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Turn back a calendar of Hoosier history that includes holiday shopping at Wolf and Dessauer and a sun drenched vacation at Indiana Beach. Visit Hammond’s packed dance halls during the Great Depression on your way to inspect WWII-era Evansville’s thrumming munitions plants. Some cross-sections of Indiana’s past represent a grimmer record, from the Burger Chef murders to the Great Circus Train Wreck. Our Indiana history books let you review a century at Ball State University or discover the significance of today’s date in Indianapolis. [View all Indiana books]
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Indianapolis Graverobbing
Indianapolis Graverobbing

Indianapolis Graverobbing

9781467151092

$23.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%

Surveying the sensational newspaper accounts as events unfolded, author and historian Chris Flook recounts this grisly tale of political intrigue and conspiracy.

In the fall of 1902, Indianapolis police uncovered a prolific graverobbing ring operating across the city. At the time, cemeteries across central Indiana were relieved of their dead by ghouls, as they were called, seeking fresh corpses desperately needed by the city's medical colleges. The ring was also accused of multiple murders. In Hamilton County, a former Confederate soldier named Wade West delivered stolen corpses by floating them down the White River. His counterpart in Indianapolis, Rufus Cantrell, an itinerant preacher and full-time graverobber known as the "King of the Ghouls," ransacked Indy's cemeteries for years before being caught.

Indianapolis Graverobbing