March 2024 ScaredyKIT: True Crime

March is True Crime month, a time to read about all those horrible yet fascinating events that have spawned a whole genre of storytelling. You can read about infamous murders, or you can choose an economic swindler like Bernie Madoff, or strange criminal behavior such as the Circleville letters. If it really happened, it counts.

Some topics to get you thinking:

Murder:
The Murder of the Century
Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper
The Devil in the White City
The Killer Across the Table
The Killer Beside Me
For the Thrill Of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago
The Warren Commission Report: The Official Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty
Buried Beneath the Boarding House- the Dorothea Puente murders

Scandal, Scams and Theft:
Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff
Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud
Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie & Clyde
Murder in the Heart Of It All- The Circleville letters

Let us know what you'll be reading for True Crime month.

I am going to read To Hunt a Killer by Julie Mackay & Robert Murphy. A DS who is assigned to the Cold Case Unit in 2009, tracks down a murderer from 1984.

I'm planning on reading Killers of the Flower Moon.

One of my fav genres! I'm planning to read The Monster of Florence a true crime set in Italy. This was recommended by Tanya.

I'll be reading The Devil's Rooming House: The True Story of America's Deadliest Female Serial Killer

I am going with Under The Banner of Heaven.

Silly question, but does the true crime have to be on your list? I'm currently reading Blind Justice by Robin Bowles. It's a book about a woman in Australia that died (it was ruled a suicide but there are a lot of questions on how it was ruled this way). Would this count? :)

Again, sorry the silly question, I'm new and trying to delve deep into LibraryThing :)

No, it doesn't have to be on my list in >1 mstrust:, it can be any true crime. If it really happened, it counts. Let me take a look at your book-
Yes, Blind Justice looks like it fits perfectly. Once you've finished it, come back here and give us a line or two about what you thought.
Welcome, glad you're here!

I did read the Monster of Florence, but finished it on 2/29, so I read another one! I completed The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370 by Florence De Changy. This was a non-fiction about the missing Malaysian 370 Plane in 2014. Investigators are sure that there was foul play involved, both by the Malay government and one of the pilots. It is unsolved as of yet.

I'm reading The Devil's Rooming House and it turns out to be the true story that the play Arsenic and Old Lace was based on.

The Devil's Rooming House is quite a tale. The Archer Home in Windsor, Conn., was opened in the early 1900s as a place for the elderly and invalid, and was actually a trailblazer in healthcare in that it didn't have the stigma of a person being thrown away by their family such as the common almshouses of the time. It was a decent looking house that had up to twenty-one residents at a time, nearly all of whom chose to live there. For $1000, Amy Archer provided total care for the rest of the resident's life. She's believed to have killed 53 people in a six year span.

And, the April thread is up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/359234

I read Cape May Court House: A Death in the NIght by Lawrence Schiller which was about a dentist who sued Ford for faulty airbags after his wife was killed in a car accident. Ford countered that she was actually strangled, and it was not the airbags that killed her. This was semi-local to me and I'm surprised that I don't remember ever hearing about this when it happened.

I have completed my read of To Hunt A Killer by DS Julie MacKay and Robert Murphy. This was a fascinating account of the cold case investigation into the 1984 murder of a teenager in Bath, England.

Can't believe I never posted here to mention what I'm reading (just started today), and to follow along. But here I am now!

I'm reading Hell's Half Acre by Susan Jonusas

I read The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson.

Hell's Half-Acre / Susan Jonusas
3.5 stars

The Benders were a group of four people, an older couple known simply as Ma and Pa, and a younger couple. No one knows if the younger were siblings or married. They moved to a plot of land in Kansas in the 1870s and stayed for a few years. The younger woman, Kate, called herself a “spiritualist”. They sold groceries (or had a sign out to do so, anyway), and attracted travellers with food and a place to stay. Unfortunately for some of those travellers, the Benders were also serial killers. When some of the locals were suspicious when the local doctor went missing, the Benders up and ran. No one ever found them. As the locals started looking around, the bodies were piling up on the homestead. There were at least 11 people killed, mostly men, mostly travellers, but one 18 month-old baby buried with her dad (they think the baby was buried alive).

I read a shorter account of this somewhere, I’d like to say not long ago, but it may be longer than I’m thinking. This was an expanded version of the story. Only about the first 1/3 of the book told of them coming to the area until they ran. The next bit of the book followed them to the wilds of Texas, where there were a lot more outlaws and places to hide, and people to help them hide. Beyond that, no one knows where they ended up. The last bit of the book was when, 16 years later, someone thought they’d found Ma and Kate; there were trials to determine if they really were the Benders or not. There is an extensive note section at the end, as well.

I thought the start and end were the more interesting. The middle part, as the Benders made their escape, was less interesting as we focused on a few of the other criminal element who helped them along their way (one of these people talked to police while he was in jail later on, so that’s how some of this is known). Overall, I’d say this was good. Certainly a lot of research went into it.

I haven't read that one yet but I hope to. I think the shorter book about the Benders may have been Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie by Harold Schechter.

>18 mstrust: Oh, I have not read that one, but I might look into it. Thank you!

I'm thinking it might have been in a book of "short stories" about true crime where I read something about the Benders.

I didn't end up starting The Killers of the Flower Moon, but I still intend on reading it this year, thanks to this thread!

>19 LibraryCin: Glad to point you towards Harold Schechter. He's a fantastic true crime author.
>20 LisaMorr: So something good came from all this true crime ;-D