Every day, amateur sleuths take to the internet in droves to solve disappearances and catch killers on the run. Writers and public figures ask whether it's healthy to be so obsessed with all things lurid and obscene. Think this widespread fascination with true crime is merely a symptom of living in the Information Age? Melina Druga will force you to reconsider.

In this gripping volume, the journalist and author of A Tale of Two Nations unearths newspaper reporting from more than a century ago, revisiting 19 grisly and unnerving cases that shocked the U.S. ? including a few that continue to stump investigators to this day.

Crime was on the rise in 1910s America. As headlines about axe murderers and missing children became inescapable, criminologists and journalists alike expressed concerns about the homicidal nature of "half-wits" and "morons."

Heinous collects tales of robberies gone wrong, murderous janitors, a fake priest's blood sacrifice, and a man dubbed the "dime novel fiend." You'll meet Alice Crispell and Marion Lambert, teenagers whose still-unsolved murders fed into a moral panic over premarital sex and permissive parenting. Then there's Dorothy Arnold, the 25-year-old New York City socialite who disappeared in 1910, never to be seen again...

Autorentext

Melina Druga is a freelance journalist and author.

She has a degree in English and certificates in publishing, social media and digital marketing. She has worked for numerous newspapers, online publications and small-business clients.

When not working, Melina can be found practicing yoga or indulging her inner news junkie. She lives in Ohio with her husband, daughter and cat.

Klappentext

What do a bubbly six year old, a Christian Scientist and a farmhouse boarder have in common? They were all brutally murdered by a person that society least expected. In Heinous: Forgotten Murders From the 1910s, you'll travel back to a violent decade - a time when "idiots and morons" were police departments' first suspects, when journalists had the opportunity to conduct interrogations and when forensics was in its infancy. It also was a decade when crime of all varieties was surging, and experts blamed everything from immigration to lax parenting. If fascinated by true crime history, you'll enjoy these 17 tales of murder and mysterious deaths. The people you'll meet include Hans Schmidt, a priest who believed his crime was divinely inspired; Russell Pethrick, a 22-year-old grocery delivery boy who was caught based on a new technology - fingerprint analysis; Thomas Fitzgerald, a pedophile who enjoyed showing little girls "pretty" pictures of dead people; and Nathan Swartz, a murder suspect whose family experienced intense shame after he went on the lam. Heinous: Forgotten Murders From the 1910s also includes a bonus case: What Happened to Dorothy Arnold? The socialite's baffling disappearance made headlines for decades and remains unsolved to this day. These stories made headlines more than a century ago and provide insight into how the media covered sensational crimes.

Melina Druga is a freelance journalist and the author of nine nonfiction books and several novels.