I'm really interested in reflecting on the fairly distant past, something terrible that happened then and how it affects people in the present, particularly if the unsolved crime comes up in the present.. like new info comes forward or they find the body or something.. so, ideally something where it's set in the present but it's about something that happened in the past.
Please don't recommend me true crime youtubers or anything, simply because I watch loads of these all ready. I am generally familiar with most cases that would be in a documentary as well. I'm really looking for fictional or based on true events dramatisation ideally, mini-series so that it's not a big investment of my time. I like the mini-series format for this type of story, think it works well.. as an aspiring screenwriter I'm actually working on numerous ideas like this for mini-series too.. but would love to find more to watch.
I'm familiar with Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, and of course they're series not mini-series.. however I do find the UK series format preferable due to its limited episode count too.. so I could take non mini-series recommendations like this where there are just like two or three 6 episode seasons or something like that.
Particularly interested in something set in the 1970s. I find this decade very interesting.
Apologies if someone has posted before. James has worked on this book for several years but it comes out in a few weeks.
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/article173296191.html
"James, of Lawrence, links the carnage at the Bernhardt farm — which stood near what now is 135th Street on the Kansas side of the state line — to dozens of similar ax murders from Oregon to Maine to Florida. He believes all could have been carried out by the same monster, someone James calls The Man from the Train." ... "“He just liked to kill,” James said in a recent interview. “He was good at it.”
McCarthy James, also of Lawrence, assisted in the research. Together they chronicled a 15-year spree of slayings across small-town America, peaking in 1912 with the unsolved slaughter of eight persons, ages 5 to 43, in a home in Villisca, Iowa. Coming days after the murder of a Paola, Kan., couple, the Villisca rampage is the most infamous crime tagged to The Man from the Train.
Supposing that he committed just half of the murders that the Jameses have identified, the man would rank among the most accomplished killers in U.S. history.
In some cases innocent persons were charged with the murders and executed, the Jameses contend. Commonly, African Americans were wrongly implicated; at least two were lynched in Georgia.
Late in their book, the authors out the true killer, they believe, by name. This story will not spoil the ending. But until the publisher Scribner releases the book Sept. 19, you would have never heard of this murderer by name anyway."
The MO of James' hypothetical serial killer sounds very similar to Servant Girl Annihilator murders in Austin although I guess these killings happened 1900 - 10.
Severely restricting gun availability is not the solution to the problem of mass killing. Sure, it will help somewhat, but people believing in violence will find other ways to commit murderous acts.
The real question American society must ask is whether we want to become a less violent society and how we do that.
Hello, every one. It quite had been a very long time since the last time I put a post here. The urban area of Chicago is fulfilled with criminal violence and activities on the daily basis. I knew in the 19th century and early 20th century, there were some notorious serial killers indeed considered the city of Chicago as their killing fields. However, I heard local media and law enforcement later claimed that those serial killers some how get caught eventually. In addition, Chicago was the homeland for famous gangs or Mafias, such as Al Capone and John Dillinger in the early 20th century. So do you know is there have any unsolved and shocking mystery that took place in the urban area of Chicago since the 20th century to today?
So I read this book in middle school around 2008/2009 so it was probably Y/A. It had a female protagonist who I think was a maid at this luxury hotel/resort and one of her fellow maids was murdered and I think she eventually solves it? I think it was based on the real life murder of Hazel Irene Drew and I think American was in the title but I could totally be wrong. The cover was grey toned with a faint silhouette of a woman’s profile and misty trees in the background. Any help figuring this out would be much appreciated because it’s currently driving me nuts
An extract from this book was part of the philosophy curriculum when I was in high school in France in 2002. I can only remember the scene we were meant to study: the protagonist, male adult, is on a train. He sees another passenger, also a man, leaning next to a door. Just right then, the train goes over a tall bridge. The protagonist feels the sudden and random impulse to throw the other man to his death, so he decides to exercise True Freedom by obeying that impulse. I think the point was that morals always stand in the way of freedom, and only pure impulse actions are truly free.
It was not new or even when it was taught to us. It was very likely an European work–French or Russian. It wasn’t that old either, because it was written well after train travel became widespread and relatively comfortable.
>Anyone who believes that we live in an age dominated by science and skepticism needs to study needs to study the history of Pennsylvania. In the rural areas of the state, a belief in witches, hexes, powerful spirits and the like was common until well into the 20th century--for all I know, it still quietly exists today. Remote farm communities saw superstition and folklore not as quaint relics of a medieval past, but as all-too real presences in their lives. Sometimes, these beliefs took the benign forms of good-luck charms, folk medicine, and positive spirituality. At other times, however, believers found themselves haunted by sincerely-held fears of curses and ghostly persecutions.
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>On occasion, these fears led these tormented souls to defend themselves through acts of violence, even murder. Probably the most famous example is the case of Nelson Rehmeyer. In 1928, a Central Pennsylvania "witch" named Nellie Noll convinced a young man named John Blymire that Rehmeyer had put a curse on him. Blymire and two friends, John Curry and Wilbert Hess, broke into Rehmeyer's home in order to steal a "spell book" they believed he owned. They were unable to find this book, but when Rehmeyer accosted them, the trio gruesomely killed him, in the hope of lifting this curse. The three youths were eventually convicted of the murder. One of the many oddities of the case is that the killers had never before committed any criminal offense, and after their release from prison went on to lead thoroughly normal, law-abiding lives.
the rest of it -- and it is very good -- here
https://strangeco.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-witch-of-ringtown-medieval-20th.html
DATE | KILLED/WOUNDED | LOCATION | METHOD
1958-12-01 | 95 killed, 100 wounded | Chicago, IL | Arson
1920-09-16 | 38 killed, >700 wounded | New York City, NY | Bomb
1973-06-24 | 32 killed, 15 wounded | New Orleans, LA | Arson
1939-08-12 | 24 killed, 121 wounded | Harney, NV | Derailing train by sabotaging tracks
1976-01-30 | 23 killed, >17 wounded | Chicago, IL | Arson
2013-04-17 | 15 killed, >160 wounded | West, TX | Arson fire causing explosion
1975-12-29 | 11 killed, 74 wounded | New York City, NY | Bomb
1978-11-26 | 10 killed, 34 wounded | Greece, NY | Arson
1917-11-24 | 10 killed, 0 wounded | Milwaukee, WI | Bomb
1906-05-24 | 9 killed, 0 wounded | Milton, FL | Axe; arson
1878-09-13 | 8 killed, 1 wounded | Hockley, TX | Axe; wounded victim was shot with pistol
1912-06-10 | 8 killed, 0 wounded | Villisca, IA | Axe
1982-09-07 | 8 killed, 0 wounded | Craig, AK | Shooting; bodies burned; one victim presumably thrown overboard
2016-04-22 | 8 killed, 0 wounded | Peebles, OH | Shooting
1965-11-20 | 7 killed, 7 wounded | Sunbury, PA | Arson; two victims wounded with shotgun
1928-04-20 | 7 killed, 0 wounded | El Dorado, KS | Shooting
1929-02-14 | 7 killed, 0 wounded | Chicago, IL | Shooting (submachine guns and shotguns)
1933-10-10 | 7 killed, 0 wounded | Chesterton, IN | Bomb
1967-10-25 | 7 killed, 0 wounded | Arcadia, FL | Rice and beans poisoned with parathion
1982-09-29 | 7 killed, 0 wounded | Chicago, IL | Tylenol poisoned with cyanide
1911-09-17 | 6 killed, 0 wounded | Colorado Springs, CO | Axe
1968-06-25 | 6 killed, 0 wounded | Good Hart, MI | Shooting (rifle and pistol); bludgeoning (hammer)
2008-02-02 | 5 killed, 1 wounded | Tinley Park, IL | Shooting (pistol)
1978-06-28 | 5 killed, 0 wounded | Boston, MA | Shooting (pistol and shotgun)
Philip Decker confessed to the 1958 Chicago, IL arson in 1962 and later recanted
Roger Dale Nunez was suspected in the 1973 New Orleans, LA murders but never charged
Denise Watson was arrested for the 1976 Chicago, IL arson; she was acquitted in 1977
John Kenneth Peel was arrested for the 1982 Craig, AK murders )