Historic Milwaukee Crimes

Milwaukee saw its share of violence as it transformed from frontier village to modern metropolis. The city was barely established when an argument over a bridge linking east and west was nearly settled with cannon fire. A local developer killed his estranged wife, severed her head and burned it in the furnace of the apartment building he built. A wronged woman murdered her lover on a busy downtown street and was found innocent by a sympathetic jury. Another woman lethally poisoned her family and laughed about it in the press. From a robbery in which the bandits got away by stealing a streetcar to the attempted assassination of President Theodore Roosevelt, local historian Carl Swanson uncovers dramatic true stories of villainy and murder from Milwaukee's long-forgotten past.

Carl A. Swanson explores and writes about his adopted hometown of Milwaukee. A magazine editor and author of Lost Milwaukee from The History Press and Faces of Railroading from Kalmbach Media, Carl studied journalism at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and photography at the Woodland School of Photography. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and blogs about the city and its history at MilwaukeeNotebook.com. 160 pages.