True Crime Books by Jason Lucky Morrow

Welcome to HistoricalCrimeDetective.com [Est. 2013], where you will discover forgotten crimes and criminals lost to history. This blog is the official website for true crime writer Jason Lucky Morrow, author of four books including the popular series: Famous Crimes the World Forgot, Volume I and Volume II. Please follow us on Facebook, for updates. Contact me here.


Tag: 1930s

Free Audiobook Sample Chapter Available
‘The Carver Family Hatchet Murders, 1930’

Last year, 2019, I was approached by former Broadway actor and audiobook narrator Charles Huddeston, who offered to narrate my two books in the Famous Crimes the World Forgot series. I’ve been approached before by other narrators, but passed on their offers for one reason or another. I’m so, so thankful that I did not […]

Mug Shot Monday! Lemuel Hawkins, veteran, baseball player, federal prisoner, & accidental gunshot victim, 1895-1934

  Lemuel Hawkins, Auto Theft (Federal), 1931 Lemuel Hawkins (October 2, 1895 – August 10, 1934) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago Giants and Chicago American Giants from 1921 to 1928. He was 5’10” and weighed 185 pounds. In 1931 he was arrested for […]

The 1935 Delaware Execution of a Mother & Son

Story by Jason Lucky Morrow Posted: December 9, 2015 On November 9, 1927, twenty-year-old Howard Hitchens of Georgetown, Delaware, was growing concerned for his uncle, Robert, whom he had not seen in several days. When he went to the man’s home in nearby Frankford, he found him “beaten to death in a blood splattered room,” […]

Mug Shot Monday! Jake Vohland, Chicken Rustler, Poultry Pilferer, 1931

Since this is the week of thanksgiving, I wanted to work in a thanksgiving type crime. The best I could do was this poultry pilferer from 1931. Credit: Nebraska State Historical Society   In 1931, during the depths of the Great Depression, Jake Vohland attempted to steal chickens from Mr. and Mrs. Dale E. Stubblefield […]

Mug Shot Monday! Cop Killer Frederick D. Fair

On August 19, 1928, Atlanta Police Department Patrolman John McDaniel responded to a disturbance between two acquaintances. When Officer McDaniel attempted to arrest Frederick D. Fair, the principal instigator, Fair shot the forty-nine-year-old lawman in the chest. McDaniel was transported to the hospital, but died three days later of his wound. Fair was later apprehended, […]

Ambush and Betrayal, Satterfield & Grice, 1933

  Sunday, October 22, 1933, 8:30 p.m. Goldsboro, North Carolina Herbert Grice was in the middle of untying his shoes when he was stopped by the frantic barking of his dogs. They often barked at everything and anything they didn’t approve of, and Grice quickly dismissed their clamor as insignificant. But before he could get […]

Serial Killer Anna Marie Hahn, 1933-1938

Anna Marie Hahn was a female serial killer who became the first woman ever to be executed in Ohio after it was confirmed that she poisoned five old men to death in order to gain their estates through fraudulently produced wills or by raiding their bank accounts. In 1927, Anna emigrated from Germany and settled […]

Mug Shot Monday! Joe Crowe, 1938

Joe Crowe’s Prison Mug Shot Oklahoma State Penitentiary convict Joe Crowe is a great example of the laxness with which prisons once guarded their inmates. In 1938, Crowe was a prison trustee on a dam project near Fort Towson, Oklahoma, where state convicts provided a large portion of the labor force. That November, Crowe left […]

Mug Shot Monday! George Darnell, Captured 1931

When railroad section hand George Darnell was fired from his job on August 17, 1929, he set his mind on revenge. The following day, Darnell tampered with a track switch near Henryetta, Oklahoma, which later caused a passenger train to jump the track. Thirteen people, eleven of them passengers, were killed and ten more were […]

Mug Shot Monday! Opium Smuggler Wesley Sischo, 1918 and 1935

: Wesley Leroy Sischo was a former maritime customs agent who decided it was more profitable to work on the other side of the law. During World War I, he began working with a Seattle Chinese gang to smuggle opium into Washington State. As the captain of a small coastal vessel, it was his job […]