The Chicago Trunk Murder

The Chicago Trunk Murder

Author: Elizabeth Dale

Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1501757660

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On November 14, 1885, a cold autumn day in the City of Broad Shoulders, an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred watched as three Sicilians Giovanni Azari, Agostino Gelardi, and Ignazio Silvestri were hanged in the courtyard of the Cook County Jail. The three had only recently come to the city, but not long after they were arrested, tried, and convicted for murdering Filippo Caruso, stuffing his body into a trunk, and shipping it to Pittsburgh. Historian and legal expert Elizabeth Dale brings the Trunk Murder case vividly back to life, painting an indelible portrait of nineteenth-century Chicago, ethnic life there, and a murder trial gone seriously awry. Along the way she reveals a Windy City teeming with street peddlers, crooked cops, earnest reformers, and legal activists--all of whom play a part in this gripping tale. Chicago's Trunk Murder shows how the defendants in the case were arrested on du bious evidence and held, some for weeks, without access to lawyers or friends. The accused finally confessed after being interrogated repeatedly by men who did not speak their lan guage. They were then tried before a judge who had his own view and ruled accordingly. Chicago's Trunk Murder revisits these abject breaches of justice and uses them to consider much larger problems in late nineteenth century criminal law. Written with a storyteller's flair for narrative and brim ming with historical detail, this book will be must reading for true crime buffs and aficionados of Chicago lore alike.


The Rule of Justice

The Rule of Justice

Author: Elizabeth Dale

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780814208670

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Rule of Justice explores a sensational homicide case that took place in Chicago in 1888. Zephyr Davis, a young African American man accused of murdering an Irish American girl who was his coworker, was pursued, captured, tried, and convicted amid public demands for swift justice and the return of social order. Through a close study of the case, Dale explores the tension between popular ideas about justice and the rule of law in industrial America. As Dale observes, mob justice -- despite the presence of a professional police force -- was quite common in late nineteenth-century Chicago, and it was the mob that ultimately captured Davis. Once Davis was apprehended, the public continued to make its will known through newspaper articles and public meetings, called by various civic organizations to discuss or protest the case. Dale demonstrates that public opinion mattered and did, in fact, exert an influence on criminal law and criminal justice. She shows, in this particular instance the public was able to limit the authority of the legal system and the state, with the result that criminal law conformed to popular will. The Rule of Justice is sure to appeal to historians of criminal justice, legal historians, those interested in Chicago history, and those interested in the history of race relations in America.


Jet

Jet

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1958-03-20

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news.


Blood Runs Green

Blood Runs Green

Author: Gillian O'Brien

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-03-09

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 022624900X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It was the biggest funeral Chicago had seen since Lincoln’s. On May 26, 1889, four thousand mourners proceeded down Michigan Avenue, followed by a crowd forty thousand strong, in a howl of protest at what commentators called one of the ghastliest and most curious crimes in civilized history. The dead man, Dr. P. H. Cronin, was a respected Irish physician, but his brutal murder uncovered a web of intrigue, secrecy, and corruption that stretched across the United States and far beyond. Blood Runs Green tells the story of Cronin’s murder from the police investigation to the trial. It is a story of hotheaded journalists in pursuit of sensational crimes, of a bungling police force riddled with informers and spies, and of a secret revolutionary society determined to free Ireland but succeeding only in tearing itself apart. It is also the story of a booming immigrant population clamoring for power at a time of unprecedented change. From backrooms to courtrooms, historian Gillian O’Brien deftly navigates the complexities of Irish Chicago, bringing to life a rich cast of characters and tracing the spectacular rise and fall of the secret Irish American society Clan na Gael. She draws on real-life accounts and sources from the United States, Ireland, and Britain to cast new light on Clan na Gael and reveal how Irish republicanism swept across the United States. Destined to be a true crime classic, Blood Runs Green is an enthralling tale of a murder that captivated the world and reverberated through society long after the coffin closed.


Return to the Scene of the Crime

Return to the Scene of the Crime

Author: Richard Lindberg

Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 9781581820133

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A region-by-region tour of Chicago that describes significant crimes that took place in each area and chronicles the changes--such as laws, real estate development, and industrialization--that have influenced crime in the city.


Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871–1971

Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871–1971

Author: Elizabeth Dale

Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press

Published: 2016-05-25

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1501757504

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 2015, Chicago became the first city in the United States to create a reparations fund for victims of police torture, after investigations revealed that former Chicago police commander Jon Burge tortured numerous suspects in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. But claims of police torture have even deeper roots in Chicago. In the late 19th century, suspects maintained that Chicago police officers put them in sweatboxes or held them incommunicado until they confessed to crimes they had not committed. In the first decades of the 20th century, suspects and witnesses stated that they admitted guilt only because Chicago officers beat them, threatened them, and subjected them to "sweatbox methods." Those claims continued into the 1960s. In Robert Nixon and Police Torture in Chicago, 1871–1971, Elizabeth Dale uncovers the lost history of police torture in Chicago between the Chicago Fire and 1971, tracing the types of torture claims made in cases across that period. To show why the criminal justice system failed to adequately deal with many of those allegations of police torture, Dale examines one case in particular, the 1938 trial of Robert Nixon for murder. Nixon's case is famous for being the basis for the novel Native Son, by Richard Wright. Dale considers the part of Nixon's account that Wright left out of his story: Nixon's claims that he confessed after being strung up by his wrists and beaten and the legal system's treatment of those claims. This original study will appeal to scholars and students interested in the history of criminal justice, and general readers interested in Midwest history, criminal cases, and the topic of police torture.


Anatomy of Injustice

Anatomy of Injustice

Author: Raymond Bonner

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-01-08

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0307948544

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner, the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twenty-three-year-old man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holt's battle to save Elmore's life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nation's ongoing, increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.


H. H. Holmes

H. H. Holmes

Author: Adam Selzer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 645

ISBN-13: 1510740856

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

America's first and most notorious serial killer and his diabolical killing spree during the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, now updated with a new afterword discussing Holmes' exhumation on American Ripper. H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of a murderer who has become one of America’s great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century. Though Holmes has become just as famous now as he was in 1895, a deep analysis of contemporary materials makes very clear how much of the story as we know came from reporters who were nowhere near the action, a dangerously unqualified new police chief, and, not least, lies invented by Holmes himself. Selzer has unearthed tons of stunning new data about Holmes, weaving together turn-of-the-century America, the killer’s background, and the wild cast of characters who circulated in and about the famous “castle” building. This book will be the first truly accurate account of what really happened in Holmes’s castle of horror, and now includes an afterword detailing the author's participation in Holmes' exhumation on the TV series, American Ripper. Exhaustively researched and painstakingly brought to life, H. H. Holmes will be an invaluable companion to the upcoming Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio movie about Holmes’s murder spree based on Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City.


The Big Trial

The Big Trial

Author: Lawrence M. Friedman

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2015-05-04

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 070062077X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The trial of O. J. Simpson was a sensation, avidly followed by millions of people, but it was also, in a sense, nothing new. One hundred years earlier the Lizzie Borden trial had held the nation in thrall. The names (and the crimes) may change, but the appeal is enduring—and why this is, how it works, and what it means are what Lawrence Friedman investigates in The Big Trial. What is it about these cases that captures the public imagination? Are the “headline trials” of our period different from those of a century or two ago? And what do we learn from them, about the nature of our society, past and present? To get a clearer picture, Friedman first identifies what certain headline trials have in common, then considers particular cases within each grouping. The political trial, for instance, embraces treason and spying, dissenters and radicals, and, to varying degrees, corruption and fraud. Celebrity trials involve the famous—whether victims, as in the case of Charles Manson, or defendants as disparate as Fatty Arbuckle and William Kennedy Smith—but certain high-profile cases, such as those Friedman categorizes as tabloid trials, can also create celebrities. The fascination of whodunit trials can be found in the mystery surrounding the case: Are we sure about O. J. Simpson? What about Claus von Bulow—tried, in another sensational case, for sending his wife into a coma.? An especially interesting type of case Friedman groups under the rubric worm in the bud. These are cases, such as that of Lizzie Borden, that seem to put society itself on trial; they raise fundamental social questions and often suggest hidden and secret pathologies. And finally, a small but important group of cases proceed from moral panic, the Salem witchcraft trials being the classic instance, though Friedman also considers recent examples. Though they might differ in significant ways, these types of trials also have important similarities. Most notably, they invariably raise questions about identity (Who is this defendant? A villain? An innocent unfairly accused?). And in this respect, The Big Trial shows us, the headline trial reflects a critical aspect of modern society. Reaching across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the latest outrage, from congressional hearings to lynching and vigilante justice to public punishment, from Dr. Sam Sheppard (the “fugitive”) to Jeffrey Dahmer (the “cannibal”), The Rosenbergs to Timothy McVeigh, the book presents a complex picture of headline trials as displays of power—moments of “didactic theater”" that demonstrate in one way or another whether a society is fair, whom it protects, and whose interest it serves.