Reviewed by Jeanne
True crime exerts a strong fascination. Long before movies,
television shows, podcasts, and internet sites catered to public interest,
there were books, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and yes, even songs to
immortalize murders, kidnappings, and other crimes. In this book, author Schechter has an
illustration of an item connected with the crime and puts it in context with a
brief explanation.
The book is arranged chronologically, starting with the murder
of Naomi Wise in 1808. The photo is of her tombstone, but the “object” is
actually a murder ballad. Her story
became “Little Omie,” a song that has been recorded numerous times, including
versions by Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, and Elvis Costello. It follows a pattern that goes back centuries
and has crossed continents, that of a young woman murdered by the man she
loves.
The final entry in the book is from 2014, and shows a soil
sample from the “Slender Man” site, where two school girls stabbed a
friend. The two had concocted the plan
in order to prove themselves worthy to a fictitious internet creature.
In between are items as varied as Al Capone’s rap sheet, the
death mask of Burke (as in the infamous Burke and Hare), a message from the
Black Dahlia killer, John Wayne Gacy’s business card, and the remains of a
pressure cooker from the Boston Marathon bombing. Most of the stories are from the U.S., though
there are a few international ones as well.
The summaries run about two pages.
Schechter has written several other true crime books,
including Hell’s Princess (about the infamous Belle Gunness) and Ripped
from the Headlines: The Shocking True Stories Behind the Movies’ Most Memorable
Crimes so this is territory he knows well.
I will confess—no pun
intended—that I didn’t read the entire book.
There’s a limit to the amount of real life murder I want to read in a
sitting. I did look up some cases, such
as the Lindbergh kidnapping, just to see how Schechter described it. In a
nutshell, he covered the evidence but acknowledged that in the years since
there have been questions as to Hauptmann’s guilt. He didn’t go into detail.
If you are a true crime
aficionado, this may be a good browsing book for you.
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