Massachusetts

On a dark, rainy night in October 1900, George E. Bailey, caretaker of Breakheart Hill farm, disappeared. He no longer made his daily milk runs to town or stopped at the tavern for his favorite cherry rum. Some suspected foul play right away, as Bailey's "wife" had recently gone to Maine, leaving Bailey alone with his farmhand, John C. Best, who was known to be a drunk and a potentially violent man. Nine days later, when Bailey's dismembered body was fished out of a local pond, all eyes quickly focused on Best. Crowds descended on the farm, and the sensational murder captured headlines in Boston's newspapers. Using official records and newspaper archives, authors Douglas L. Heath and Alison C. Simcox uncover the facts and bizarre circumstances of this shocking tale.

On a crisp September evening in 1899, a seventeen-year-old petty thief named Edwin Ray Snow shot and killed a bakery deliveryman named Jimmy Whittemore outside Yarmouth. The gunshots rang out for only a moment, but the effects resounded on Cape Cod for half a century. The idyllic atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Cape Cod was shattered in a flash. Soon after the crime, Snow pleaded guilty to murder in the first degree, and was the first person ever to be sentenced to death by electric chair in Massachusetts history. But his compelling story didn't end there, and his redemption--earned through decades of hard time--was as dramatic and uplifting as his crime was heinous. Drawing upon town records, historical documents, correspondence and newspapers of the day, The Cape Cod Murder of 1899 recreates the towns of Dennis and Yarmouth at the turn of the century and examines the details of a murder that shook Cape Cod to its core.

MetroWest is known for its rolling farmland, winding rivers and quaint white churches facing green town commons. But looks can be deceiving. Tales from these small towns captured headlines and shocked readers across the state with lurid details of betrayal, cruelty, greed and murder. Nina Danforth, spurred on by love and jealousy, made a midnight call to the home of Andrew Emery in Framingham seeking revenge. The murder of spinster Mabel Page in Weston sent a man to the electric chair, and forty years before Lizzie Borden, the grisly axe murder of a husband and wife sent shock waves through the terrified town of Natick. Authors James L. Parr and Kevin A. Swope reveal the stories behind these crimes and the motives of the desperate criminals who perpetrated them.

Boston's history is checkered with violence and heinous crimes. In 1845, a woman lured into prostitution was murdered at the hands of her jealous lover who used sleepwalking as his defense at trial. A leg was found floating along the Boston Harbor, wrapped in a burlap bag that would later be connected to a woman who was brutally murdered and dismembered by her handyman. In the 1970s, a string of seemingly unconnected murders led to a killer who became known as the Giggler. Christopher Daley explores the tragic events that turned peaceful Boston neighborhoods into disturbing crime scenes.