Wicked Decatur
Published on 4. April 2011
101 pages
978-1-62584-116-2 (ISBN)
Description
In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed "Hell's Half Acre."? By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the "Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, "? gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor's great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue's gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Troy Taylor
Wicked Decatur
Book
04/2011
Arcadia Publishing (SC)
€21.00
No shipping information available
Person
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.
Content
- Front Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Carved Out of the Prairie: Decatur's Early Years
- Death Rides the Rails: Murder, Crime and Decatur's Railroads
- Law and Disorder: History of the Decatur Police Department
- "If You Can't Find a Drink, You're Not Trying Hard Enough!": Prohibition in Decatur
- Rolling the Bones: Gambling in Decatur
- Decatur: Kidnapping Central
- Decatur's Vice Districts
- Red Lights on the Prairie: Prostitution in Decatur
- The End of the Crime Era
- Death by Another's Hand: A Collection of Decatur's Most Infamous Murders
- Bibliography
- About the Author
