Ann Marie Ackermann is a former American lawyer, now living in Germany. Her book, Death of an Assassin, the true story of a 19th century German murderer who died defending Robert E. Lee in battle, will be published by Kent State University Press in 2017.
It’s perhaps fitting that one of the most controversial hearsay exceptions was first used in one of the most controversial trials of United States history. The muskets the British soldiers fired in the Boston Massacre found their marks in American...
He put up a fine luncheon for us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the pleasantest fruit in Germany…. Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad Greengages Anna Pavord, writing for the British newspaper Independent, calls them “most...
God! how delicious the memory of it!—I caught him escaping from his grave, and thrust him back into it. – Mark Twain, “A Dying Man’s Confession,” in Life on the Mississippi Murder and revenge. These two themes form the warp and weft in “A...
A man who murdered his lover on his wedding day. A serial killer who lured girls into his house with the promise to show them their future husbands in a magic looking glass. The first intentional use of a dog to search for a cadaver. Lady Lucie Duff...
The dangers of time travel You have to admit you’ve at least thought about it before. What would it be like to fly back in time with a time machine? What would you want to see? The dinosaurs? The life of Jesus Christ? A historical event you’ve been...
The night before she died, Dorothy Kilgallen participated in the television show “What’s My Line” and correctly guessed the contestant’s occupation. The young woman sold dynamite. Kilgallen, a crack investigative and crime reporter, was sitting on a...
Real quick now: What are the first things that come to your mind when you think of the Texas frontier? Cowboys? Check. Rangers? Check. Indians? Check. Mexicans? Check. But how about paleontologists? Did you think about them, too? Fossil hunters...
Germany as a haven after the Lincoln assassination One of the lesser known aspects of the Lincoln assassination is the aftermath that played out in Germany. All the surviving occupants of the presidential box at Ford’s theater ended up moving to...
The lives of our forefathers send ripples through the generations, shaping who we are today. If one of those forefathers happened to be a U.S. President, he shaped both national and familial history. And if that forefather was assassinated in...
A royal funeral makes criminal history Black plumes bounced on the horses’ heads as they pulled the hearse through the rain and mud. The muffled hoofbeats foreshadowed change. Neither horse nor guard nor mourner could know the path before them led...
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