The Congressman who Got Away with Murder

The Congressman who Got Away with Murder
Author: Nat Brandt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1991
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

An account of power, sex and murder, seen in the context of the politics, justice system and mores of Washington society on the eve of the Civil War. This book provides an account of the murder trial of a congressman and includes illustrations from newspapers and magazines of the time.

Finding Chandra

Finding Chandra
Author: Scott Higham
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010-05-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1439148767

It was the mystery that gripped the nation during the summer of 2001: the sudden disappearance of Chandra Levy, a young, promising intern, and the possible involvement of Congressman Gary Condit. And then the case went cold. By 2007, satellite trucks and reporters had long since abandoned the story of the congressman and the intern in search of other news, fresh scandals. Across the country, Chandra’s parents tried to resume their daily lives, desperately hoping that someday there might be a break in the investigation. And in Washington, the old game of who’s up and who’s down played on without interruption. But Chandra Levy haunted. Six years after the young intern’s disappearance, investigative editors of the Washington Post pitched two Pulitzer Prize– winning reporters their idea: Revisit the unsolved case and find out what happened to Chandra, a task that had eluded police and the FBI. Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz went to work. e result was a thirteen-part series in the Washington Post that focused on a prime suspect the police and the FBI had passed over years before. They had wrongly pursued Condit and chased numerous false leads, including a claim that Chandra had been kidnapped and taken to the Middle East. But the most likely culprit was far less glamorous: an immigrant from El Salvador, a young man in the clutches of alcohol, drugs, and violence who had been stalking the running paths of Rock Creek Park, assaulting female joggers at knifepoint. He had attacked again, even as the police and the press concentrated on a congressman romantically linked to the intern. Finding Chandra explores the bungled police efforts to locate the crime scene and catch a killer, the ambition and hubris of Washington’s power elite and press corps, the twisted culture of politics, the dark nature of political scandal, and the agony of parents struggling to comprehend the loss of a child. Above all, it is a quintessential portrait of a cast of outsiders who came to Washington with dreams of something better, only to be forever changed.

Murder of the U.S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles’ Crime of Passion in 1859 (A Historical True Crime Short)

Murder of the U.S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles’ Crime of Passion in 1859 (A Historical True Crime Short)
Author: R. Barri Flowers
Publisher: R. Barri Flowers
Total Pages: 36
Release:
Genre: True Crime
ISBN:

From R. Barri Flowers, award-winning criminologist and bestselling author of Murdered by the King of Western Swing, Murder at the Pencil Factory, Murder of the Doctor’s Wife, and Murder During the Chicago World’s Fair, comes the gripping historical true crime short, Murder of the U.S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles’ Crime of Passion in 1859. On February 27, 1859, Philip Barton Key II, the forty-year-old U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was gunned down while standing in Lafayette Square, a public park across from the White House. His killer was Rep. Daniel Sickles, a thirty-nine-year-old New York congressman and lawyer whose striking young wife, Teresa Sickles, Key had been having an affair with. Upon discovering his wife’s infidelity, Sickles became enraged and had the deadly encounter with her suitor. Afterward, he surrendered to authorities, confessed, was charged with murder, and went to trial. In spite of the cold-blooded and premeditated nature of the attack, Sickles used a defense of temporary insanity for his actions, the first such time this type of legal defense was employed in the United States. He was acquitted as a result and the “temporarily insane” justification for homicide or other serious intimate-involved offenses became a common defense for so-called crimes of passion. Sickles, who was no stranger to public scandals and controversy, was able to effectively get away with murder. He would reconcile with his wife for a short time, continue his career in politics, and become a decorated soldier for the Union Army during the Civil War, and a diplomat, before dying in his nineties. His long life notwithstanding, taking the life of his wife’s lover, Philip Key, in a fit of jealousy would forever remain a major part of Daniel Sickles’ legacy, as chronicled in this compelling trip back in time of more than 150 years. Bonus material includes a complete and riveting historical true crime short, Dead at the Saddleworth Moor: The Crimes of Serial Killers Ian Brady & Myra Hindley; and excerpts from the author’s bestselling true crime anthologies, The Dreadful Acts of Jack the Ripper and Other True Tales of Serial Murder and Prostitutes, and Murder and Menace: Riveting True Crime Tales (Vol. 3).

Murder of the U. S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles' Crime of Passion in 1859 (a Historical True Crime Short)

Murder of the U. S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles' Crime of Passion in 1859 (a Historical True Crime Short)
Author: R. Barri Flowers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 94
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre:
ISBN: 9781721939138

From R. Barri Flowers, award-winning criminologist and bestselling author of Murdered by the King of Western Swing, Murder at the Pencil Factory, Murder of the Doctor's Wife, and Murder During the Chicago World's Fair, comes the gripping historical true crime short, Murder of the U.S. Attorney: Congressman Sickles' Crime of Passion in 1859.On February 27, 1859, Philip Barton Key II, the forty-year-old U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, was gunned down while standing in Lafayette Square, a public park across from the White House. His killer was Rep. Daniel Sickles, a thirty-nine-year-old New York congressman and lawyer whose striking young wife, Teresa Sickles, Key had been having an affair with.Upon discovering his wife's infidelity, Sickles became enraged and had the deadly encounter with her suitor. Afterward, he surrendered to authorities, confessed, was charged with murder, and went to trial.In spite of the cold-blooded and premeditated nature of the attack, Sickles used a defense of temporary insanity for his actions, the first such time this type of legal defense was employed in the United States. He was acquitted as a result and the "temporarily insane" justification for homicide or other serious intimate-involved offenses became a common defense for so-called crimes of passion.Sickles, who was no stranger to public scandals and controversy, was able to effectively get away with murder. He would reconcile with his wife for a short time, continue his career in politics, and become a decorated soldier for the Union Army during the Civil War, and a diplomat, before dying in his nineties.His long life notwithstanding, taking the life of his wife's lover, Philip Key, in a fit of jealousy would forever remain a major part of Daniel Sickles' legacy, as chronicled in this compelling trip back in time of more than 150 years.Bonus material includes a complete and riveting historical true crime short, Dead at the Saddleworth Moor: The Crimes of Serial Killers Ian Brady & Myra Hindley; and excerpts from the author's bestselling true crime anthologies, The Dreadful Acts of Jack the Ripper and Other True Tales of Serial Murder and Prostitutes, and Murder and Menace: Riveting True Crime Tales (Vol. 3).

Getting Away With Murder - In U.S. Public Life

Getting Away With Murder - In U.S. Public Life
Author: Emilio Bernal Labrada
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2012-07-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781475031102

A series of murders and felonies in high places makes this story disguised as fiction a gripping page-turner. Particularly since they were committed by and against presidents, vice presidents, politicians of all stripes and powerful personages in various branches of our government and, sometimes, of foreign ones as well. A number of these crimes were committed in collusion with professional mobsters and henchmen hired for the purpose, creating an unusual set of circumstances: governments, foreign and domestic, in partnership with the underworld. Although others have covered these events in nonfiction works, in most cases they have avoided the dangerous conclusions in this novel, such as the murder of a famous movie star (disguised as suicide) and the lover of an iconic politician (disguised as an accident). Also exposed are the great unpunished and unsolved assassinations of the twentieth century: JFK (clearly not done by the patsy accused of it), RFK (ditto), Martin Luther King (ditto), and J. Edgar Hoover. This book reveals the motives and brains behind these and other heinous crimes covered up by the very powers that committed them. The novel uncovers the sex and personal lives of the killed and their killers, as well as those of their movie-star and Mafia accomplices, naming their (in some cases mutual) sexual partners, some of which were regular participants in the White House, Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe sex parties. The mere possibility that any one of these events could actually have taken place is unsettling enough. Taken as a whole they form a mind-boggling compendium of criminal conduct nearly inconceivable in this day and age, above all considering that the American public has been led to believe, through manipulative use of the media and the proactive intervention of top-level government officials themselves, that everything has been done “by the book.” Aware that, while others have tried to pseudonymously evade consequences, I am willing to put my life at risk by using my own name. But it is a story worth telling for Americans to get an idea of the powerful forces they are up against. Forces capable not only of high crimes but, more importantly, able to cover them up officially and seamlessly.

Getting Away with Murder

Getting Away with Murder
Author: Vanessa A. Holloway
Publisher: University Press of America
Total Pages: 123
Release: 2014-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0761864334

Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the US Congress engaged in bitter debates on whether to enact a federal law that would prosecute private citizens who lynched black Americans. In Getting Away with Murder, the fundamental question under scrutiny is whether Southern Democrats’ racist attitudes toward black Americans pardoned the atrocities of lynching. The book investigates underlying motives of opposition to Senate filibustering and invites an intellectual discussion on why Southern Democrats thought states’ rights were the remedy to lynching, when, in fact, the phenomenon was a baffling national crisis. A rebuttal to this query may include notions that congressional investigations into state-protected rights were deemed unconstitutional. In a unifying theme, the appeal ties into questions of the federalism-civil rights debate by noting intervals that warrant research and advancing new perspectives intended to accentuate the matrices of race-based politics. To examine the federalism-civil rights debate, this book asks three practical questions: (1) Would Southern Democrats suspend their friendships with private citizens and enact a federal law that would prosecute them for lynching? (2) Was the national government limited in its constitutional power to protect black Americans from private citizens who organized themselves as lynch mobs? (3) Were concerns for states’ rights the core reasons for Senate filibustering, or did Southern Democrats’ argument for states’ rights support the lie of racism?

Sickles at Gettysburg

Sickles at Gettysburg
Author: James A. Hessler
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Total Pages: 505
Release: 2009-06-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1611210453

“Sickles is as dividing a figure in Civil War history as there is. In his masterful work . . . Hessler . . . puts him out there with all his wrinkles” (Confederate Book Review). Winner of the Robert E. Lee Civil War Roundtable of Central New Jersey’s Bachelder-Coddington Literary Award Winner of the Gettysburg Civil War Roundtable’s Distinguished Book Award By licensed battlefield guide James Hessler, this is the most deeply-researched, full-length biography to appear on this remarkable American icon. No individual who fought at Gettysburg was more controversial, both personally and professionally, than Major General Daniel E. Sickles. By 1863, Sickles was notorious as a disgraced former Congressman who murdered his wife’s lover on the streets of Washington and used America’s first temporary insanity defense to escape justice. With his political career in ruins, Sickles used his connections with President Lincoln to obtain a prominent command in the Army of the Potomac’s 3rd Corps—despite having no military experience. At Gettysburg, he openly disobeyed orders in one of the most controversial decisions in military history. Hessler’s critically acclaimed biography is a balanced and entertaining account of Sickles colorful life. Civil War enthusiasts who want to understand General Sickles’ scandalous life, Gettysburg’s battlefield strategies, the in-fighting within the Army of the Potomac, and the development of today’s National Park will find Sickles at Gettysburg a must-read. “The few other Sickles biographies available will now take a back seat to Hessler’s powerful and evocative study of the man, the general, and the legacy of the Gettysburg battlefield that old Dan left America. I highly recommend this book.”—J. David Petruzzi, coauthor of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg