DEADLY WEEKEND A True Story of Obsession and Murder

Hardback. This is the author's, (a homicide detective) riveting account of his investigation into the dangerous world of fast money and cold-blooded killers, in this chilling story of murder in New Orleans. On January 19, 1978, Mark Sheppard, a 50yr old MD from St. Petersburg, Florida, disappeared in the French Quarter. He'd come to New Orleans for the weekend, bringing a $50,000 marble bust of Andrew Jackson he intended to donate to a museum, $300 in cash, and a watch worth $10,000. He never went home. When Dr. Sheppard's friends hired a flamboyant private investigator, what began as a routine missing-persons case quickly escalated into a front-page challenge for the New Orleans Police Department. And Detective Dillmann was assigned to find the doctor, dead or alive. Dillmann scoured the Big Easy, questioning hustlers, vendors, and barflies, but he could find no evidence of a crime: Sheppard's valuables, including the bust of Jackson, were all safe in his hotel room. Frustrated at every turn by mounting public outrage, Dillmann searched the doctor's luxurious St. Petersbsurg mansion, convinced it held some clue to Sheppard's disappearance. What he found there, coupled with the discovery of the doctor's partially nude decomposing body in an irrigation ditch outside New Orleans, led the haggard detective down a new and grisly trail. Yet as he closed in on the suspects, Dillmann found the real mystery was only just beginning. Illus. + Epilogue. 255pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. V.v. lightly browned pp. o/w Vg+ in Vg+ dw.