A high-profile murder can function as a mirror of an era, and attorney and crime researcher Virginia McConnell provides a fascinating view of Connecticut in Victorian times, as glimpsed through the unrelated, but disturbingly similar murders of two young women near New Haven in the late 1800s. The colorful characters involved in the commission, investigation, and prosecution of these crimes emerge as real, vibrant individuals, and their stories, compelling in themselves, reveal much about Victorian sex and marriage, drugs from arsenic to aphrodisiacs, early forensic medicine, and...
A high-profile murder can function as a mirror of an era, and attorney and crime researcher Virginia McConnell provides a fascinating view of Conne...
On the day before Easter Sunday 1895, four women entered the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco's Mission District to decorate the altar with flowers. When they opened the door to the little room containing the library, they were greeted with a horrible sight: the stabbed and strangled body of 21-year-old Minnie Williams, her blood coating the floor and spattering the walls. A search of the church revealed another grisly discovery in the belfry: the decomposing body of another young woman, reported as missing ten days before. She, too, had been strangled. But unlike the victim in the...
On the day before Easter Sunday 1895, four women entered the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco's Mission District to decorate the altar with...
In December 1924, a 21-year-old millionaire orphan, William Billy McClintock, died of an unusually virulent form of typhoid. He was mourned by his finance, Isabelle Pope, who sought unsuccessfully to rally her love by marrying him on his deathbed. Shortly after Billy's funeral, questions arose as to the cause of death, with insinuations of foul play. After reaching his majority and inheriting his estate in April, McClintock had signed a will drafted by one of his guardians, lawyer William D. Shepherd--a will which left everything to Shepherd, but only if Billy died before his planned...
In December 1924, a 21-year-old millionaire orphan, William Billy McClintock, died of an unusually virulent form of typhoid. He was mourned by his ...
The attorney Virginia A. McConnell provides a riveting view of Connecticut in the late 1800s as revealed through the unrelated but disturbingly similar murders of two young women. The first, Mary Stannard, was an unmarried mother who worked as a domestic and believed herself to be pregnant for a second time. The man accused of her murder, Reverend Herbert Hayden, was a married lay minister whose seduction of Mary was common knowledge. Three years later, Jennie Cramer, another woman of low social status, was found floating facedown in Long Island Sound off West Haven. The characters involved...
The attorney Virginia A. McConnell provides a riveting view of Connecticut in the late 1800s as revealed through the unrelated but disturbingly simila...
