front cover of Bad Blood
Bad Blood
Freedom and Death in the White Mountains
Casey Sherman
University Press of New England, 2012
In the shadow of the fallen Old Man of the Mountain, on a lonely stretch of mountain road, two men lay dead. A spasm of violence that took only a few minutes to play out leaves a community divided and searching for answers. From the author of newly released Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph Over Tragedy, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Bad Blood is the riveting account of the long-standing feud between Franconia, New Hampshire, police officer Bruce McKay, 48, and Liko Kenney, 24. In May 2007, Kenney shot and killed Officer McKay, following a dramatic chase that began with a routine traffic stop. Kenney, cousin of ski legend Bode Miller, was then shot and killed by a shadowy passerby. Almost immediately, the tragic incident revealed deep tensions within this otherwise quiet community in the White Mountains with charges that Kenney was a hell-raiser and mentally unstable and counter-charges that Officer McKay was a rogue cop who dispensed justice as a way to settle personal scores. Striving to get at the truth of the story, the author uncovers a complicated mix of personalities and motivations. Local and statewide interests clash while regional and national media— and even YouTube viewers— supply ready stereotypes to fit their agendas. Amid larger questions of the meaning of individual freedom we are, ultimately, helpless witnesses to an inevitable clash of characters.
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The Baltimore Plot
The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln
Michael J. Kline
Westholme Publishing, 2008

The Complete Story of the First Attempt to Assassinate President Abraham Lincoln

"In a thrilling detective story of conspiracy, treachery and assassination, Michael J. Kline suggests how close the Baltimore plotters came to achieving their goal, and reveals how Lincoln and a few guards outwitted them. Meticulously researched and written with verve, "The Baltimore Plot" takes readers aboard Lincoln's inaugural train for a perilous and unforgettable journey." —James L. Swanson, author of the Edgar Award-winning New York Times bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

On February 11, 1861, the "Lincoln Special" - Abraham Lincoln's private train—began its journey from Springfield, Illinois, to the City of Washington, carrying the president-elect to his inauguration as the sixteenth president of the United States. Considered a "sectional candidate" by the South, and winning the election without the popular vote, Lincoln was so despised that seven states immediately seceded from the Union. Over the next twelve days, Lincoln would speak at numerous stops, including Indianapolis, Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Albany, New York, and Philadelphia, expressing his desire to maintain the Union. But as Lincoln made his way east, America's first private detective, Allan Pinkerton, and a separate undercover operation by New York City detectives, uncovered startling evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln during his next-to-last stop in Baltimore. Long a site of civil unrest—even Robert E. Lee's father, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, was nearly beaten to death in its streets—Baltimore provided the perfect environment for a strike. The largest city of a border state with secessionist sympathies, Baltimore had been infiltrated by paramilitary groups bent on killing Lincoln, the "Black Republican." The death of the president-elect would, it was supposed, throw the nation into chaos and allow the South to establish a new nation and claim Washington as its capital. Warned in time, Lincoln outfoxed the alleged conspirators by slipping through Baltimore undetected, but at a steep price. Ridiculed by the press for "cowardice" and the fact that no conspirators were charged, Lincoln would never hide from the public again. Four years later, when he sat unprotected in the balcony of Ford's Theatre, the string of conspiracies against his life finally succeeded. One of the great presidential mysteries and long a source of fascination among Lincoln scholars, the Baltimore Plot has never been fully investigated until now. In The Baltimore Plot: The First Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Michael J. Kline turns his legal expertise to evaluating primary sources in order to discover the extent of the conspiracy and culpability of the many suspects surrounding the case. Full of memorable characters, including Kate Warne, the first female undercover agent, and intriguing plot twists, the story is written as an unfolding criminal proceeding in which the author allows the reader to determine whether there was a true plot to kill Lincoln and if the perpetrators could have been brought to trial.

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Barbarous Souls
David L. Strauss
Northwestern University Press, 2010
On December 14, 1955, Darrel Parker arrived at his Lincoln, Nebraska, home to find his wife, Nancy, strangled to death. Although their house was broken into less than a month earlier, the police were unable to find any leads, so their attention turned to Parker. To make their case, the authorities relied on a private interrogation by polygraph operator John Reid of Chicago. Reid’s company, founded in 1947, today provides interviewing and interrogation techniques that the company claims are the most widely used in the world. 

Barbarous Souls tells the story of Darrel Parker’s wrongful conviction for Nancy’s murder. Lincoln native David Strauss weaves a shocking true crime story with an exposé of still-prevalent methods of interrogation—methods that often lead to false confessions and the conviction of innocent suspects. After he was convicted, Parker served thirteen years of a life sentence before agreeing to a deal that would free him but not clear his record. It was later discovered that a murderer who died in prison in 1988 had taped a confession to the crime.

A roller-coaster ride in the tradition of John Grisham’s The Innocent ManBarbarous Souls is a thorough examination of a wrongful conviction based on a false confession, and an illuminating portrayal of a widespread phenomenon that still plagues the justice system.
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Bath Massacre
America's First School Bombing
Arnie Bernstein
University of Michigan Press, 2009
"With the meticulous attention to detail of a historian and a storyteller's eye for human drama, Bernstein shines a beam of truth on a forgotten American tragedy. Heartbreaking and riveting."
---Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Starvation Heights
 
"A chilling and historic character study of the unfathomable suffering that desperation and fury, once unleashed inside a twisted mind, can wreak on a small town. Contemporary mass murderers Timothy McVeigh, Columbine's Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho can each trace their horrific genealogy of terror to one man: Bath school bomber Andrew Kehoe."
---Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart
 
On May 18, 1927, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty-eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kehoe, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife---burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze---was found tied to a handcart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large-scale murder are nothing new.
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Bath Massacre, New Edition
America's First School Bombing
Arnie Bernstein
University of Michigan Press, 2022
The new edition of this Michigan Notable Book includes a new introduction and stories from interviews with two additional survivors, Myrna (Gates) Coulter and Ralph Witchell, which took place after the first edition was published in 2009.

On May 18, 1927, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty-eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kehoe, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife—burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze—was found tied to a handcart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large-scale murder are nothing new.
 
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Betrayal of the Spirit
My Life behind the Headlines of the Hare Krishna Movement
Nori J. Muster
University of Illinois Press, 1996

Combining behind-the-scenes coverage of an often besieged religious group with a personal account of one woman's struggle to find meaning in it, Betrayal of the Spirit takes readers to the center of life in the Hare Krishna movement.

Nori J. Muster joined the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)--the Hare Krishnas--in 1978, shortly after the death of the movement's spiritual master, and worked for ten years as a public relations secretary and editor of the organization's newspaper, the ISKCON World Review. In this candid and critical account, Muster follows the inner workings of the movement and the Hare Krishnas' progressive decline.

Combining personal reminiscences, published articles, and internal documents, Betrayal of the Spirit details the scandals that beset the Krishnas--drug dealing, weapons stockpiling, deceptive fundraising, child abuse, and murder within ISKCON–as well as the dynamics of schisms that forced some 95 percent of the group's original members to leave. In the midst of this institutional disarray, Muster continued her personal search for truth and religious meaning as an ISKCON member until, disillusioned at last with the movement's internal divisions, she quit her job and left the organization.

In a new preface to the paperback edition, Muster discusses the personal circumstances that led her to ISKCON and kept her there as the movement's image worsened. She also talks about "the darkest secret"–child abuse in the ISKCON parochial schools--that was covered up by the public relations office where she worked.

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Bloody Williamson
A Chapter in American Lawlessness
Paul M. Angle; Introduction by John Y. Simon
University of Illinois Press, 1952

"In Williamson County some men took to violence almost as a way of life. A shocking story, well told."--New Yorker

Williamson County in southern Illinois has been the scene of almost unparalleled violence, from the Bloody Vendetta between two families in the 1870s through the Herrin Massacre of 1922, Ku Klux Klan activities that ended in fatalities, and the gang war of the 1920s between the Charlie Birger and Shelton brothers gangs. Paul Angle was fascinated by this more-than-fifty-year history, and his account of this violence has become a classic.

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Boston Strong
A City's Triumph over Tragedy
Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge
University Press of New England, 2015
Veteran journalists Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge have written the definitive inside look at the Boston Marathon bombings with a unique, Boston-based account of the events that riveted the world. From the Tsarnaev brothers’ years leading up to the act of terror to the bomb scene itself (which both authors witnessed first-hand within minutes of the blast), from the terrifying police shootout with the suspects to the ultimate capture of the younger brother, Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy reports all the facts—and so much more. Based on months of intensive interviews, this is the first book to tell the entire story through the eyes of those who experienced it. From the cop first on the scene, to the detectives assigned to the manhunt, the authors provide a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation. More than a true-crime book, Boston Strong also tells the tragic but ultimately life-affirming story of the victims and their recoveries and gives voice to those who lost loved ones. With their extensive reporting, writing experience, and deep ties to the Boston area, Sherman and Wedge create the perfect match of story, place, and authors. If you’re only going to read one book on this tragic but uplifting story, this is it.
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Brotherly Love
Murder and the Politics of Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Rhode Island
Charles Hoffmann
University of Massachusetts Press, 1998
On New Year's Eve in 1843, Rhode Island textile manufacturer Amasa Sprague was shot and beaten to death. Within two days, three Irish immigrant brothers were arrested, charged with murder, and eventually brought to trial.

Brotherly Love is a graphic reconstruction of the crime, its social and economic background, and the subsequent trials. The story reveals the antagonism between native-born Yankees, who commanded great power, and the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants, most of whom worked in the textile mills. Indeed, the economic, political, and religious dimensions of the conflict are all evident in the trials.

The authors argue persuasively that the Gordons were victims of bigotry and circumstantial evidence, serving as convenient scapegoats to appease a community outraged over the murder of its wealthiest citizen. In telling the story of this notorious case, Brotherly Love reveals the politics of prejudice in nineteenth-century New England as played out in community and courtroom.
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The Business of Crime
Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States
Humbert S. Nelli
University of Chicago Press, 1981
"Dr. Nelli . . . describes the kinds of crime that prevailed in Italian immigrant enclaves in America; like most American crime, then as now, Italian crime was one aspect of the so-called culture of urban poverty—boys graduated from street gangs to criminal gangs. None of these gangs were very big until Prohibition brought the Great Leap Forward, to a level that Dr. Nelli calls 'entrepreneurial crime.' His fine account makes sense of many murderous incidents, differentiates among places, and sketches individuals and the talents (Torrio's brains, Capone's brutality) that enabled them to rise in the underworld."—New Yorker

"A definitive history of organized crime in America."—American Historical Review
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Butcher's Work
True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness
Harold Schechter
University of Iowa Press, 2022
 A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America. While other infamous homicides from the same eras—the Lizzie Borden slayings, for example, or the “thrill killing” committed by Leopold and Loeb—have entered into our cultural mythology, these four equally sensational crimes have largely faded from public memory. A quartet of gripping historical true-crime narratives, Butcher’s Work restores these once-notorious cases to vivid, dramatic life.
 
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