Queen City Notorious

Losing a loved one to murder is life's ultimate tragedy. But when the killer is never captured, a family's paralyzing grief only compounds. Years pass. Pain grows. Time heals nothing. Parents, spouses, and children of the victims never find peace. Investigators continue to lie awake night after night, year after year, thinking, "If only..." Cold cases fascinate us because of the endless possibilities. What if Alice Hochhausler hadn't driven her daughter home from work while a strangler was running loose? What if Oda Apple's wife hadn't sent him to the corner drugstore? What if Linda Bricca hadn't been so beautiful – and her husband not a workaholic? J. T. Townsend takes us on a sinister journey through thirteen cases, which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, between 1904 and 1971. You'll meet Frances Brady, a pretty bride-to-be gunned down at her own front door. Tommy Coby, age eight, who arrived home to an empty house, and learned later his parents were lying dead in their car. Patty Rebholz, a popular cheerleader, who was bludgeoned in a neighbor's backyard while walking to break up with her teenage boyfriend. What do these cases have in common? A fleeting, irrational act of violence with no resolution. Somebody literally got away with murder. Each episode took place in sheer moments––but hundreds of innocent people still remember, still mourn, and are still haunted by horrible, unbearable images. Townsend's riveting accounts include never-before-published details from police files and insights from both investigators and witnesses. Finally someone has managed to put all of the pieces together. Whodunit? We'll never know for sure––but we can certainly make some informed, calculated guesses. Meanwhile, on these pages, each victim returns to vibrant life, becomes as real to us as to those loved ones they left behind––and still cries out for justice.

In his much awaited follow-up to cult classic "Queen City Gothic," JT Townsend conducts the reader on another sinister journey through 13 murder tales from the golden age of Cincinnati true crime history. In "Queen City Notorious: Cincinnati's Most Sensational Murder Cases, watch as Townsend exhumes the dark underside of every love triangle, family vendetta, and perilous partnership that ended with a local homicide worthy of this anthology. Each chapter brushes away the cobwebs to uncover the motive for those murders most foul, and each crime abounds with the intriguing killers, riveting trials, and swift punishment. "Queen City Notorious" will dispense macabre delight to the true crime reader, along with the assurance that no murderer will ever escape from these pages.

Explores the history of Springfield, Missouri.

It was an unbelievable crime - hideous, unexpected, baffling. A crime destined to become the most notorious and obsessive cold case in Cincinnati history.On that long ago day in September on the cusp of autumn, we were horrified by the blaring Bricca murder headlines. Jerry, his pretty wife Linda, and their young daughter Debbie were found stabbed to death in their home in the city's Bridgetown neighborhood. Striking between the 4th and 5th slayings of the Cincinnati Strangler in 1966, the Bricca killer plunged a city already on edge into an abyss. A half century later, the Bricca mystery lingers in cobwebs and survives on whispers. It's a terminal case with a fading pulse. Opening up any cold case is daunting. Evidence is lost, buried, or forgotten. Contradiction and hearsay muddy the waters. The truth is elusive, shrouded, or shameful. Bricca also defies our comfortable expectation that killers are always captured, victims will be avenged, and justice aligns with the truth.Enter Cincinnati crime writer JT Townsend. The author of Queen City Gothic was given unprecedented access to the Bricca case file - laden with information that never saw the light of print - evidence that might illuminate the relentless rumors that police "screwed up the crime scene" or "covered up for the suspect." As an armchair detective stalking a legendary murder mystery, Townsend is not shackled by presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt. ALL evidence is admissible - hearsay, rumors, gossip, and undertones. With this overdue excavation of the Bricca murders, JT Townsend will jettison the unworkable and the implausible scenarios until we arrive at the probable truth.And for those of us who preserved this slaughtered family in our memory, it will never be too late to learn that truth. There looms one huge, lasting question? Who killed the Bricca family?

The riveting history of a beautiful queen, a shocking murder, a papal trial -- and a reign as triumphant as any in the Middle Ages. On March 15, 1348, twenty-two-year-old Joanna I, Queen of Naples, stood trial for the murder of her husband before the Pope and his court in Avignon. Determined to defend herself, Joanna won her acquittal against overwhelming odds. Victorious, she returned to Naples and ruled over one of Europe's most prestigious courts for the next three decades -- until she herself was killed. Courageous and determined, Joanna was the only female monarch in her time to rule in her own name. She was widely admired: dedicated to the welfare of her subjects, she reduced crime, built hospitals and churches, and encouraged the licensing of female physicians. A procession of the most important artists and writers of the time frequented her glittering court. But she never quite escaped the stain of her husband's death, and the turmoil of the times surrounded her -- war, plague, and treachery would ultimately be her undoing. With skill, passion, and impeccable research and detail, Nancy Goldstone brings to life one of history's most remarkable women. The Lady Queen is a captivating portrait of medieval royalty in all its incandescent complexity.

Cincinnati Cemeteries is not only a history of graveyards and their occupants. It also investigates the culture of death and dying in Cincinnati: from the infamous Pearl Bryan murder and the 19th-century cholera epidemics, to the body snatchers who stole the corpse of Benjamin Harrison’s father and the notorious “resurrection men.” In a city teeming with immigrants and transients these “sack ‘em up” grave robbers had ample opportunities to supply cadavers to Cincinnati’s medical schools. And if fresh graves weren’t available, they lurked for victims in the saloons and the dark alleys of Vine Street and the West End.

From its founding in the early 1830s, Springfield was a rough frontier town where whiskey flowed freely, gunplay and fistfights abounded and gambling thrived. The Civil War not only brought the horror of warfare home to Springfield but also introduced worldly vices like prostitution that were scarcely known in previous years. Yet throughout its history, Springfield has managed to maintain a veneer of respectability not shared by certain other towns of southwest Missouri that were founded as wild, wide-open mining camps, like Joplin and Granby. Join Larry Wood as he digs beneath the surface of Queen City history to expose notorious characters and capers that would make even Joplinites blush.