Murder Mayhem And Whitecapping

Murder, Mayhem and Whitecapping is set in northwest Georgia 1894. It is the story of two men who were attacked by a group of whitecappers, men sworn by a blood oath to protect moonshiners, remove immoral people from their communities, but most of all to protect their own. The area of northwest Georgia had a membership of 800-1000 men. Henry Worley, a whitecapper himself, turns on his brotherhood, and manages to survive the hangman's noose but a week later is shot and killed by men he once called friends. A few months later, William Roper, who has been turning in moonshiners for a profit, finds himself a target as well. He is attacked in the middle of the night by whitecappers, who shoot him and leave him for dead in an abandoned copper pit. After six days, he is rescued from the pit and eventually testifies in federal court against his attackers. The federal government would eventually charge 30+ men, many of them prominent individuals in the county, with conspiracy. These two trials, as well as subsequent pleas, would eventually lead to the demise of the whitecappers in northwest Georgia. The trials would be covered extensively by The Atlanta Constitution. It along with federal court transcripts, essays on moonshining and whitecapping, and other historical references, serve as sources for this historical, nonfiction book.

Early twentieth-century San Diego was growing fast, and the officers sworn to protect the city encountered more than their fair share of wily lawbreakers. From a shootout with a lone gunman in Mission Hills to gunfights with a gang of bank robbers that involved enthusiastic bystanders hoping to assist, detectives and patrolmen alike tried to maintain the peace. They encountered unexpected bodies, confronted car thieves and pursued criminals through neighboring states and into Mexico. Join author Steve Willard as he unearths stories directly from the case files of the early San Diego Police Department.

From railroad towns like Ladore to cow towns like Newton and Wichita, southeast Kansas pulsed with rowdy activity during the late nineteenth century. The unruly atmosphere drew outlaws, including the Dalton Gang, and even crazed serial killers the likes of the Bender clan. Violent incidents, from gunfights to lynchings, punctuated the region's Wild West era, and the allure of the frontier also attracted the everyday people whose passions sometimes spawned bloodshed as well. Award-winning author Larry E. Wood explores thirteen of these remarkable episodes in the criminal history of southeast Kansas.

Imagine waking up one morning at the age of 18 and realizing that you have just become the youngest woman in Georgia awaiting the electric chair. Just hours after her birth, Janice Buttrum was sold by her prostitute mother to an alcoholic couple who raised her in squalor. Janice soon found herself a product of the foster care system. At the age of 15, she married her knight in shining armor, 26-year-old Danny Buttrum, and quickly became the victim of domestic abuse. Janice began a descent into the abyss that eventually would lead to her and Danny stabbing a young woman to death in a hotel room, while their own 19-month-old daughter watched the carnage unfold. Janice was convicted of murder in 1981 in the city of Dalton, Georgia-the youngest woman sentenced to death in the state. She has spent 36 years behind bars-including ten years on Georgia's death row, and for five of those years, she was the sole prisoner. Now, after all this time, Janice may soon have the opportunity at life outside of prison.

Eula was born an Elrod but used several last names during her tumultuous life, some legally, others questionable. Although few considered Eula "drop dead gorgeous," she used her female wit and wiles to persuade men to do her bidding. She was accused of bootlegging (illegally transporting moonshine from Tennessee to Georgia), robbery, conspiracy, bigamy, running a house of prostitution, and murder-all before she was 25 years old. Eula's father reportedly told a relative that he thought that Eula was the meanest woman who ever lived in Murray County. She was the first woman in Georgia sentenced to die in the electric chair, at a time before Murray County even had electric service. Governor Hardman personally involved himself in Eula's murder cases. Newspapers across America printed stories about this rebellious woman's exploits and legal entanglements.

This historical study examines a “legal lynching” in 1902 Texas, shedding light on race relations, political culture, and economic conditions of the time. On October 17, 1902, in Nacogdoches, Texas, a black man named James Buchanan was tried without representation, condemned, and executed for the murder of a white family—all within three hours. Two white men played pivotal roles in these events: the editor of the Nacogdoches Sentinel, Bill Haltom, a prominent Democrat who condemned lynching but defended lynch mobs; and A. J. Spradley, a Populist sheriff who managed to keep the mob from burning Buchanan alive, only to escort him to the gallows. Each man’s story illuminates part of the path toward the terrible parody of justice at the heart of A Hanging in Nacogdoches. The turn of the twentieth century was a time of dramatic change for the people of East Texas. Frightened by the Populist Party's attempts to unite poor blacks and whites in a struggle for economic justice, white Democrats defended their power base by exploiting racial tensions in a battle that ultimately resulted in complete disenfranchisement for the black population. In telling the story of a single lynching, Gary Borders dramatically illustrates the way politics and race combined to bring horrific violence to small southern towns like Nacogdoches.