True Crime: An American Anthology

Harold Schechter
Introduction

William Bradford
The Hanging of John Billington

Cotton Mather
Pillars of Salt

Benjamin Franklin
The Murder of a Daughter

Anonymous
An Account of a Murder Committed by Mr. J— Y—, Upon His Family, in December, A.D. 1781

Timothy Dwight
"A crime more atrocious and horrible than any other"

The Record of Crimes in the United States
Jesse Strang

James Gordon Bennett
The Recent Tragedy

Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A show of wax-figures"

Abraham Lincoln
Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder

Ambrose Bierce
Crime News from California

Mark Twain
from Roughing It

Anonymous
Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend

Lafcadio Hearn
Gibbeted

Celia Thaxter
A Memorable Murder

José Martí
The Trial of Guiteau

Thomas Byrnes
The Murder of Annie Downey, alias "Curly Tom"

Frank Norris
Hunting Human Game

Susan Glaspell
The Hossack Murder

Murder Ballads
Poor Naomi
Stackalee
The Murder of Grace Brown
Belle Gunness
The Murder at Fall River
Trail's End

Thomas S. Duke
Mrs. Cordelia Botkin, Murderess

Edmund Pearson
Hell Benders, or The Story of a Wayside Tavern

Damon Runyon
The Eternal Blonde

Herbert Asbury
from The Gangs of New York

Alexander Woollcott
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab

Joseph Mitchell
Execution

H. L. Mencken
More and Better Psychopaths

Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser Sees Error in Edwards Defense

Dorothy Kilgallen
Sex and the All-American Boy

Edna Ferber
Miss Ferber Views "Vultures" at Trial

Jim Thompson
Ditch of Doom

James Thurber
A Sort of Genius

Meyer Berger
Veteran Kills 12 in Mad Rampage on Camden Street

John Bartlow Martin
Butcher's Dozen

A. J. Liebling
The Case of the Scattered Dutchman

Zora Neale Hurston
The Trial of Ruby McCollum

Jack Webb
The Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Hardwick
The Life and Death of Caryl Chessman

Robert Bloch
The Shambles of Ed Gein

Miriam Allen deFord
Superman's Crime: Loeb and Leopold

W. T. Brannon
Eight Girls, All Pretty, All Nurses, All Slain

Don Moser
The Pied Piper of Tucson

Calvin Trillin
A Stranger with a Camera

Gay Talese
Charlie Manson's Home on the Range

Truman Capote
Then It All Came Down

Jimmy Breslin
"Son of Sam"

Jay Robert Nash
The Turner-Stompanato Killing: A Family Affair

Albert Borowitz
The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills

James Ellroy
My Mother's Killer

Ann Rule
Young Love

Dominick Dunne
Nightmare on Elm Drive

Copyright 1995–2011 Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.
Contact Us | Privacy and Security