventually, official justice was established by the courts, replacing private vengeance committed as a result of feuds, fights or fraud. After reading these stories though, one might wonder -- is there truly any justice in this world!