Cold Case Frozen: The Grimes Sisters of Chicago

The last time we visited Chicago on a cold winter’s night, a gangster lay bleeding out in a doorway—a man who had stood up to none other than Al Capone. That visit was in 1959—on this visit, however, just two years earlier in 1957, we come to explore one of the saddest cases ever to befall the Windy City, the cold case of the Grimes sisters. A case that is, unfortunately, now frozen.

It’s a case that has obsessed Chicagoans since the first day the news broke that Patricia and Barbara Grimes, aged fifteen and thirteen, hadn’t come home from watching the latest Elvis flick at the Brighton Theatre near McKinley Park. Devoted fans of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, the two had gone to see Love Me Tender no less than ten times already, but as author and historian Troy Taylor records in Murder & Mayhem on Chicago’s South Side, the eleventh would prove to be their last.

Their mother, Loretta Grimes, was on alert even before the girls were late, and sent her other children out to wait for them, but after they never stepped off any of the buses on their route home, the Grimes family began to fear the worst. After scouring the area to no avail, police released a plea for any information about the missing persons, yielding a flood of tips and sightings—many of which were contradictory or located miles apart. Incredibly, even Elvis himself got involved, releasing a statement from Graceland and asking the girls to return home.

The cranks—always the cranks. As the frigid days wore into frozen weeks, more illegitimate sightings were reported, mysterious phone calls were logged, and fake ransom notes showed up at the Grimes household, including one that directed Loretta to wait in a Catholic church in Milwaukee with $1000 cash. As expectations began to fray, any remaining threads of hope were severed when a construction worker named Leonard Prescott spotted two bodies on the side of German Church Road, bodies he initially believed to be mannequins. The date was January 22, 1957. It had been nearly four weeks since the girls had gone missing.

A photo of the side of the road where the Grimes sisters were found.
The location on German Church Road where the bodies of the Grimes sisters were discovered in January 1957. Image sourced from Murder and Mayhem on the Chicago South Side.

Regrettably, the transition from a missing-persons case to a murder investigation was mishandled in key ways. Not only did investigators swarm the scene, trampling any potential evidence in the nearby woods, but infighting among law enforcement agencies and the coroner’s office led to ambiguities, and later outright conflicts, over the cause of death. Despite evidence of strangulation, sexual assault, and puncture wounds (allegedly from an ice pick) on the girls’ bodies, the only cause of death that was recorded was ‘shock and exposure.’ Nor could analysts even agree on the date of death—though the bodies had been unusually well-preserved by their placement in a deep snowfall, the irony of their preservation brought no further clues to the case.

The drama didn’t end there. Unfortunately, as Taylor writes, Chicago PD of the time was more interested in cracking the case quickly than proceeding in a lawful manner, and despite interviewing over 300,000 people (yes, you read that right) they also managed to administer illegal polygraph tests to minors and to arrest drifters and local nutcases on flimsy evidence and unreliable confessions. Questions surrounding the girls’ nighttime activities polluted local discussion, and theories that they were kidnapped potentially to be sold into slavery (then killed when they refused) could never truly be substantiated. As the months wore on, without any new evidence or leads, the case drifted further and further into the investigative backlog—where sadly, despite being the largest manhunt in Chicago history in terms of man-hours alone, it remains today.

There is one interesting wrinkle, though. Recently it came out that retired Chicago police detective Ray Johnson took up the case, naming a potential culprit no one had identified. According to Detective Johnson, Loretta Grimes had received two phone calls from someone who claimed involvement with the case, bragging during one of them about another young girl he had just killed—a girl named Bonnie Leigh Scott. Though convicted and jailed for killing Scott, Charles Melquist was never fully investigated for the murder of the Grimes sisters, and eventually died in 2010.

The truth may lie with him—but who knows? 1957 isn’t so long ago, with plenty of living memory around to plumb its secrets. Perhaps this cold case will one day thaw after all.

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Good, Bad, and Private Cops: When Law Meets Labor

Have a nice weekend? Have any weekend at all? Ever take a paid sick day, or receive a severance package? Ever get hurt on the job and, thanks to your benefits package, not have to pay for your medical care?

Thank the labor movement—in particular, thank a steelworker.

It’s easy to forget nowadays that many of the modern working conditions we enjoy today were not guaranteed from the outset. Things like the 40-hour week or compensation for injuries were once pleasant fictions to the American worker, daydreams savored on the fifth twelve-hour factory shift in a row. In the early 20th century, steelworkers were at the forefront of a new industry, forging one of the world’s hardest metals out of raw iron, but they were also on the bleeding edge of the struggle for more and better rights in the workplace—often, the literal bleeding edge.

Image of a large vat of iron being poured into a heath furnace as a steel worker stands at a safe distance
Vat of molten pig iron poured into an open hearth furnace at Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. Courtesy of the National Archives. Image sourced from Road to Rust: The Disintegration of the Steel Industry in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Steelmaking wasn’t just a dirty business in the early 1900s. It was a deadly business. As Dale Richard Perelman describes in his book Road to Rust: The Disintegration of the Steel Industry in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, injuries and accidents were near daily-occurrences in steel mills of the day. Burns, crushed limbs, explosions, and worse set rank-and-file workers—many of whom were immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, viewed as expendable labor—on edge not just against their treacherous environment, but against the profit-chasing mill owners and steel barons (with little-known names like J.P. Morgan, Charles Schwab, and Andrew Carnegie) that sought to squeeze every last nickel from each shift.

Early strikes against these conditions, such as the 1892 Homestead Strike, led to even greater actions, and soon the mill barons had to bring in extra security as negotiations deteriorated. In July 1909, the Pressed Steel Car Strike in McKees Rocks, PA, outside Pittsburgh—protesting sordid conditions, starvation wages, cronyism in management, and more—saw hundreds of steelworkers mobilize in solidarity with crane operators who had been unjustly fired, walking off the job in support. The mill owners responded by mobilizing their ‘coal and iron police’ to maintain order.

Four police officers on horses.
McKees Rocks mounted police patrol. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Image sourced from Road to Rust: The Disintegration of the Steel Industry in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

As we’ve seen before, there are good cops and bad cops, but then there are private cops. The hundreds of striking workers escalated to thousands, and in retaliation, the mill owners promised those positions to any men in the area who wanted them, substitute workers who would be protected by their own law enforcement. As picket lines grew more violent—an estimated 4000 workers surrounded the plant, patrolled by 300 deputies and another 500 or so company police—bottles, bricks, and soon enough bullets began to fly.

Meet Pennsylvania’s Coal and Iron Police

Sadly, as Perelman records, there are no heroes in this story. The strikers of Pressed Steel Car were just as apt to injure, and in some cases kill, their own men (on suspicion of being a scab) as they were to attack members of management who they saw as furthering their oppression. The sheriff’s deputies were just as likely to pass out riot guns with orders to shoot to kill as they were to protect vulnerable strikebreakers attempting to enter the plant. On Bloody Sunday—August 22, 1909—strikers found an off-duty local deputy named Harry Exley on a streetcar and, after a scuffle, murdered him in cold blood in the street. Exley’s death was the spark that ignited the powder keg; after that, Perelman writes,

“The state police—the Black Cossacks, the Kozaki, as many an immigrant called them—struggled to reestablish order. A pitched battle followed. Bullets flew by the thousands. Militant strikers lobbed homemade bombs and scrap fragments across the fence into the plant. Vandals destroyed buildings and looted stores. The square at Donovan’s Bridge earned the sobriquet ‘the Bloody Angle,’ with justification. Authorities on horseback trampled the guilty and innocent alike. … A patrol of constables herded sixty-three men and one woman into a makeshift boxcar prison as the battle raged through the night.”

A distant photo of a bridge with about five people at the front of it.
‘The Bloody Angle’ from the Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909 in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Image sourced from Road to Rust: The Disintegration of the Steel Industry in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Following the worst of the violence, the city mourned the dead and the wounded on both sides—scores of picketers and policemen had been slain or grievously injured, and though tensions still ran high, enough was enough. But the sacrifice was not in vain. When the United States Commissioner of Labor finally arrived in McKees Rocks to settle the dispute, labor and management were able to agree on terms: the company “agreed to squash grafting, eliminate Sunday work, and cut Saturday hours,” as well as grant a pay increase within 90 days. Later, Pressed Steel Car would even go on to teach English to immigrant workers, and pay for civic improvements.

As Perelman writes, it would be a long time before full unionization would reach the steel industry, a story that he chronicles over the course of the twentieth century. Further gains would spread to other sectors of labor over time, with some advances requiring national legislation to enable them. But those gains were built on the backs of early vanguards such as these, and if you’re reading this at home on a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon—well, now you know who to thank.

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Donald Trump’s Butler Murdered! (in 1986)

Friends, we’ve seen some twists in our day. The broken-down car in the getaway plot, or the Mafioso who ended up kidnapping himself. But this one—we admit, we never saw this one coming.

At first blush, the murder of Jeffrey Heagerty in West Palm Beach, Florida, had all the trappings of your standard unsolved murder, straight out of the swamp. Heagerty, a young man who was found floating in a canal in the summer of 1984, seemed by all accounts simply to have ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.

a photo of Jeff and his friends posing for a picture inside of a car
Jeff (center) with Zohun Morgan (driving) and another friend on a night out in Fort Lauderdale in 1983. Courtesy Robert Smallwood. Image sourced from Solving the West Palm Beach Murder of Jeffrey Heagerty.

A passionate partygoer, aspiring stylist, and nightlife hound, Heagerty appeared to have fallen prey to the more predatory elements of the men’s club scene of the time. His friends and intimates had solid alibis for the night, and malicious cruisers of the day were known to pick out singletons and, plying them with drugs and booze, offer them a good deal more than they’d bargained for. This wasn’t the first tragedy of this sort in the area. Yet leads were so scant in Heagerty’s case that one amazing tip led investigators to interview everyone in the Palm Beach gay scene who dressed up like Boy George.

Yeah—like that really narrowed it down.

Thomas Stone pictured in Boy George attire and makeup.
Police sought out anyone who was known to do Boy George impersonations to be interviewed since Jeff was allegedly last seen in Kismet talking to someone in that attire. Kent Holiday, T.J. Sparks (known as Tacky Jacky) and Thomas Stone (pictured here) were all interviewed and photographed. Courtesy Palm Beach County Sheriff. Image sourced from Solving the West Palm Beach Murder of Jeffrey Heagerty.

But without any viable evidence other than a single unidentified fingerprint on Heagerty’s car, investigators hit a brick wall, and the case gradually went cold—until a chance conversation in a jail cell three years later. In 1987, another young man named Kurt Eugene Emrich was awaiting trial for a crime that shocked even him—when in an act of self-defense months earlier, he strangled his longtime lover, Emery James Illenye. In 1986, Emrich and Illenye had been a couple for a year or so, moving in together to a modest house in North Palm Beach. While they both worked to pay the bills, it’s fair to say that Illenye had a slightly higher-profile job: serving as personal butler to Donald and Ivana Trump, at their newly-purchased Mar-a-Lago estate.

According to Graham Brunk, who tells the whole sordid story in his book Solving the West Palm Beach Murder of Jeffrey Heagerty, the future 45th President was so impressed with Illenye’s work ethic that they even invited him to join their household staff back in New England that summer. But not all was well back in paradise—Brunk describes how during Illenye’s summer away, Emrich and Illenye argued at length over the costly upkeep of their new house. Eventually, once Illenye had returned home to Palm Beach, an argument broke out, and as arguments can do between lovers, things went south fast. In an alcohol-induced rage, Illenye began to physically assault Emrich. Emrich threw up his hands to protect himself, and when the dust settled in their bedroom, Emrich was standing over a corpse.

Learn how never, ever, ever to hide a dead body

To be fair, Emrich made for a terrible criminal, as least as far as the ‘getting away with it’ part goes. Fast-forward past burying the body in his own backyard (yep, you read that right) to the part where police find him holed up in a Holiday Inn and you can imagine how he ended up in the clink.

The twist? In that cell, awaiting trial, Emrich meets one Jeffrey Payne, a drifter locked up on other charges who strikes up a conversation. Payne decides he likes Emrich—maybe because he’s young, maybe because this is his first time in the joint—and starts telling him stories, bragging about his exploits, even about a murder he committed a couple of years back where he picked up a guy outside a bar one night and did some rather unspeakable things to him before dumping his body in a canal. Emrich is struck—either Payne is the best off-the-cuff storyteller in the Sunshine State, or he’s in possession of certain details that only someone very close to a crime might know. Either way, Emrich later took down careful notes of their conversation and sent them to the prosecutor on his case—and with the promise of even more details to come, bought himself some leverage in his trial.

What happens after that? We can’t spoil everything (that wouldn’t be any fun), but remember that mysterious fingerprint on Heagerty’s car? Wonder whose that turned out to be. Stranger things, friends, stranger things indeed—but had the former butler to the current President of the United States not once drunkenly assaulted his younger lover, Jeffrey Heagerty’s murderer might be walking free.

How’s that for a twist? Only one word to describe it—Yuuuuge!

Palm Beach newspaper headline that reads "Teen acquitted in death after self-defense claim."
After a remarkably tense trial, Kurt was acquitted of his second-degree murder charge on September 1, 1987. Jurors believed that the murder he committed was truly an act of self-defense. Courtesy the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Image sourced from Solving the West Palm Beach Murder of Jeffrey Heagerty.

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Meet Susan Guy, Author of The Moonlight Mill Murders

After following historian Kelly Hartman down the deadly Yellowstone Trail, this week we’re privileged to have Susan Guy join us on Crime Capsule. Guy is not only a historian but a longtime police officer in Ohio, bringing firsthand knowledge of the criminal justice system to her new book, The Moonlight Mill Murders of Steubenville, Ohio, just published by Arcadia/The History Press. Welcome, Susan, and congratulations!

Can you tell us how The Moonlight Mill Murders came to be?

The book came about through my research into crimes in Steubenville and Jefferson County, Ohio. I was surprised that a so-called serial killer had been so close to where I was born and raised, and that I had never heard about it. When I discussed it with my mother and stepfather at their kitchen table, my stepfather told me that his dad was a boss at Wheeling Steel at that time. He vaguely remembered his dad telling him that the men were fearful to go to work and that everybody wondered who was next. While researching, I discovered that my stepfather’s uncle on his mother’s side, Paul Cash, had actually chased the killer through the mill, with another guy.

During my local book signing events, an older woman approached me and asked if I was ever going to write about the killer at Wheeling Steel. It was at that time that I knew the story needed to be told. It was a part of local history that very few people knew about.

You’ve written for Arcadia/The History Press before. As a historian, what did you learn working on your previous books that you could apply to this one?

One thing I learned was that numerous people wanted to learn more about the characters in my book:—not just that they were murdered, but they wanted to know more about each one of their lives. That meant something to me because that’s how I am. I delve into each person’s life to the very end. I am a genealogist first and foremost, so I learn as much about a person as I can. I was so concerned to get the story written that I may have left out too much about the victims. This book, however, is written a bit differently and will hopefully give people more of an insight into each person who has a significant part in the story.

What kind of material did you use to tell your story? What were your sources?

My sources were court records, old newspaper articles, local history books, census records, death records, files from the Schiappa Library in Steubenville, and from the Jefferson County Historical Museum. Volunteers at both the library and the museum are always eager to help in projects of this kind and I am grateful for their help.

The Phantom Killer of Steubenville is such an incredible story to tell. What kind of legacy do these murders have today?

It is just one of many incredible stories that lend to Steubenville’s notorious past of being known as “Little Chicago.” The Phantom ranks right up there with the other notorious criminals of the time, which you will see when you read the book. There are many more stories to come.

Photo of author Susan Guy

You’ve written about this area in your previous book, Mobsters, Madams, & Murder in Steubenville, Ohio—but you’re also a native Ohioan. Did any aspect of the Moonlight Mill story hit home for you? Did you have any personal connection to any part?

All of the stories that I dig up on Steubenville and Jefferson County—or any story that I become interested in—become personal for me. The people involved in those stories become real, and I want to see how their story ends. I think any genealogist or true-crime writer feels the same way.

Remarkably, alongside your work as a historian you have also served as a sergeant at the Cross Creek Township Police Department. How has your work in law enforcement better equipped you to tell these stories?

The way I look at the crimes and look for clues. I can identify with the officers investigating the case, and their frustration at hitting brick walls, and I may write in legal jargon a little better than someone else. Being a genealogist and a police officer are not much different, really. Both hunt for clues and information about a person. It is tough, and some people are very elusive. You’ve got to stay on course until you find what you’re looking for.

Last but not least, can you tell us about your next project? What are you working on now?

I am working on another true crime book about Steubenville. It will be similar to Mobsters, Madams & Murder in that it will be multiple stories, but a bit different. That is all I can say for now—I keep my projects close to the vest. I will also be working on a book that is more personal to me about the crimes of my great-great-grandfather, which will be set in Fulton County, Pennsylvania. This book was actually supposed to be my first, but I got sidetracked with all the local history of Steubenville—and it keeps sidetracking me because there’s so much to tell!

On Protesting: When is a Crime not a Crime?

Reader, you know us. There’s nothing we love more on Crime Capsule than the story of a good solid crime. Not because we condone them, but because we’re fascinated by them: public officials turned frightfully corrupt. Heists worthy of Bonnie and Clyde. Bizarre murders, bootlegging (of course), and maybe best of all, the unsolved cases that continue to tickle our brain cells, always begging just one more question.  

According to legal codes, crimes such as these tend to be cut-and-dried: somebody did something terrible to someone else (or something else), and after working out the details, all that remains is to bring them to justice. But as we’ve followed recent events following the death of George Floyd (and Breonna Taylor, and so many others), the protests that have swept the nation have brought with them not just sweeping calls for reform to our justice system but deep-seated interrogations of what justice even is.

It’s a question worth asking. Protest in its criminalized form becomes known as civil disobedience, yet built into the very nature of civil disobedience is a paradox aimed at the heart of the legal system. In a country ruled by laws, not by tyrants, how do we account for times when the populace rejects the law as it stands in order to challenge, reform, or even abolish that law? What does it look like when a citizen willingly jailed for civil disobedience rejects the authority of the court that holds and tries them?

In other words, can they be called a criminal?

From the very beginnings of our country, protest has been a part of who we are. It’s no exaggeration to say that it’s written into the First Amendment to our Constitution. Yet even before the Constitution was even imagined, the Boston Tea Party had become one of the first organized protests in our history, taught now to every schoolchild in America. That protest could not have been more successful: it ultimately led to open rebellion and to the founding of our nation. Subsequent events that have reshaped the American political landscape—the abolitionist movement, the suffrage movement, different anti-war movements, and of course, the civil rights movement—have all used protest to powerful ways. It’s in our DNA.

Indeed, for many who are branded as criminals as a result of civil disobedience, the brand becomes a badge of honor, a battle scar from a greater struggle. In recent months we’ve looked at those who survived unjust imprisonment in Mississippi and Alabama, but beyond our shores, places such as Robben Island in South Africa now honor prisoners sentenced for daring to challenge the ruling regime: here, political prisoners shared knowledge in what was known as “Robben Island University,” where the unofficial motto was “Each One, Teach One.” Nobility, dignity, solidarity: attributes of hardened criminals? We think not.

Related: History of Protest in D.C. (via Yesterday’s America)

Are all crimes subject to such negotiation or reinterpretation? Of course not. Arson is still arson, and kidnapping is still kidnapping, and our legal definitions of acts such as these remain foundational to our society. But civil disobedience stands apart: in its effort to reshape society (rather than, say, just make off with the hooch), it challenges the known boundaries of our typical definitions of crime, and forces a reckoning not with the act itself—most often marching, carrying signs, and exercising our Constitutional right to assembly—but with the law that defines the act as criminal. Perhaps most important to remember is that such a challenge is uniquely democratic: protest is enabled by democracy in ways that monarchy, despotism, or totalitarianism hardly ever allow. Civil disobedience says: we—we as a people—are better than this.

All this is to say: if you’re heading out to any protests in the coming days or weeks, regardless of where you spend the night thereafter, we here at Crime Capsule urge you to (1) stay safe, (2) know your rights, (3) take care of others while on the march, and (4) exercise your best judgment always. Our country isn’t perfect—indeed, as Americans labor towards a more perfect union, America’s best description remains as a work-in-progress. Hearts can change, and laws can too.

But bootlegging? Bootlegging is forever.

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Meet Kelly Hartman, Yellowstone Murder Sleuth

Having chased gangsters across the desert with historian Parker Anderson, we’re thrilled to sit down with author, curator, and artist Kelly Hartman, whose new book Murder along the Yellowstone Trail: The Execution of Seth Danner has just been published. Delving deep into the story of alleged Montana murderer Seth Danner, Hartman graciously shared her journey with the book with us, and recounted some rather curious connections she had with her subject…

Congratulations on your new book! Can you tell us how Murder along the Yellowstone Trail came to be?

This book has been a long time coming. When I was a kid, I toured the Cooke City Museum (housed within the old Gallatin County Jail) with my parents and vividly remember the gallows in the building. Over 20 years later, as curator of that same museum, I found I wanted to understand what had happened there in 1924. It was like I needed to make peace with that past because I was now confronted with it every day at work. When I started digging into the story, I started to see how this executed man, Seth Danner, may have been wrongly convicted and sentenced. The more I found out about him, the more I thought his story needed to be shared. There was just so much that hadn’t been discovered.

You’ve written for Arcadia/The History Press before. As a historian, what did you learn working on your previous books that you could apply to this one?

When I wrote A Brief History of Cooke City I was nearly overwhelmed with the amount of history there was to break down and interpret. My favorite part of that process, however, was when I came across a story that no one had delved into before. In that book, it was the story of a couple from Bohemia who worked their whole lives in a mine trying to strike it rich without ever finding success. Their story was small in the overall scheme of Cooke City’s history, but the impact of their struggles, their specific experience in perseverance, really pushed that history into the reader’s emotional understanding of the place. When I first began to understand Seth Danner’s story, I saw the same content of a life untold until now.

What kind of material did you use to tell your story? What were your sources?

At the museum, I had a great number of resources and volunteer help for researching this book, as I was concurrently working on a brand-new exhibit about the gallows. I used newspaper articles the most, as they brought to life how Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley viewed Seth Danner and the case at hand. Through these articles, one hears Seth’s voice, which couldn’t be found anywhere else, as well as the bias of the local reporters in condemning the man long before his sentence was given. The articles both illuminated and veiled my attempts to get at the truth. Ancestry.com was also important in understanding Seth Danner’s complicated family tree, and the Montana Historical Society’s archives also held valuable letters written on his behalf. Most important of all, however, was the Gallatin History Museum’s copy of the original court transcript of the murder trial.

The life and death of Seth Danner is such an incredible story to tell. What kind of legacy do these murders have today, in this part of Montana and in Yellowstone at large?

I wholeheartedly believe that there is doubt that Seth Danner committed the murders. There was extreme bias in the local papers, enough that I believe those sitting on the jury were swayed by what they had already been exposed to in the months leading up to the trial. Unfortunately, with all of our modern technology for catching criminals and a justice system that strives to prevent bias, people are still either incarcerated or executed who are later found to be innocent. Seth’s story is a reminder that not all injustice is in the past. I also believe that the Danners’ story encapsulates a time when the Great Depression was taking hold of Montana: people were traveling where the work brought them, prohibition was in force, and life was hard. The Danners traveled the Yellowstone Trail not as tourists, but as a downtrodden family looking for a living. The backroads of Montana are full of stories like Seth’s, still waiting to be told.

Author Kelly Hartman poses on a stairwell amongst an antique sheriff's department sign and a noose.
Author Kelly Hartman

You’ve written about this area in your previous book, A Brief History of Cooke City—but you’re also a native Montana. Did any aspect of the Seth Danner story hit home for you? Did you have any personal connection to any part?

The aspect of travel was so intriguing in the Seth Danner story. Montana has a lot of hidden secrets, many roads that I have yet to see for myself. I have always been attracted to seeing the world, America in particular. So often stories that seem specific to one location ring true in the nature of any person in any location. As for a personal connection, when I began to write this book I had nightmares most nights that I was trying to get out of the building before Seth’s execution. When I awoke and looked at my clock, it would often be about 2:15 am, roughly when Seth died. When I finished the portion of the book that told Seth’s side of the story, the nightmares stopped. I truly feel like I was chosen to tell this story and the telling of it became a very personal thing for me.

Alongside your work as a historian, you’ve also served as a curator at the Cooke City Montana Museum. How has your work in preservation and education better equipped you to tell these stories?

My true background is in the arts: I have a BFA in Painting which has been helpful in designing and creating exhibits. But I think that my background has been most influenced by the nuances of living, in wanting to share my view of the world. When I paint, I work from a place of feeling and personal observation. When I work on an exhibit, I look for the story, the part of someone’s life that will connect with a visitor, and the artifacts that I can use to tell that story—this is what has drawn me to want to record history in book form. While building exhibits, I find I am rarely drawn to the big stories, like that of John Bozeman (the namesake of Bozeman, Montana, where I currently work as a curator at the Gallatin History Museum). His story has been told. I look for those that haven’t yet had a chance to be heard. The certain color of an image that has not yet been seen.

Last but not least, can you tell us about your next project? What are you working on now?

As curator of the Gallatin History Museum, I am drawn in by new stories every day. I haven’t yet found one that captures my attention as much as the Danner story, but I’m sure is one is out there. Recently, volunteers at the Museum have been saving articles on murders from the past for me, so maybe I am looking at a life of crime.

Mary Dyer: Early American Martyr

It’s often said that American history advances by fits and starts, taking two steps forward, one step back. Arenas in which the underprivileged or marginalized have had to fight for their freedoms—women’s rights, civil rights, the labor movement—have long been characterized by sacrifice, setback, and struggle, sometimes at great cost.

But when someone is willing to die for their beliefs, how much of a criminal can they be?

Recently on Crime Capsule we met the ‘Witch’ of Delray, a misunderstood woman named Rose Veres long maligned by her community, whose imprisonment for murder ultimately led to a wrongful conviction and the clearing of her name. Veres’ story echoes in many ways the story of Mary Dyer, an Englishwoman who moved to the United States while it was still a British colony. Arriving in the Massachusetts Bay Colony around 1635, Dyer and her husband found local Puritan society to be so restrictive that they soon fled to a fledgling community up the coast where they could practice their beliefs in peace.

This statue of Quaker Martyr stands in front of the Massachusetts State Capital, directly across the street from where she was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave. via Scandalous Newport, Rhode Island

After all, Portsmouth, Rhode Island—originally known as Pocasset—had been founded as an enclave for religious seekers seeking to escape the dominant Puritanism. As historian M.E. Reilly-McGreen describes in her book Witches, Wenches, & Wild Women of Rhode Island, the Dyers were early adherents of Quakerism, founded back home in England by George Fox. Wholly taken with Fox’s message that God could speak to and through anyone, without any need for controlling clergy, Mary took it upon herself to challenge the stifling orthodoxy of the day and preach religious freedom for all.

LEARN MORE: Meet more extraordinary women from Rhode Island

Needless to say, the ruling powers back in Boston were not amused, and on one of her first trips back to Massachusetts in 1657 Dyer was immediately arrested, banished, and threatened with execution should she return. Bolstering the Boston governor’s decision was the convenient news of a stillbirth that Mary had had not long after arriving in Pocasset, a medically deformed fetus that was immediately branded a devil baby. Historian Larry Stanford, in his book Scandalous Newport, Rhode Island, has (bless him) dug up Governor Winthrop’s original description of the child:

“…it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape’s; it had no forehead but over the eyes were four horns, hard and sharp. Between the shoulders, it had 2 mouths and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children do but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.”

Yeah. Right.

Undeterred, Mary returned time and time again to advance the Quaker cause, including advocating for other imprisoned ministers and protesting the trials of still more. Arrested again and again, expelled again and again, one of her trips to Boston in the late 1650s nearly became her last, when she was led to the gallows herself—only to be saved at the last second by the new governor of the colony calling a stay of execution from the crowd. Her visit in 1660, however, did prove to be her last, and as Reilly-McGreen notes, there would be no eleventh-hour reprieve this time. Hung on Boston Commons, in her last words Dyer refused to recant her beliefs, and died true to her faith.

Mary Dyer’s memorial marker at Founders’ Brook Park, Portsmouth. Photo by M.E. Reilly-McGreen from Witches, Wenches, & Wild Women of Rhode Island

Why, you may ask, do we see Dyer and Veres as soul sisters? Not simply because both were branded with unjust labels of witchery after enduring unwarranted suspicion and abuse. No, in looking at the struggle for freedoms in this country, we see how wrongful conviction creates an even greater desire for the truth to emerge, and remember these women for the sacrifices they made to bring about a more just world—even paying the greatest cost there is. Indeed, as Stanford writes, Dyer’s death brought about the very change for which she had worked: “When news of [her] execution reached England, King Charles II was outraged and banned all further executions of Quakers in England.”

How’s that for a legacy? Frankly, we here at Crime Capsule like to think that wherever they are now, both Veres and Dyer are having a good long laugh at the fools who tried to silence them—and who ended up making them icons of their movements instead.


Further Reading on Mary Dyer & Puritan History

Experience the history of Rhode Island and learn about the Ocean State’s most fascinating and wild women. Read of Mercy Brown, a nineteen-year-old consumption victim who was thought to be a vampire and whose body was exhumed and discovered with blood in the heart. There was Goody Seager, accused of infesting her neighbor’s cheese with maggots by using witchcraft, and Tall “Dutch” Kattern of Block Island, an opium-eating fortuneteller whose curse, legend says, set a ship aflame after its crew cast her ashore. Hear of the revolutionaries, like Julia Ward Howe, who invented Mother’s Day and wrote the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and religious reformer Anne Hutchinson, said to be the inspiration for Hawthorne’s heroine in The Scarlet Letter, in these thrilling tales from author M.E. Reilly-McGreen.

Newport, Rhode Island, is renowned for its stunning cliff-side vistas and the luxurious summer homes of the Gilded Age elite. Yet the opulent facades of the City by the Sea concealed the scintillating scandals, eccentric characters and unsolved mysteries of its wealthiest families. Learn how Cornelius Vanderbilt III was cut out of the family’s fortune for his unapproved marriage to Grace Wilson and how John F. Kennedy’s marriage to a Newport debutante helped to secure his presidency. Travel to the White Horse Tavern, where a vengeful specter still waits for his supposed murderer to return to the scene, and discover the mysterious voyage of the “Sea Bird” and its missing crew. Historian Larry Stanford searches the dark corners of Newport’s past to expose these scandalous tales and more.

Wicked Puritans of Essex County is a unique report on Puritan criminality that shatters the stereotype of the Puritan (someone striving, above all, to achieve moral purity). With a ground breaking, eye opening level of detail, this book reveals that a surprising number of Puritans were prone to kick the dog, skip church, disrespect the minister, steal a keg of nails, shortweight your grain, turn swine into your corn, burn your barn, or perform any number of wicked and vicious acts. Lesson learned? The Puritan crowd was not, after all, much different from any other, then or now. Author Tom Juergens may not be the first to drive nails into the coffin of Puritan moral superiority, but he has found a hefty hammer to wield in the record they left behind.


Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Birmingham’s Foot Soldiers for Justice

A tribute to foot soldiers in the Birmingham movement is on the plaque and in the scene depicted in this sculpture at Kelly Ingram Park.
A tribute to foot soldiers in the Birmingham movement is on the plaque and in the scene depicted in this sculpture at Kelly Ingram Park.

Normally on Crime Capsule, we’re interested in criminals who end up in jail against their will. The kind who never planned to get caught, who bungled the job, or who got outfoxed by a wily lawman.

This week, we’re looking at a different kind of criminal.

As May and June are the anniversary months of the 1960s Freedom Riders, pouring into the South from across the country, we wanted to honor those men and women (and children at the time) who were unjustly imprisoned, who voluntarily entered detention centers, and those who pursued civil disobedience in search of a greater justice. We’ve already explored some of this history in Mississippi; thanks to journalist and historian Nick Patterson, we’re now able to meet some of the “ground troops” of the Birmingham civil rights movement, those who fought bravely and sacrificed dearly to bring equal rights to their community—and yet, in the shadow of more prominent figures of the era, whose stories might have been lost.

In his book Birmingham Foot Soldiers: Voices from the Civil Rights Movement, Patterson introduces us to over a dozen key activists, organizers, and citizens from the Magic City, telling their stories in riveting detail—some of which have never before been told in print. Here at Crime Capsule, we’re proud to offer a different kind of jailhouse lineup, a photo gallery of those whose time in lockup, protesting segregation and a racist regime, succeeded in changing not just a city but a nation.

LEARN MORE: Discover the Birmingham Children’s Crusade, where kids faced down racist cops in Birmingham’s Foot Soldiers

“Fred and Ruby Shuttlesworth, on the frontlines of the Birmingham civil rights movement, were assaulted while trying to integrate city schools. In 1956, his home attached to his church, the Historic Bethel Baptist Church, was bombed by Klansmen.”
“Fred and Ruby Shuttlesworth, on the frontlines of the Birmingham civil rights movement, were assaulted while trying to integrate city schools. In 1956, his home attached to his church, the Historic Bethel Baptist Church, was bombed by Klansmen.”
“Ira Sims was a child soldier in the Birmingham civil rights movement, jailed for his participation in anti-racism demonstrations, and went on to fight for his country in Vietnam.”
“Ira Sims was a child soldier in the Birmingham civil rights movement, jailed for his participation in anti-racism demonstrations, and went on to fight for his country in Vietnam.”
“As a teenager, Gloria Washington Lewis-Randall had a harrowing experience in jail when she was arrested during the Children’s Crusade, including defending fellow female activists from sexual assault by on-duty officers.”
“As a teenager, Gloria Washington Lewis-Randall had a harrowing experience in jail when she was arrested during the Children’s Crusade, including defending fellow female activists from sexual assault by on-duty officers.”
“Myrna Carter Jackson—arrested and jailed multiple times for peacefully protesting—strives to educate students today, including those at her alma mater of Parker High, about their heritage and the struggles required to win their rights.”
“Myrna Carter Jackson—arrested and jailed multiple times for peacefully protesting—strives to educate students today, including those at her alma mater of Parker High, about their heritage and the struggles required to win their rights.”
“He volunteers at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute today, but Clifton Casey says he fell into the fight against segregation ‘by accident.’ He was one of thousands of activists who stuffed local jails to their breaking point, a deliberate tactic by movement organizers.”
“He volunteers at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute today, but Clifton Casey says he fell into the fight against segregation ‘by accident.’ He was one of thousands of activists who stuffed local jails to their breaking point, a deliberate tactic by movement organizers.”
“A fellow member of the Children’s Crusade, jailed and mocked for his protests, as an adult, Ray Goolsby shares the wisdom he gained during the movement with school kids and visitors to the Civil Rights Institute from around the world.”
“A fellow member of the Children’s Crusade, jailed and mocked for his protests, as an adult, Ray Goolsby shares the wisdom he gained during the movement with school kids and visitors to the Civil Rights Institute from around the world.”
“Terry Collins went from being a youngster protesting regular police harassment to working in the office of Birmingham’s mayor after segregation. Image by Bill Ricker, courtesy of Terry Collins.”
“Terry Collins went from being a youngster protesting regular police harassment to working in the office of Birmingham’s mayor after segregation. Image by Bill Ricker, courtesy of Terry Collins.”

Read more: Civil Rights & Social Justice History Resources

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Burn Her Anyway: The (Wrongfully Convicted) Witch of Delray

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. If only that were true for so many women throughout history: women accused of crimes they didn’t commit, women whose eccentric ways fomented suspicion and unease, women whose credibility was undermined. Women who were simply never believed.

Women like Rose Veres, the Witch of Delray. Or should we say “Witch”?

Detroit & The Depression

1930s Detroit. The nation barely recovering from the Great Depression, a burgeoning industrial city attracting new labor in the automobile plants, its neighborhoods expanding with working-class and immigrant communities. A wretched mayor, one of the city’s worst ever. Polish, German, Russian, and Hungarian, whose new arrivals speak a language unlike any other in the area, and cultural assimilation in to American life was fraught with difficulty.

The Witch of Delray.
“Henry Ford’s car company, which produced these police vehicles, was one of the largest employers in Metro Detroit. His promise of “Five Dollars a Day” drew thousands of men to Detroit to work. Author’s collection.”

So when a man falls from a ladder outside a house in 1931, and his landlady doesn’t speak any English, and she has a reputation for looking a little strange—even, perhaps, of exerting an unnatural influence on people—it doesn’t take long before the industrial Midwest starts to look like Salem, Massachusetts. In her book The Witch of Delray: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery, author Karen Dybis tells the story of how misunderstanding, suspicion, and paranoia led not just to Veres’ conviction for murder, but the decades-long saga of her family’s search for justice.

When Rose Veres—born Rozalia Sebestyen in Hungary in 1877—was convicted for murder, along with her son Bill who was named as a co-conspirator, the case seemed cut-and-dried. Based on paperwork police found at her house (a boardinghouse frequented by local auto workers), it seemed she had cooked up a tidy life insurance scam, paying the premiums for impoverished boarders who then had a habit of mysteriously dying—and whose payouts went directly to Veres.

Learn how one woman’s suicide note came to topple Detroit’s government.

Railroaded through the Detroit justice system by overzealous prosecutors, the Vereses, barely able to mount a defense, hardly stood a chance. But following their conviction, Dybis writes, Rose and Bill experienced a startling turn of events. One of the very district prosecutors who had fought so hard to lock them up, Duncan McCrea, had fallen from grace himself—caught up in a citywide graft, protection, and corruption scandal that would topple even Detroit’s mayor—and ended up at Jackson State Penitentiary as an inmate. In the same prison yard as Bill.

The Witch of Delray.
“After his first-degree murder conviction, Bill Veres was an inmate in Jackson Prison. It is here that Duncan C. McCrea met with him upon his conviction in 1942. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.”

We’ve looked before at what happens when the justice system fails, or when corruption reaches the halls of law enforcement and the courts. Though history does not record the depth of their conversations, Dybis writes that Bill, who had always maintained his and his mother’s innocence, was able to engage McCrea enough that he could learn what he needed about the prosecutorial misconduct from years past: conflating witnesses with alleged accomplices, submitting unreliable testimony, and more. With the help of one of Michigan’s shrewdest attorneys—Alean B. Clutts, herself a trailblazer in women’s history—in 1944 Bill was able to obtain not just a new trial, but a dismissal of the charges brought against him.

"I enjoyed it so much, I finished it in three days!" - Reader Review.

Clutts’ work to free Rose would take longer, and much of it would hinge on overturning suspicions of her poor command of English. Sadly, it wasn’t sticks and stones, but words that had hurt her: first mocked as an eccentric, then maligned as an outcast and a witch, Veres had suffered repeatedly both before and during her incarceration. Even as she sought to undo this damage to Veres’ reputation, Clutts aggressively investigated the mishandling of the original case, uncovering layer after layer of inconsistencies, and culminating in her bombshell discovery: that the court had violated its own procedures by failing to have the judge present when the verdict was read. And with that one fact, fourteen years after her original conviction, Veres was granted a new trial.

The Witch of Delray.
“Alean B. Clutts was a crusader for justice from a young age, helping the American Red Cross and participating in local elections. Clutts family collection.”

To Be Continued…

What happened after that? Dybis has the full account, which we won’t spoil here. But for anyone interested in the intersection of women’s history, the power of the law, and a fight for the truth that spans generations, we can’t recommend The Witch of Delray highly enough. Though so much of the struggle of the story arises from clear injustices, it’s a riveting account of how justice can—and does—prevail.

Until then, our only regret here at Crime Capsule is that no one saw fit to turn Duncan McCrea into a newt.

Looking for more to read during quarantine? Check out our quaran-reads here. Finding us for the first time, and want to learn more about what we do? Visit our welcome page and sign up for the Crime Capsule email newsletter. See you behind bars!

Meet Parker Anderson, Arizona Gangster Hunter

After last month’s discussion with Teresa Nordheim, our next victim—er, guest—on Crime Capsule is Parker Anderson, longtime Arizona historian and author of the brand-new Arizona Gold Gangster Charles P. Stanton: Truth & Legend in Yavapai’s Dark Days. Anderson’s book explores the legacy of one of Arizona’s most famous crime lords, and we’re delighted to have him join us this month.

CC: First things first, congratulations on your new book! Can you tell us how Arizona Gold Gangster came to be?

PA: I have lived in Yavapai County all my life, and had long heard the legend of Charles P. Stanton. From other historical research I have done in the past, I encountered his name in passing and things sounded a little “different” in some ways from the legend. Finally I decided to do a thorough research project on him from original surviving documents.

You’ve written for Arcadia/The History Press before. As a historian, what did you learn working on your previous books that you could apply to this one?

That it is always best to go right to surviving original sources if possible, i.e. newspapers, county records, etc. It is not always wise to assume that previous historians did all the work and got everything right, even though most would think that a reasonable assumption.

At heart, Arizona Gold Gangster is the story of one almost larger-than-life man. As you were researching and writing, how did you separate truth from legend and fact from myth?

It was easier than one would think. In many cases, the surviving primary sources were often directly contradictory with the legend, and in such cases, I think original sources are the most reliable. Some people think that if a legend has been around for generations, it has earned the right to be considered true, but I think that is absurd if it really isn’t true.

What kind of material did you use to tell your story? What were your sources?

County property records, old mining claims, court papers, old newspapers, etc. Yavapai County records are fairly well-preserved, unlike in some areas of the nation. Often sources such as these are ignored because so many historians borrow from each other, making the often-erroneous assumption that the last writer got it right. There is also a viewpoint that I don’t subscribe to—and which is showing signs of fading—that oral legends have earned the right to be considered accurate simply because they have survived for so long.

Parker Anderson

What kind of legacy does Stanton have today? What remains of his vast empire now?

His legacy is, sadly, only the legend, which depicts him as Satan incarnate, a human monster. I simply do not believe this is true, and presented my case in the book. Today, the town that bore his name is a ghost town. The site is now owned by the Lost Dutchman Mining Association, and they have turned it into, of all things, an RV park for their members!

You’ve written about Arizona many times before, but you’re a native Arizonan as well. Did any aspect of this story hit home, or did you have any personal connection to any part?

I used to live in the area—I spent part of my childhood in the towns of Congress and Yarnell, both not far from where the town of Stanton was. So I do have a soft spot for the whole area. There is a part of me that wishes my family had never left. But through my childhood, I heard local lore about the area, including the traditional legend of Stanton.

Last but not least, what’s your next project? Do you have any idea?

I am writing a book called Hidden History of Prescott for The History Press. Details to come, though I hope to explore early influences on the city of Prescott that are not talked about so much. I also have aspirations of eventually writing a biography of a once-prominent, early 20th-century stage actress who shall remain unnamed for now.

Arizona Gold Gangster Charles P. Stanton: Truth & Legend in Yavapai’s Dark Days

About the Book:

For generations, Arizonans have been fascinated with the story of Charles P. Stanton. The alleged crime boss and mass murderer oversaw a reign of terror in the small mining town that bore his name. Driven by greed, he stole ore, swindled mines away from their owners and bribed his way out of justice. Those who crossed him usually ended up dead. But are the legends actually true? Relying on original source material, including court documents and newspapers, Arizona historian Parker Anderson reveals the true story of Stanton for the first time and broaches the possibility that the mysterious Irish Lord may not have been guilty of the terrible crimes that folklore has attributed to him.