Old Crimes

Obviously the fact that I compose this blog based on true crime stories tells you that I am fascinated by them.  I am especially interested in stories I have not heard of and those that have been lost to history. Recently I have read several books that entail crimes from the late 1800's and early turn of the century crimes.

 I am currently reading "Psycho USA" by Harold Schecter.  Prior to this I read another of his books based on a woman serial killer, Jane Topper who poison her victims in the late 1800's.  Psycho USA is a book to show us that "The Good Ole Days" never really existed and that crimes ranging from Columbine to The Oklahoma City Bombing and people such as Susan Smith and Andrea Yates are not even close to being new.

 Schecter asked a curious question.  Why is it that we can remember the Halls/Mills murder but not the LeBoeuf/Dreher crime. Why is it we can remember names like Leopold and Loeb from the early 1900's but not the names of  Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky who murdered three members of the Petit family in their home in 2007.  

 I intend on spending the next several days looking into some of these old forgotten crimes (and a few not so old ones, like the Petit family killing), as well as some old not so forgotten crimes like those of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray as well as the infamous Belle Gunness.  Maybe when you are done reading these stories you will realize like I have that the world has not really gotten worse... in fact in many ways it has gotten better. Over the decades access to things such as Arsenic have been made harder as well as tougher gun laws.  Imagine if these things had not changed what kind of world we would live in. 

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