THE MANIAC IN THE BUSHES And More Tales of Cleveland Woe

Softcover. The second book in the series in which the author delves into 13 more incredible but true stories of Cleveland crime and disaster, including : Martha Wise, Medina's not-so-merry widow, who poisoned a dozen relatives with arsenic - including her own husband, mother, brother, niece, and nephew - because she enjoyed attending funerals; The legendary Torso Murders, which baffled Cleveland safety directory Eliot Ness, two Cuyahoga County coroners, and the entire Cleveland police force as they tried in vain to catch the perpetrator - whom newspapers dubbed the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run"; The unspeakably horrible Collinwood School Fire of 1908, in which 172 schoolchildren perished in panic because of obstructed fire exits; Bad, bold Blinky Morgan, habitual liar and small-time gangster, whose relentless life of crime stopped short at the end of a hangman's rope in 1888; Hammer-wielding Velma West, a big-city girl of Cleveland's Jazz Age driven to murder her small-town husband by the slow pace of life of Painesville - and her own obsession with another woman; The Flats lumber fire of 1914, which levelled Cleveland's industrial Flats, melted bridges, and very nearly set the entire city ablaze; Carl Bernthaler and Lena Ziechmann's secret assignation in Cleveland Heights' Stillman Woods on a pleasant spring day in 1908 : it began in romance and ended in a curious double-slaying; The enduring mystery of 10yr. old Beverly Potts, whose puzzling disappearance from west-side Halloran Park in 1951 launched Cleveland's greatest manhunt; and more true local stories of courage, fear, deception, treachery, tragedy, violence and guilt. Illus. with 90 photographs. 299pp. trade size p/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. with no crasing to covers.