Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever, and misunderstood female criminals.
'Queen of the Underworld' Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in court three times, and twice in the street, rendering both women battered and bloodied. Nellie Pope goaded her lover to axe her husband in what the press called 'one of the most atrocious, cold-blooded, and deliberately-planned murders' in city history. Mother Elinor L. Mason, 'High Priestess of the Flying Roller Colony,' was no holy roller but a criminal chameleon who changed personas as easily as some people change clothes. And a feud between Delray madams Julia Toth and Annie Smith exposed widespread graft in the thriving red-light industry and led to one of the worst police scandals in Motor City history. These stories and more await in this deliciously entertaining collection.
With his boyish good looks, Arthur Warren Waite charmed into marriage the daughter of wealthy Grand Rapids business tycoon John E. Peck in 1916. He then wasted no time executing what he believed to be a flawless scheme to hijack his wife's inheritance. The plot went awry when a mysterious telegram set off a sequence of events that ultimately exposed his immoral ambition to poison all other Peck heirs. Follow Waite's fingerprints of indiscretion around Grand Rapids and New York City as author Tobin T. Buhk details this audacious plan of staggering complexity.