For a few short weeks during June 1841, residents of Springfield, Illinois, were caught up in the mass hysteria of a sensational murder case that had all the elements of an Edgar Allan Poe murder mystery. Three strangers from out of town arrive in Springfield, but one of them soon goes missing. Wild rumors abound […]

Mona Wilson’s 1927 Mug Shot for the women’s prison in York, Nebraska   In 1927, thirty-one-year-old Mona Wilson lived with her husband of two years on her parents’ farm in rural Sheridan County, Nebraska. She was a loyal daughter who helped them on their rented farm and had little interest in the outside world. Mona […]

The George Tisdale Case The case of George Tisdale, convicted in 1911 for second degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 15 years in federal prison, reveals a deplorable side to the prison justice system at that time. The story below  comes from the August 1926 edition of the publication, The O.E. Library Critic. The […]

 Over-Zealous Newspapers Quick To Play Up Story 2 day Interrogation Leads to False Confession Police Tactics Criticized [Note: Versions of the following three stories appeared in 80 newspapers for the newspaper archive database I used in this case. That doesn’t mean that only 80 newspapers published this story, it only means of the newspapers the […]