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.
Law changes history. There are plenty examples of that: The Magna Carta, the Napoleonic Code, the United States Constitution. So do criminal trials. In 1985, Fritjof Haft, criminal law professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany, published a...
An Interview with Ron Franscell, Coauthor of the New Book, “Morgue: A Life in Death” Vincent van Gogh’s death is one of greatest mysteries of the art world. Historians can tell you this much for sure: The Dutch artist was staying in...
Did the church usher mistake him for a duke? And did Mark Twain mistake the empress for someone else? Mark Twain’s account of an encounter with Empress Augusta of Germany counts among his most hilarious sketches of Baden-Baden. It appears in A Tramp...
The thing that scares me most about the Jack the Ripper case is not the murders. Oh, no. It’s the number of suspects! The list of men accused of the world’s most famous serial killing spree now far outstrips the number of victims, and fresh suspects...
A monster… roaming the streets…. With the moniker “Girl-Cutter,” he fills the city with terror…. With these words, the Bavarian newspaper Rheinbayer spread goose bumps among its reading public. It was April 1835 and a serial criminal was on the...
London, 1788. A fiend terrorized the city with his series of crimes. The “London Monster,” as the city dubbed him, didn’t kill, rape, or ignite. He slashed. Karen Lee Street has just launched a novel about the London Monster. She joins us today to...
Real quick now – which saint killed the dragon? What’s the first name that comes to your mind? St. George. Is that what you thought? It’s what I thought, too. St. Mark’s Square in Venice sports two monolithic columns with figures on top. One is a...
Stop! Thief! Cries pierce the night air and echo down the narrow streets. Doors and shutters fly open, feet pound the cobblestone, and the pursuit begins. A criminal has struck in a European town, and the residents respond in the only way they know...
Is the witness lying? It’s an important question for a detective – a train switch that can change the course of the investigation. Modern detectives can rely on lie detectors and subtle clues in body language. They get training based on...
While Sherlock Holmes honed his forensic skills in Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, real Victorian detectives scoured dark alleys, beer houses, and even doctors’ offices to solve crimes. How did real investigators compare with the world’s most...
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