This is the story of Frances Carrick, a transgender woman accused of murder in Chicago in 1923.
Tag: crime
Minnie Wallace and the Ravenswood House of Mystery
When you’re 49 and talk a teenage girl into marrying you, and then she kills you and takes all your money… it’s kinda on you, bro. Minnie was only 16 when she left her home in New Orleans to marry 49 year old J.R. Walkup, the mayor of Emporia, Kansas. A month after the wedding…
Was John Stone Chicago’s First Serial Killer? (podcast)
John Stone was the first murderer hanged in Chicago – and suggested the murder wasn’t his first. An “oral history” of his Chicago crime.
“The Black Hole” of the South Loop, 1882
Podcast also available on iTunes! Recently, Valancourt began republishing a bunch of novels by Michael McDowell, who is best known for writing the screenplays to Beetle Juice and Nightmare Before Christmas. Mostly forgotten, his horror novels are fantastic books that deserve to be among the first rediscovered as readers start sifting through the rubble of…
Murder in the Drinking Water: The Lake Tunnel Murder of 1864
Urban folklore in Chicago is full of stories of the city being cursed – most of which have little basis in fact. One often hears that Cap Streeter cursed the Streeterville area on his death bed (if it happened, no one wrote it down at the time), or even that Potowatomi Indians did a “ghost…
The “Widow in Green” Blackmail Mystery
“Does anybody know the woman in green?” asked the Tribune in November of 1908. “Can anybody tell the name of the mysterious woman motorist who for the last month has been an unfailing topic of conversation for those who have time to observe humanity as seen in Chicago’s streets? Who is she?” For a month, Chicagoans…
The Strange Case of Baron von Biedenfeld
While doing research for the new Architecture of Mysterious Chicago tour, I ran into some fascinating data about Baron Cut von Biedenfeld, one of the late 19th century Chicago’s more colorful characters, who is all but forgotten today. Look him up online, and you’ll mostly find references to his father writing letters back and forth…
HH Holmes’ OTHER Murder Castle in Fort Worth: Diagrams and More
Been a while since I had a new Holmes post up! But I spent the last year researching him in depth for my massive new book on him, and with a couple of Holmes bus tours coming, I thought today would be a good day to share a bit about the lesser-known OTHER Holmes Castle…