Wicked Northern Illinois: The Dark Side of the Prairie State

by Troy Taylor

Overview

From the secrets of Joliet Penitentiary to the ferocious gunfights between the Ku Klux Klan and the Shelton Gang, Troy Taylor takes the measure of the dishonest sweat and innocent blood poured into the prairies of Northern Illinois. Meet the "fallen angels" of Decatur's red-light district, the Springfield counterfeiters who bungled stealing Lincoln's bones and the Aurora man who propped up his porch with the heads of his wife and brother-in-law. And if you dare, eavesdrop on the chilling confession of a man who left a dancer's corpse to the mercy of the railroad tracks: "So, I pat them on the cheek, call them sweet names, and kill them."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781540217769
Publisher:	History Press Library Editions
Publication date:	09/24/2010
Pages:	130
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.38(d)

About the Author

Troy Taylor is an occultist, supernatural historian and the author of seventy-five books on ghosts, hauntings, history, crime and the unexplained in America. He is also the founder of the American Ghost Society and the owner of the Illinois and American Hauntings Tour companies. Taylor shares a birthday with one of his favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but instead of living in New York and Paris like Fitzgerald, Taylor grew up in Illinois. Raised on the prairies of the state, he developed an interest in "things that go bump in the night" at an early age. As a young man, he channeled that interest into developing ghost tours and writing about haunts in Chicago and Central Illinois. Troy and his wife, Haven, currently reside in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction: A Bloody History of Early Illinois Crime 9

The Murder of Colonel Davenport 25

Stealing the President: The Attempt to Kidnap Abraham Lincoln's Bones 30

The Tragic Case of Charles "Pacer" Smith 46

The Body on the Railroad Tracks 55

Red Lights on the Prairie 63

Illinois Gangsters: The Saga of the Shelton Brothers 72

Two Heads in a Concrete Block 100

The Starved Rock Murders 108

Behind the Walls of Joliet Penitentiary 118

Bibliography 125

About the Author 127