If you appreciate the true crime genre, this New York Times feature is a fantastic checklist of books to read. Tina Jordan and Ross MacDonald selected one true crime book to represent each of the fifty United States. I live in California and really enjoyed Jeffrey Toobin’s “American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst.” But even having grown up in Ohio, I hadn’t heard of the heinous crimes of Billy Mulligan who “became the first person in this country’s history to be declared not guilty by reason of insanity on the grounds of a psychiatric diagnosis of ‘multiple personality.’” Here are a few more from the article that I’ve now added to my reading list:
Utah
Mikal Gilmore, “Shot in the Heart”
“A compelling volume that traces the sad, violent history of the Gilmore family and shows, in its author’s words, ‘how its webwork of dark secrets and failed hopes helped create the legacy that, in part, became my brother’s impetus to murder.’”
Louisiana
Ethan Brown, “Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?”The women — “all prostitutes and drug addicts, which made them vulnerable and defenseless, expendable in a jurisdiction that’s centrally positioned along the route of the Gulf Coast drug trade” — were killed between 2005 and 2009.
Oklahoma
David Grann, “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI”“Grann’s book, about how dozens of members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s were shot, poisoned or blown to bits by rapacious whites who coveted the oil under their land, is close to impeccable. It’s confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet.”
“50 States of True Crime” (NYT)