Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Murder
A whiskey baron who murdered his wife in a jealous rage, George Remus led a life that embodied both the opulence and violence of Prohibition.
Editor’s Note: Bob Batchelor is a cultural historian who has written or edited more than two dozen books on popular culture and American literature, including
It was a story so disturbing that we all still remember it. But what if it wasn’t true?
In the paper’s morning edition for March 27, 1964, The New York Times ran one of the most indelible leads in its 155-year history.
On the hundredth anniversary of the unsolved double murder of Andrew and Abby Borden, is it time to ask: What was going on in Lizzie Borden's family?
Up until the last century in some parts of the country, a murderer’s guilt could legally be determined by what happened when he or she touched the victim’s corpse
In 1646 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mary Martin was pregnant and unmarried. Her paramour was a married man, but it was her status as a single woman that determined the nature of her crime.
One of Ruth Snyder’s Crimes Was Murder
In 1925 a woman named Ruth Snyder too up with a salesman—a corset and brassiere salesman to be exact—and together on March 20, 1927, they murdered her husband in his bed. Months later, they were both electrocuted.
Why Lizzie Borden Went Free
During the summer of 1893, Americans riveted their attention on the town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, where Lizzie Andrew Borden was being tried for the gruesome ax murder of her father and stepmother.
Was there really a conspiracy to burn the town?
In January, 1708, a Mr. William Hallett, Jr., of Newton, Long Island, was murdered in his sleep with his pregnant wife and his five children. Two of Hallett’s slaves, an Indian man and a Negro woman, were tried for the crime and found guilty.
The city panicked with fear of the Mafia when the police chief was murdered
The lamplight filtering through the haze and drizzle gave the streets of New Orleans an eerie pallor that October night in 1890.
Today, thirty-two years after Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for the murder of a paymaster and his guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts, the ghosts of the cobbler and the fish-peddler are not at rest.
Featured Authors
