The Unknown Crime Of The Century

A. C. Doyle is a retired engineer and, having graduated from Rensselaer and being employed for more than forty years by major government contractors in the fields of nuclear energy and nuclear submarines, is therefore well qualified to perform the analysis of the election. However, this book also relates why the subject of the election became a hot topic for investigation. In the telling of some of the events that took place in the years prior to and during the election, Doyle describes functions of the government that are necessary in understanding why the true natures of all US elections are hidden in the details and are not obvious. Love for the United States and respect for the Constitution are mixed in the discussion of the results of the analysis and its possible effects on the USA and the world. Additionally, the method of the analysis is described so that the reader understands that the results of the analysis are proven facts as opposed to opinion or theory.

The story behind the attack that shocked a nation and opened a new chapter in the history of American crime. On July 14th, 1966, Richard Franklin Speck swept through several student nurses’ townhouse like a summer tornado and changed the landscape of American crime. He broke in as his helpless victims slept, bound them one by one, and then stabbed, assaulted, and strangled all eight in a sadistic sexual frenzy. By morning, only one young nurse had miraculously survived. The killer was captured in seventy-two hours; he was successfully prosecuted in an error-free trial that stood up to appellate scrutiny; and the jury needed only forty-nine minutes to return a death verdict. Here is the story of Richard Speck by the prosecutor who put him in prison for life with a brand new introduction by Bill Kunkle, the prosecutor of the infamous John Wayne Gacy Jr. In The Crime of the Century, William J. Martin has teamed up with Dennis L. Breo to re-create the blood-soaked night that made American criminal history, offering fascinating behind-the-scenes descriptions of Speck, his innocent victims, the desperate manhunt and massive investigation, and the trial that led to Speck’s successful conviction.

During the 1950s and 1960s True Detective magazine developed a new way of narrating and understanding murder. It was more sensitive to context, gave more psychologically sophisticated accounts, and was more willing to make conjectures about the unknown thoughts and motivations of killers than others had been before. This turned out to be the start of a revolution, and, after a century of escalating accounts, we have now become a nation of experts, with many ordinary people able to speak intelligently about blood-spatter patterns and organized vs. disorganized serial killers. The Rise of True Crime examines the various genres of true crime using the most popular and well-known examples. And despite its examination of some of the potentially negative effects of the genre, it is written for people who read and enjoy true crime, and wish to learn more about it. With skyrocketing crime rates and the appearance of a frightening trend toward social chaos in the 1970s, books, documentaries, and fiction films in the true crime genre tried to make sense of the Charles Manson crimes and the Gary Gilmore execution events. And in the 1980s and 1990s, true crime taught pop culture consumers about forensics, profiling, and highly technical aspects of criminology. We have thus now become a nation of experts, with many ordinary people able to speak intelligently about blood-spatter patterns and organized vs. disorganized serial killers. Through the suggestion that certain kinds of killers are monstrous or outside the realm of human morality, and through the perpetuation of the stranger-danger idea, the true crime aesthetic has both responded to and fostered our culture's fears. True crime is also the site of a dramatic confrontation with the concept of evil, and one of the few places in American public discourse where moral terms are used without any irony, and notions and definitions of evil are presented without ambiguity. When seen within its historical context, true crime emerges as a vibrant and meaningful strand of popular culture, one that is unfortunately devalued as lurid and meaningless pulp.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.