True Crime

The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave by an unlikely lineup of murderesses—village wives, mothers, and daughters. At the center of it all was a midwife who distilled arsenic and distributed it to the women of Nagyrév who used the deadly solution to finally be free of cruel and abusive spouses.  But as the number of dead bodies grew without consequence, the killers grew bolder. With each vial of poison emptied, a new reason surfaced to drain yet another. Some women disposed of sickly relatives. Some used arsenic as “inheritance powder” to secure land and houses. For more than fifteen years, the unlikely murderers aided death.  By the time their crimes were discovered, hundreds were feared dead.

A collection of essays in which inmates at American prisons who were sentenced to death while still in their teens share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up in prison and how they feel about capital punishment. 

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted--thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

A compelling account of the killing of Vincent Chin, the verdicts that took the Asian American community to the streets in protest, and the groundbreaking civil rights trial that followed. America in 1982. Japanese car companies are on the rise and believed to be putting American autoworkers out of their jobs. Anti-Asian American sentiments simmer, especially in Detroit. A bar fight turns fatal, leaving Vincent Chin -- a Chinese American man -- beaten to death at the hands of two white men.