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Featured E-books: True Crime

Stringbean

The artist's impact on country music and how his death changed the genre

Murder on the Mountain

Margaret Klem and John Meierhofer were Bavarian immigrants who arrived in New Jersey in the 1850s, got married, and started a small farm in West Orange. When John returned from the Civil War, he was a changed man, neglecting his work and beating his wife. Margaret was left to manage the farm and endure the suspicion of neighbors, who gossiped about her alleged affairs. Then one day in 1879, John turned up dead with a bullet in the back of his head. This is a gripping and thought-provoking study of a murder that shocked the nation.

Mr Crippen, Cora and the Body in the Basement

It was an 'open and shut' case. Hawley Harvey Crippen, an American quack doctor, had murdered his wife, the music hall performer Belle Elmore, and buried parts of her body in the coal cellar of their North London home. But by the time the remains were discovered he had fled the country with his mistress disguised as his son. After a thrilling chase across the ocean he was caught, returned to England, tried and hanged, remembered forever after as the quintessential domestic murderer.But if it was as straightforward as the prosecution alleged, why did he leave only some of the body in his house, when he had successfully disposed of the head, limbs and bones elsewhere? This book, the first to make full use of this astonishing new evidence, considers its implications for our understanding of the case, and suggests where the real truth might lie.

Dying for Chocolate

On a summer day in 1898, a family in Dover, Delaware, shared a box of chocolates they received in the mail from an anonymous sender. Within days, two of the seven family members were dead; the other five became ill but recovered. The search for the perpetrator soon moved from Delaware to California, where a suspect was quickly identified: Cordelia Botkin, lover of the husband of one of the poisoned women. This book chronicles the shoddy investigation that led to Botkin's indictment and the two sensational trials, adjudicated in the press, that found her guilty.

A Talent to Deceive

On a dreary March night, Charles Lindbergh's 20-month-old son was abducted from his crib. The baby's kidnapper left behind muddy footprints, a broken ladder, and a ransom note demanding $50,000. Weeks later, Charles Lindbergh Jr. was found dead. Everyone was a suspect in this investigation, even the Lindberghs. After a six-week trial, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was named the ultimate culprit, but he claimed he was innocent even up to his execution day. For nearly 100 years, the Lindbergh Kidnapping still remains a major topic of controversy and fascination.

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