In this serious yet entertaining book, historian Richard Carl Lindberg probes unexplored avenues of Chicago history and presents the first in-depth history of the Chicago Police Department in over a century. The book traces the stormy history of the department from the 1850s to the Summerdale Scandal of the near present. Interspersed with the major chapters about the chaotic struggle between reform and the machine are short, intimate vignettes: the Armory Station, a gray, somber fortress that housed some of Chicago's most desperate characters for over thirty years; Francis O'Neill, Chicago's turn-of-the-century police chief who collected Irish folk songs and transcribed them into sheet music; the first fingerprint conviction in Cook County in which a man paid the ultimate price; and a retrospective look at some of the most infamous murder cases of the century and how the police solved them.

Lindberg discusses the tie between politics, organized crime, vice, and the police department. He presents a history of Chicago politics and law enforcement in chronological order and recounts pivotal events in Chicago history in the police context. The book reveals how police corruption in Chicago was the result of the political drag on the department; the pernicious influence of meddling aldermen and vice operatives that prevented the police from carrying out their sworn duties in a forthright manner. Lindberg examines the lack of central authority over the police department; police superintendents were traditionally weak, subservient figures to the mayor, unable, and often unwilling to exercise control over the bureaucracy. Students and scholars of history, criminal justice, Chicago history, and law enforcement will find" To Serve and Collect "provocative reading.

A fun-filled book that brings together for the first time the significant events in Chicago sports history. In addition to baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, it covers such minor"" sports as tennis, ice-skating, golf, bowling, horseracing, running, and sailing. This is a look at the athletes, their accomplishments, and the games they played.""

A fun-filled book that brings together for the first time the significant events in Chicago sports history. In addition to baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, it covers such minor"" sports as tennis, ice-skating, golf, bowling, horseracing, running, and sailing. This is a look at the athletes, their accomplishments, and the games they played.""

Return Again to the Scene of the Crime is the sequel to the 1999 bestseller Return to the Scene of the Crime. Revisiting the neighborhoods of Chicago and its adjoining suburbs, Return Again... probes deeper into old mysteries and provides fascinating glimpses of notorious crime scenes.

Here again are the uncensored tours of the back alleys and boulevards where crime, scandal, natural disasters, and mayhem occurred. Organized neighborhood by neighborhood, it retraces the steps of a rogue's gallery of murderers, con men, wise guys, anarchists, kidnappers, bad cops, and crooked politicians. Return Again... examines such stories as:
-- the baffling mystery surrounding the murder of wealthy Chicago candy heiress Helen Voorhies Brach in 1977. Was it the gardener who lured her out of her lush Glenview estate to a rendezvous with death? Was it the aging gigolo Richard Bailey? Why wasn't her body ever found?
-- the 1982 murder of Dianne Masters, married to a corrupt mob attorney, that exposed the seamy underbelly of the affluent South Suburbs.
-- the sensational peacock case of 1936, a slaying of a well-to-do North Side physician randomly selected for murder by a gang of boys drawing names from a telephone book.
-- the Mob's greatest hits...and misses down through the years.
-- the case of Thomas Neill Cream, 1880, the famous Gaslightera poisoner who drifted to Chicago from London and was freed by a city magistrate to kill again, returned to London, and allegedly reinvented himself as Jack the Ripper.
-- the POW camp in suburban Des Plaines, in which German prisoners of war were housed from 1942 through 1945.

Return Again to the Scene of the Crime is destined to become aninvaluable reference book on Chicago for many years to come.

Return again to the scene of the crime and visit the secret hideouts of Nazi saboteurs, anarchist plotters, charlatans, fakers, gangsters, and even a love-sick matron dubbed the "Torso Killer." See up close the murdering matrimonial bluebeard Johann Hoch and probe the unsolved mysteries surrounding the disappearance of candy heiress Helen Brach, the sinking of the "Christmas Tree Ship," and dozens of famous gangland "rubouts." This sequel to the best-selling Return to the Scene of the Crime is a provocative travel guide and road map pointing toward more dark and unexplored corners of the Windy City and its surrounding suburbs. The bizarre, the unexpected, and the offbeat are viewed through a kaleidoscope of colorful Chicago neighborhoods populated by outrageous characters. Crime scenes are presented in "then-and-now" perspective with running commentary on the history of the city. Included in the neighborhood tours is a unique collection of side trips--shorter, lighter historical vignettes that spirit out-of-towners to places of interest in Chicago that are not necessarily infamous. Once you have read this guidebook, you will want to return to the scene of the crime, again and again.

Return to the Scene of the Crime: a Guide to Infamous Places in Chicago,"" by Richard Lindberg, is an uncensored neighborhood-by-neighborhood map to the back alleys and boulevards of Chicago where some of the most infamous events of the city's criminal past occurred. Capone, Dillinger, and other organized crime figures have left an indelible imprint on the Windy City.""

This book revises the picture of the glittering Chicago of impressive mansions and museums; it exposes the city's corrupt underbelly and the realities of life in an age which is often assumed to have been simpler and more moral than ours. Includes chapters on the Haymarket riot, the gamblers' wars, the notorious levee red-light district and institutionalized graft.

Lindberg, an accomplished local historian and true crime writer, presents a fascinating story of two contemporaneous serial killers, both weaving marriage and murder in and around Chicago during the 1890s and 1900s. Johann Hoch was a debonair bigamist and wife killer who boasted of having perfected a "scientific technique" to romance and seduction. Belle Gunness was a nesting "Black Widow" whose sprawling farm in Northwest Indiana was a fatal lure for lonely bachelors seeking the comforts of middle-age security by answering matrimonial advertisements placed by Gunness.

Notorious in his own day, Hoch had faded into the dark background of Chicago crime history. But, in "Heartland Serial Killers," Lindberg brings back vividly the horrors of one of Chicago's first celebrity criminals and uncovers new evidence of a close connection between Hoch and H.H. Holmes, the "Devil in the White City."

Unlike Hoch, Belle Gunness, likely the most prolific and infamous female serial killer of the 20th century, has remained fascinating to the public. Here, Lindberg presents the most comprehensive and compelling study of the Gunness case to date, including new information regarding ongoing DNA testing of remains found at the site of Gunness's farm in LaPorte, Indiana, which may serve to resolve once and for all the mystery surrounding Gunness's death.

Told in alternating chapters and rapidly paced, this book is true crime at its best--gripping, pulpy, and full of sharp historical tidbits. True crime fans, history buffs, and those interested in local lore will delight in this chilling tale of two ruthless killers.