Gruesome Illinois is a collection of true-life stories. Most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book - such as the Monmouth Ax Murders have ever made it into print. Except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.
Included inside:
H. H. Holmes told investigators he killed eighteen people outside of the White City in his Murder Hotel.
Henry Spencer, better known as the Tango Murderer, confessed to killing twenty-nine people. When detectives finally caught up with him, he said: "After my first stretch in the penitentiary, I became cold-blooded, and for five-cents, I would kill a man and drink his blood."
Henry Bastian murdered nine people on his Milan Murder Farm rather than pay them, then hung himself, just as his secret began to leak out.
The Sunday Night Murderer stepped off the train in Monmouth, Illinois, butchered the Dawson family with an ax, then mysteriously disappeared on the same rails he rode into town.
Ray Pfanschmidt became the Lizzie Borden of Payson, Illinois, after authorities discovered his family, chopped up and roasted in the kitchen stove. He was initially found guilty and sentenced to hang, then released three years later after he won a new trial. Even then, people couldn't help asking, was Ray Pfanschmidt a psycho-killer?
Of course, there's more, but you get the idea. Gruesome Illinois covers 16 brutal murders that occurred in Illinois between 1867 and 1920.
Read them now, if you dare.
