True Crime
The Taliesin Murders
This is the story of how an ACTUAL CRAZY AXE MURDERER killed seven people – Wisconsin’s worst act of mass murder until 2005, inspired a Thomas Wolfe story – as well as many an urban legend, and completely changed a style of architecture – yet most of us have probably never even…
An 1801 Whodunnit
Say you’re on a jury in 1801 Massachusetts. On trial is a young man accused of killing his sweetheart. Her family did not approve of their connection. On the day in question, he had told two witnesses he passed on the road that he was on his way to her…
The Trial of Margaret Douglass
From American State Trials: “A Southern lady (Margaret Douglass) living with a daughter in Norfolk, Virginia sixty-six years ago (1853) and being greatly interested in the religious and moral instruction of colored children and finding that the Sunday school where they were allowed to attend was not sufficient, invited them…
Trial for Bastardy – 1808
Place: New York City Time: August 1808 On Trial: Alexander Whistelo, “a black coachman” The Story: “Adam-colored” Lucy Williams and her black lover Alexander Whistelo had a child together, a child whom Whistelo accepted as his own until his friends (possibly named Iago?) “put it into his head that it…
The Nude That Launched a Thousand..well, One Trial
Meet Narcissus. The original of this statue of him was discovered in Pompeii in 1862 and housed in the Naples Museum. In 1873, an enterprising art dealer of New Bedford Massachusetts, one Charles Hazeltine, purchased a replica of this very Narcissus in Boston and displayed it in the front window…