Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids

Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids
Author: Tobin T. Buhk
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2015-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1625855516

While the River City is known for its history of furniture making, it also has a sinister side. Jennie Flood was a widow with a get-rich scheme that involved a shotgun and an insurance application. Reverend Ferris went undercover in his war against the city's purveyors of vice. The police rounded up the usual suspects in an attempt to solve the infamous 1921 bank heist that led to the slaying of two detectives. And the death of a teenager exposed "Aunty" Smith and her dangerous side business conducted in the shadows. Author Tobin T. Buhk delves into the colorful characters of Grand Rapids' past and the heinous crimes they committed.

Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids

Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids
Author: Tobin T. Buhk
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467117528

While the River City is known for its history of furniture making, it also has a sinister side. Jennie Flood was a widow with a get-rich scheme that involved a shotgun and an insurance application. Reverend Ferris went undercover in his war against the city's purveyors of vice. The police rounded up the usual suspects in an attempt to solve the infamous 1921 bank heist that led to the slaying of two detectives. And the death of a teenager exposed "Aunty" Smith and her dangerous side business conducted in the shadows. Author Tobin T. Buhk delves into the colorful characters of Grand Rapids' past and the heinous crimes they committed.

Forever and Five Days

Forever and Five Days
Author: Lowell Cauffiel
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2014-07-08
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1497649714

The bestselling author’s “auspicious debut in the true-crime genre . . . [a] sensitive and searching story of the murders of at least six nursing home patients” (Publishers Weekly). Outside the dining hall of the Alpine Manor nursing home, there is a sign that reads, “This is Grand Rapids, Michigan,” a reminder for those who can no longer trust their own minds. For months, Cathy Wood has fed these residents, bathed them, and even moistened their eyes with artificial tears. To her, they live in a state worse than death—and she has decided to relieve them of their pain. Wood and her lover, Gwen Graham, make a pact to kill those whom they were hired to care for. No one notices when an elderly person dies a quiet death, but as these two slip deeper into their plan, the terrible secret becomes unbearable. Lowell Cauffiel’s account of the Alpine Manor murders is a chilling saga of true crime and the twisted lengths to which some will go in pursuit of justice.

True Crime: Michigan

True Crime: Michigan
Author: Tobin T. Buhk
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2011-06-07
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0811745104

Includes Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, the Bath School Massacre, the Purple Gang of Detroit, and many more.

Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids

Poisoning the Pecks of Grand Rapids
Author: Tobin T. Buhk
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-10-28
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1625852258

“Traces the footsteps of poisoner Arthur Waite from his marriage to Clara Peck . . . in 1915 to his death by electrocution at Sing Sing Prison in 1917” (MLive.com). With his boyish good looks, Arthur Warren Waite charmed into marriage the daughter of wealthy Grand Rapids business tycoon John E. Peck in 1916. He then wasted no time executing what he believed to be a flawless scheme to hijack his wife’s inheritance. The plot went awry when a mysterious telegram set off a sequence of events that ultimately exposed his immoral ambition to poison all other Peck heirs. Follow Waite’s fingerprints of indiscretion around Grand Rapids and New York City as author Tobin T. Buhk details this audacious plan of staggering complexity. Includes photos! “Follow Waite’s trail around Grand Rapids and New York City as the author, Tobin Buhk details his complex plan meant to make him a rich man.” —Holland Sentinel

Darker than Night

Darker than Night
Author: Tom Henderson
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2006-10-03
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1429997087

In the bitter cold of 1985, two buddies embark on a hunting trip from suburban Detroit to rural Michigan, unaware they would soon become the hunted. Darker than Night tells the chilling true story of the mystery that haunted a community and baffled the police for two decades. The eerie silence surrounding their sudden disappearance is broken after nearly two decades when a relentless investigator inspires a terrified witness to break her silence. The witness narrates a haunting scene that had unfolded years back, pointing fingers at the prime suspects–the Duvall brothers. With no bodies unearthed, the justice system is riveted by the startling revelations during an electrifying trial in 2003. The brothers, Raymond and Donald Duvall, had bragged about the murders, evocatively explaining how they dismembered their victims and fed them to pigs. Despite the shocking confession, the case holds its ground purely on a single witness's account, taking the courtroom through a labyrinth of dark secrets and sinister acts. This gripping thriller presents a vivid tale of crime that reveals the devastating power of evil.

Murder in the Thumb

Murder in the Thumb
Author: Richard W. Carson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: Caro (Mich.)
ISBN: 9780922993772

One night in 1974, fifteen-year-old Robin Adams and her ¿foster sister¿ mischievously consulted a Ouija board. Robin asked the board how long she would live. The board told her she would die before her 17th birthday. About two years later, Robin disappeared from the Caro, Michigan, home where she worked as a live-in babysitter. Local police thought she had run away. Her friends knew better. Robin was having problems with her former boyfriend, who, two weeks earlier, had beaten her. However, with no eyewitnesses, no evidence of forced entry or struggle at the house and no body, the case went cold. In 1982, the case was reopened and assigned to a rookie detective. A ¿psychic¿ began assisting the detective. The psychic predicted that a ¿surprise witness¿ would come forward and identified another suspect who later failed a polygraph test.A break in the case came when the prime suspect¿s younger sister told a boyfriend that she helped commit the crime. She and her brother were charged with murder. The story might have ended after the trial, but it didn¿t. The sister¿s boyfriend suffered a series of injuries, which a medium blamed on black magic. Two trial witnesses died a year apart (same date) and several others connected to the case or members of their families were struck by tragedy. Was some unknown entity extracting vengeance for the shame brought on the killer¿s family? Murder in the Thumb is a powerful true story written by a seasoned journalist.

Wicked Northern Illinois

Wicked Northern Illinois
Author: Troy Taylor
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2010-09-24
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1614232202

From the secrets of Joliet Penitentiary to the ferocious gunfights between the Ku Klux Klan and the Shelton Gang, Troy Taylor takes the measure of the dishonest sweat and innocent blood poured into the prairies of Northern Illinois. Meet the "fallen angels" of Decatur's red-light district, the Springfield counterfeiters who bungled stealing Lincoln's bones and the Aurora man who propped up his porch with the heads of his wife and brother-in-law. And if you dare, eavesdrop on the chilling confession of a man who left a dancer's corpse to the mercy of the railroad tracks: "So, I pat them on the cheek, call them sweet names, and kill them."

Lynching Beyond Dixie

Lynching Beyond Dixie
Author: Michael J. Pfeifer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2013-02-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252037464

In recent decades, scholars have explored much of the history of mob violence in the American South, especially in the years after Reconstruction. However, the lynching violence that occurred in American regions outside the South, where hundreds of persons, including Hispanics, whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs, has received less attention. This collection of essays by prominent and rising scholars fills this gap by illuminating the factors that distinguished lynching in the West, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. The volume adds to a more comprehensive history of American lynching and will be of interest to all readers interested in the history of violence across the varied regions of the United States. Contributors are Jack S. Blocker Jr., Brent M. S. Campney, William D. Carrigan, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Dennis B. Downey, Larry R. Gerlach, Kimberley Mangun, Helen McLure, Michael J. Pfeifer, Christopher Waldrep, Clive Webb, and Dena Lynn Winslow.

Wicked Western Slope

Wicked Western Slope
Author: D.A. Brockett
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2012-06-22
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1614235759

Early promoters of Colorados Western Slope would have had settlers believe the area was one of proper behavior and upstanding morality. But this was not the case. Hot tempers led to quick trigger fingers and Main Street shootouts. Drinking, gambling and thieving were popular pursuits, and law breaking of all kinds thrived in this wild land. From Charles Graham, whose jealous rampage in Grand Junction is still talked about today, and the mysterious Friday the thirteenth murder of Jeanette Morris to Abe C. Ong, the mischievous pioneer bootlegger of De Beque, and Riversides Mrs. Barnes and her foul crime, History Sleuth D.A. Brockett reveals some of the most outrageous and remarkable crimes in Western Slope history.