Fox Cities Murder Mayhem

Wind through the criminal history of the cities along northeast Wisconsin’s Fox River with the author of Milwaukee Mafia as your guide. The safe and sedate Fox Cities have seen their share of horrible crimes. Coldblooded murder, kidnapping, prostitution, organized crime and other misdeeds shocked and appalled not just the community but the entire state. Murderer Porter Ross tried to commit suicide by eating bedsprings. Wenzel Kabat mutilated and burned a man in order to take over his farm. The Appleton Butcher left dismembered human remains on a playground for children to find. In this volume, crime writer and leading expert on the Milwaukee Mafia Gavin Schmitt turns his magnifying glass on small-town America. Includes photos!

Known for friendly people, traditional family values, and the Packers, Green Bay is a big city with a small-town feel. But resting beneath its welcoming demeanor is an underbelly of wickedness that has been there from its very formation. The city's downtown district rests atop one of Wisconsin's oldest burial sites, and the west side was the location for the state's second recorded hanging, which was at the time the punishment for murder. And the city's beloved football team once drafted one of America's worst serial killers. Compiling stories of stolen skulls, underground gangs, and crimes so horrendous and shocking they made national news, Timothy Freiss reveals a side of Green Bay few have seen.

From murder and matchstick men to all-consuming fires, painted women, and Great Lakes disasters--and the wide-eyed public who could not help but gawk at it all--"Milwaukee Mayhem" uncovers the little-remembered and rarely told history of the underbelly of a Midwestern metropolis. "Milwaukee Mayhem" offers a new perspective on Milwaukee's early years, forgoing the major historical signposts found in traditional histories and focusing instead on the strange and brutal tales of mystery, vice, murder, and disaster that were born of the city's transformation from lakeside settlement to American metropolis. Author Matthew J. Prigge presents these stories as they were recounted to the public in the newspapers of the era, using the vivid and often grim language of the times to create an engaging and occasionally chilling narrative of a forgotten Milwaukee. Through his thoughtful introduction, Prigge gives the work context, eschewing assumptions about "simpler times" and highlighting the mayhem that the growth and rise of a city can bring about. These stories are the orphans of Milwaukee's history, too unusual to register in broad historic narratives, too strange to qualify as nostalgia, but nevertheless essential to our understanding of this American city.

The author's analysis of the internecine strife and fierce clan rivalry rampant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries puts into perspective the turmoil into which the Lebanon has fallen today. This translation comprises the memoirs of several generations of the Mishāqa family. The author, Mikhāyil Mishāqa (1800-1888), a many-faceted individual, was raised in Dayr al-Qamar, then the princely seat of Mount Lebanon, apprenticed as a merchant in Damietta, Egypt. He served as financial comptroller to the Shihab emirs of Hasbayya and in his later years was a physician and consul to the United States in Damascus. Mishāqa gives a vivid picture of life and history during the period. From his position he was privy to political deliberations and knew intimately the clan chiefs, pashas and princes who were the principal agents of change. The book contains information unavailable elsewhere of importance to political and social historians, on life during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large portions of the original text that are of particular interest for the study of the interaction of the various ethno-religious groups that inhabit the area, were at one time expunged from the printed Arabic version as too sensitive, but are included in this comprehensive English translation.

The author's analysis of the internecine strife and fierce clan rivalry rampant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries puts into perspective the turmoil into which the Lebanon has fallen today. This translation comprises the memoirs of several generations of the Mishāqa family. The author, Mikhāyil Mishāqa (1800-1888), a many-faceted individual, was raised in Dayr al-Qamar, then the princely seat of Mount Lebanon, apprenticed as a merchant in Damietta, Egypt. He served as financial comptroller to the Shihab emirs of Hasbayya and in his later years was a physician and consul to the United States in Damascus. Mishāqa gives a vivid picture of life and history during the period. From his position he was privy to political deliberations and knew intimately the clan chiefs, pashas and princes who were the principal agents of change. The book contains information unavailable elsewhere of importance to political and social historians, on life during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Large portions of the original text that are of particular interest for the study of the interaction of the various ethno-religious groups that inhabit the area, were at one time expunged from the printed Arabic version as too sensitive, but are included in this comprehensive English translation.

Collection of popular press op-ed articles on homicide from world-renowned experts on the subject. This book provides strong evidence that the opinions of criminologists, based on research and theory, can effectively make their way into the popular press in order to influence public opinion as well as the thinking of policymakers. Almost all of the 56 essays reprinted in this volume were originally published by the authors as opinion columns in major newspapers around the country. These op-eds, as they are called, focus on various types of murder how to account for changes in the rate of homicide, why individuals commit various types of murder, and how our criminal justice system ought to respond in order to combat extreme acts of violence.