Spine Chilling Murders In Des Moines

Spine-Chilling Murders in Des Moines is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book have ever made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Read them if you dare.

Ever wonder what evil lurks in your hometown? Spine-Chilling Murders in Iowa takes you behind the scenes of some old-time killings in Iowa. Nettie Schwab married Jerome Hoot in Kansas City in 1899. When she woke up on the second day of her honeymoon, she found him bending over her, holding a handkerchief laced with chloroform close to her face. Another time, Hoot tried to drug her with a tablet, but she spit it out when he wasn’t watching. Not long after that, she received an infernal machine in the mail. The Saturday Night Murderer butchered eight people overnight in the sleepy little town of Villisca in June 1912. Investigators believed the killer rode the rails into town, then once his bloody work was done, hopped back on the train. “Tonight, I’m going to hold up the Handy Store,” bragged Floyd Sheets. “If there is any resistance, someone is going to be filled with lead. So, watch tomorrow evening’s papers if you think I’m kidding.” Sure enough, he killed the owner’s son at the Davenport, Iowa grocery store. No one was particularly surprised when they learned Earl Throst killed schoolmarm Inga Magnusson near Dorchester, Iowa, in 1921. When captured, Throst told detectives he planned to marry Magnusson the following week even though she was engaged to another man. Myrtle Cook’s death contained all the elements of a good murder mystery—rum runners, and an estranged husband who fumbled some of the details of his alibi. Cook, age 51, was shot to death in her Vinton, Iowa home on September 7, 1925. Read them if you dare!

Spine-Chilling Murders in the Quad-Cities is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book have ever made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Cities covered include Davenport, Bettendorf, Muscatine, and Clinton, Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline, and Silvis, Illinois. Stories include: The murder of Herman Peetz by his former friend, Walter J. Hill, in Rockingham, West Davenport, Iowa. When Anna Kilduff shot and killed her husband John at the Bar Fish and Oyster Market on Brady Street in Davenport. The Black Hand killing of Beni Scatura on West Third Street in Davenport by Joe Campanelli. The story of how Irene Dolph shot and killed her husband, Fritz, in Lyons, now Clinton, Iowa. A pair of shootings in the Silvis Railroad Yards in the early 1900s. Dan Chasteen killed Special Officer Hugo Alvine, and Alfonanso Petrone fell victim to the Black Hand. Ethel Collicott was murdered at the River-to-River Garage on Davenport's Main Street during an attempted robbery. His killer Norman O. Luce was captured nine years later in Plattsburgh, New York. Lulu Bennett whacked her neighbor Mary Mason over the head and killed her over a racial slur. Manuel Rocha killed his friend Harry Carey with an ax on Brown Street in Davenport. Rudolph Brandenburg's stepfather Claus Muenter was a mean drunk who constantly abused Brandenburg's mother. One day Brandenburg snapped, and unloaded seven rounds from his Colt Automatic into Muenter, then turned the gun around and beat his head with the butt of his revolver. Maria Mota and her lover, Antonio Silva, murdered her common-law husband, Pedro Medjia in the boxcar settlement outside of Walcott, Iowa, so they could run away and get married.< Fred Smith shot and almost killed Davenport Policeman Henry Janssen on a routine burglary call. After he was caught, Smith said he didn't want to be taken in with a gun in his pocket. Maurice Meyer killed Rose Gendler and tossed her warm body over the Rock River bridge in Moline, Illinois three days before Christmas in 1932. He said she took a fall on the ice and he disposed of the body rather than face questioning. The coroner said she didn't die until her body hit the ice below the bridge. Read them now, if you dare!

Ever wonder what evil lurks in your hometown? Spine-Chilling Murders in the Northeast takes you behind the scenes of some old-time killings in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and more. Joseph Elwell, the Whist Wizard of Manhattan, was shot to death in his home overnight on June 11, 1920. Roy Harris, an aspiring novelist, confessed to the crime, but it soon turned out to be nothing more than a publicity stunt to help sell his new book. Louise Lawson led a double life. The folks back home in Walnut Springs, Texas, knew her as a shy young girl aspiring to a big-time musical career. Her friends in New York knew her as a Broadway Butterfly, one of those kept girls who lived in a fancy apartment. When she was found dead in 1918, it turned out she was the victim of a gang that targeted the working girls of New York. Marie Williams (aka Boots) was the prettiest girl ever arrested in West Virginia. She told police that she, and her boyfriend, Peter Treadwell, were in the room when Henry Pierce was murdered, but they did not have anything to do with the crime. The police wanted to believe her, but... When nineteen-year-old Avis Linnell turned up dead at the Y. M. C. A. in Boston, suspicion quickly fell on her fiance, Reverend Clarence V. T. Richeson. The Boston Globe said Richeson had a "soft" and "musical" voice, almost too much for a girl to resist. It didn't help the Reverend any that he was carrying on with Avis, while he announced his upcoming marriage to wealthy Boston socialite, Violet Edmands. Pretty Josephine Amore killed her neighbor/lover Michael Martelle in Newark, New Jersey, in August 1908. Martelle kissed her and threatened to harm her family unless she ran away with him. "I got me a great big gun," said Josephine, "and killed him." Detectives didn't believe her for a minute. They were convinced her husband, Carmine Amore, was the killer, but could never quite pin the killing on him. Alfred Morrison shot his wife in his sleep and told police he didn't know anything about it. He was lost in a dreamlike state much like Walter Mitty. The newspapers quickly labeled him the Mount Vernon Dream Killer. Hans Schmidt, a New York Priest, became known as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Killer after he murdered Anna Aumuller and scattered her dismembered remains in the North River. He told detectives he tasted her blood first, then when she was dead dragged her body into the bathroom and carved it up. George White, a man of color, was arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering seventeen-year-old Helen S. Bishop in Wilmington Delaware in June 1903. A mob broke him out of the Castle County Work House as guards stood by and did nothing to stop them. White was dragged out into the woods and burned alive. All he could say in his defense was, "You would not have done this if I was a white man." Read them if you dare!

Spine-Chilling Murders in Illinois is a collection of true-life stories, most of which were rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Few events in this book have made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Burglars killed Chicago millionaire Amos Snell during a home invasion in 1888. The investigation took detectives on a winding course across the country, but the killer was never found. Finally, twenty-five years later, a deathbed confession showed the police had the killer in their hands just days after the murder. But unfortunately, they let him go due to a lack of evidence. H. H. Holmes murdered as many twenty-seven people during his fifteen-year crime spree. Holmes's base of operations was his murder castle in Elgin, Illinois. Most of his victims died so Holmes could collect the insurance policies he took on their lives. The others were sold to body snatchers for $25 to $55 per head. The car barn bandits were every Chicagoan's worst nightmare-four bored boys, armed and out for thrills, let the consequences be damned. They killed eight men in less than a year and injured almost a dozen more. After Gustave Marx's capture, the gang leader told reporters: "There are too damn many people walking around town. They ought to be glad to be put out of their misery." Johann Hoch, the Chicago Bluebeard, married as many as fifty women in the ten years between 1895 and 1905. Most times, he took their money and disappeared. Unfortunately, at least nine of Hoch's wives died shortly after marrying him. Later, when asked what all his wives died from, Hoch chuckled and said, "kidney problems, I suppose. "Ask the doctors. They know better than I do." The Cambridge Curse defied explanation. During the three years between 1905 and 1908, Henry County experienced ten murders, five suicides, two attempted suicides, and a bank robbery. The statistics were totally out of whack for a community of 1500. Chicago Tribune crime reporter Jake Lingle was gunned down in cold blood in a city subway station on June 9, 1930. At first, the city mourned his passing as a martyr in the fight against crime. But, before the month was out, evidence surfaced that Lingle was in deep with the city's mobsters. He was a personal friend of Al Capone and worked as a go-between for the gangsters and police. Of course, there's more, but you get the idea. Illinois was a dangerous place at the turn of the century. Read them if you dare.

Spine-Chilling Murders in San Francisco is a collection of true-life stories rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Few events in this book have made it into print, except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, stage name "Fatty" Arbuckle, one of the hottest stars of the silent film era, hosted a party at the posh St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in early September 1921. There was a lot of drinking, and one of the guests, a beautiful young starlet named Virginia Rappe, died several days later from an affliction that started at the party. Conkling was charged with manslaughter and tried three times. The bodies of two young women were discovered in the Emanuel Baptist Church in 1895. The primary suspect, W. H. Theodore Durrant, was a dental student at the Cooper Medical College in San Francisco. The thing was, Durrant wasn't someone you'd suspect of being a killer. He was active in the church and served as the church librarian and secretary for the Christian Endeavor Youth group. And yet, all signs pointed to Theodore Durrant as the killer. Albert Hoff, the San Francisco Troll, admitted being in the house with Mary Clute when she was killed. However, he insisted he didn't do it. Hoff was dirty, shifty, and nervous as detectives questioned him. Chief Isaiah Lees took an immediate disliking to Albert Hoff. Cordelia Botkin had a long-running affair with war correspondent John P. Dunning. She had picked him up out of the gutter and reinvigorated him spiritually, financially, and sexually. And then, not long before Dunning's wife was murdered, he told Cordelia Botkin that he intended to move back to New York with his wife when the war ended. Suspicion quickly fell on Cordelia Botkin. The prosecution had a strong case against her, but there were several obstacles they needed to overcome to try her. Of course, there are more stories, but you get the idea. Criminals roamed the streets of San Francisco at the turn of the century. Some killed for money, some for love, and others for the thrill of it. Read them if you dare.

One hundred years ago Villisca, Iowa made the national spotlight when eight people were butchered in their sleep. Attention quickly turned to the Reverend Lyn Kelley, ""a queer, strange, little preacher man,"" often accused of window peeping. Kelley said he was walking by the Moore house when a voice commanded him to, ""Go in. Slay utterly."" What could he do? He climbed the stairs and slaughtered the children. ""Slay utterly. Suffer the little children."" Back downstairs, he went into the parent's bedroom. ""More work yet. There must be sacrifices of blood."" Again, the ax did its work. In another downstairs bedroom, he discovered the Stillinger girls, asleep in their beds. ""More work still."" The ax resumed its work. Eight people were dead. The ax was satisfied. When Kelley recanted his confession, detectives developed dozens of other suspects, but none of them panned out. The Villisca Ax Murders remain Iowa's most famous cold-case file.

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