RAPE IN PARADISE The first full account of the sensational Massie rape case of 1931 in Hawaii

Hardback. On September 12, 1931, Thalia Massie, the young wife of an American Naval officer, walked out of a party in Honolulu and was found 2 hours later wandering along a lonely beach road, her face bruised. Her story was that she had been beaten and raped by 'a gang of Hawaiian boys'. Thus began the world-famous Massie case, in which Thalia Massie identified as her assailants five boys who - as the author shows - could not have been guilty. Why would Thalia Massie have lied? And why did the Honolulu police try to manufacture evidence? Many more questions arise as the author unravels this strange and suspenseful affair: Why was the American public aroused, not at the attempts of the white authorities to pin the crime on boys, but at their failure to do so? Why did the great American barrister, Clarence Darrow, go to Hawaii to defend not the alleged rapists, but rather the white lynch gang - among whom was the elderly socialite mother of Thalia Massie herself - which had murdered one of the accused boys in a bizarre episode? The author follows the case - and fully documents each step - from the alleged rape to the slaying and its tragic aftermath. Included in the book are photographs of unique documents which were thought to have been secretly destroyed. Illus., Glossary and Notes. 304pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned pp. o/w Vg+ in sl. sunned vg. dw.