A treasury of XXth century murder

During the years 1918 and 1919, six people in New Orleans were killed and six more injured, in their homes, in the dead of night, by an axe-wielding intruder who got away without a trace. After more than a year, the killings stopped as suddenly as they started. No trace of the murderer was ever found. Geary presents the facts and the speculations about these attacks in the third in his series on twentieth-century murder.

When William Desmond Taylor is found dead of a gunshot wound, the motion picture community cannot believe that Taylor could draw the ire of anyone, let alone a murderer. The ensuing investigation reveals that the well-respected director was not the person he seemed and neither were his friends.

All was well for Charles Lindbergh after his daring solo crossing of the Atlantic. Fame and fortune came quickly. But soon after the Lindberghs built their dream home far from the madding crowd, tragedy struck--their baby was abducted!.

"The fourth entry in Geary's chronicling of famous XXth century murders tackles the extremely controversial case of Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Geary delves into his most political case yet in this series, however, all his favorite elements are there: the murders are unsolved, the attention of the media is tremendous, there are multiple theories as to what really happened. What's unusual about this particular event is how this polarized and galvanized the world. A possibly biased judge they could never get rid of no matter how many appeals, thanks to Massachusetts law, and a prevailing attitude, especially among the ruling elite, about eradicating anarchists and communists, may have contributed to what many decried as a monkey court trial. Many pieces of evidence were inconclusive, much testimony questionable. Riots erupted all over the world. They lived in a time when class differences were at a raw edge worldwide, the US included, and this struck far too many as more evidence of repression by the ruling elite. In this volume, we are not dealing with some outlandish fait divers but a clash of classes and a justice system that may have failed to treat these men with any equanimity. The tension throughout the book is palpable as a result"--Publisher's wbe site.