J. T. Townsend - Queen City Notorious: Cincinnatis Most Sensational Murder Cases

All information contained in the narrative sections of Queen City Notorious is a matter of public record, including book research, newspaper archives, magazine articles, personal interviews, and police case files. Any rumor or conjecture is identified as such within these sections.

The Armchair Detective chapter epilogues are subjective summations of the author based on evidence as stated in the narrative, and do not represent an accusation against any person living or dead.

QUEEN CITY

NOTORIOUS

Cincinnatis Most Infamous

Murder Mysteries

J. T. Townsend

All images used under the public domain with fair use, unless otherwise noted.

Queen City Notorious, by J. T. Townsend. ISBN 978-1-62137-625-5 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-62137-770-2 (eBook).

Published 2014, 2015 by Virtualbookworm.com Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 9949, College Station, TX 77842, US. 2014, 2015, J. T. Townsend. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of J. T. Townsend.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE DETECTIVES. JUSTICE MAY BE BLIND, BUT SHE CAN SEE

IN THE DARK...

I met murder on the way

He had a mask like Castlereagh

Very smooth he looked, yet grim

Seven bloodhounds followed him.

All were fat, and well they might

Be in admirable plight

For one by one, and two by two

He tossed them human hearts to chew...

THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY

All courtroom proceedings seem more like a prize-ring combat than a calm, dignified effort to find the truth.

Clarence Darrow

Murder is the act of removing an ugly fact to maintain a pleasant fiction, the grim reality of the dead body, or bodies, contradicting the fantasy of high flown or obscure motives.

Dorothy Dunbar

Every newspaper is nothing but a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, torture, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of ordinary individuals, an intoxicating brew of universal atrocity. And it is this disgusting aperitif that the civilized man takes with his morning meal.

Charles Baudelaire

As to old women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased with anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the mind of sensibility requires something more.

Thomas De Quincey

The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours.

Sigmund Freud

Cincinnatis Most Sensational Murder Cases

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

W.H. Auden

For your next book, could you please write about murder cases we actually solved?

Old detectives never die they just dissolve. Or wind up with cold case files in their attics. Which is why the appeal from this retired homicide cop did not surprise me.

Since Queen City Gothic was published in 2009, this author has engaged in countless deliberations with mystery-loving Cincinnatians who refuse to surrender their emotional statute of limitations when it comes to murder most foul.

Yet mystery is only half of the true crime equation. For without closure, there is no truth, no justice, and no American way.

Many QCG readers suggested that those petrified crimes would have been cracked with modern investigative tools. Some even felt that local law enforcement came across in early chapters like the Keystone Cops.

So let this book be my anthem to the Queen City detectives most long buried, some still above ground men who caught these cases on their watch and latched onto them like a dog with a bone.

Their work was, quite simply, superb. Because of their investigative prowess, Queen City Notorious abounds with intriguing killers, riveting trials, and swift punishments. These felons were captured, judged, and sentenced. Today they are all square with the house some died in the electric chair, while others languished in prison.

Most importantly, victims families were never bothered by the lingering questions that haunt cold case survivors.

Yet my QCG minions should not lament any dearth of mystery in this volume. Just because a case is solved doesnt mean theres no ambiguity, because true crime history is replete with closed cases trailing loose ends.

On a national front, Bruno Richard Hauptmann may have extorted money from Charles Lindbergh, but when you pull on the frayed threads that bind him to the babys murder, they fall apart, just like the tattered and sabotaged evidence that placed him in the electric chair.

Consider our two most famous acquitted double murderers. Did Lizzie Borden plan to kill her father ninety minutes after butchering her stepmother or was this an improvisation to create the illusion of a maniac intruder? Did Ron Goldman merely interrupt O.J. Simpson killing Nicole or did Simpson arrive when Ron was already talking to her? The motivation behind both of these sensational American crimes spins between the questions and the answers.

Thats why I endeavored in every case included here to unravel a motive, especially when it was not initially apparent. Why thirteen-year-old Lindberg Trent killed and then mutilated six-year-old Shirley Woodburn. Why young and handsome Jack Rauss viciously stabbed his moms close friend and, for good measure, that friends elderly, wheelchair-bound husband. Why soft-spoken, deeply religious Betty Butler strangled and then drowned a girlfriend in a row boat and then claimed sexual entrapment coupled with emotional blackmail.

Therein lays the mystery of Queen City Notorious . The question here is not who did it, but rather what the hell was going on inside their heads that drove each of them to kill another human being? These answers will be excavated from the dark underside of every romantic entanglement, family vendetta, perilous partnership and psychological mutation that ended with a Cincinnati homicide worthy of this anthology.

Unlike QCG , these killers are not faceless. Their shocking murders are followed by dramatic trials, and in the courtroom their most closely guarded secrets are made public. For most families this shame never sees the light of day only murder brings it into the sunlight.

As the writer I will assume the roles of detective, reporter, and judge while showing the reader that the reality of murder always surpasses its fictional portrayal. And by selecting, enhancing, and revitalizing the raw material of each factual crime, I can only hope that novelistic renderings will seem lackluster by comparison

My criterion for case selection is arbitrarily slanted in my favor. There must be a robust human element, remnants of public fear, and a whiff of scandal. Anything within the last forty years is forbidden these more recent crimes have not yet acquired a vintage appeal, and they often feature living family members of victims. Im not comfortable writing about awful events still inflamed in the memory of those who survive.