Villisca

It became obvious quickly that this was a self published book. There are a lot of typos, misspellings, and omitted words. I mention this first because it hit me right on the first page.The crime itself was horrific, and Marshall refers to other similar crimes in the same time period in the Midwest. But there are no citations and no bibliography. If you want to follow up on this, you'll have to do your own research.Also, the crime investigation got bogged down, and unfortunately, so does this book. A detective with a love of conspiracy theories took over the investigation, and convinced others to concentrate on his convoluted theory, rather than actual facts. The book devotes a significant chunk of the book to the accusations, derailed political career, and libel trials that ensued. This section quotes verbatim from transcripts, and it is a dreary slog.In the closing few chapters, Marshall's voice comes through. He drops his objective stance, and makes his view known. And it is such a shame! If only the entire book was written like this.

I am something of a true-crime junkie and this book will be among the prizes of my library. Another reviewer complained there was too much in the way of "transcript." Goodness gracious. I found Marshall's use of original documents to be particularly helpful in understanding this complex story. The author has an eye for detail and I appreciated some of his short digressions into "the times."I do wish there had been an index, but having been forewarned, I wrote a lot of notes in the margins to keep up with the secondary characters. This is a wonderful narrative and I highly recommend it.

GHOST HUNTERS aired an episode from Villisca last month. I became very intrested in more of the story, so I bought thebook by Roy Marshall. It was amazing how the killer was never convicted, even though he confessed to the killings. There were similair murders in other cities, but those were never solved either. The book doesn't go into the hauntings, just themurders. It isa very interesting and very fast read...once I started readng it, I couldn't put the book down!

This book recounts the terrible mass murder of a family, husband, wife and children, in Australia in the early 1900s. The family was found hacked to death in their own home. The author reviews not only the case, but looks at the possible suspects. Why would a merchant and his family be killed so brutally? This case brings to mind the Borden murders in the late 1800s, but the death of Lizzie Borden's father and step-mother pale in comparison. Marshall talks about the family and possible motives as well. And he does a great job of laying out the crime scene and its evidence...some of it quite bizarre. This case, this book is not for the squeamish. It's so terrible because it's true.

This book gave a well-organized account of the complex sequence of events in the Villisca axe murder case. I've read many true crime books and have been disappointed by many of them that simply rehash the trial transcripts. That didn't happen with this book. The author obviously spent a great deal of time getting to know all of the characters involved and developed them in a way that made me feel as if I were reading a novel. Even though I felt he cleared the name of one of the major suspects, I didn't get the impression that he was unreasonably biased. Still, I would have loved for the author to give his opinion on who he thought might be the real killer.I would have given this book 5 stars, but gave it 4 only because it's in dire need of proof-reading. It had an enormous amount of typos in it.

AMAZING LOVED IT

Fascinating book!

One of the best true crime books

The wording on more then half the pages was very faint.my glasses came in very handy.