Spine-Chilling Murders in Chicago

by Nick Vulich

Ever wonder what evil lurks in your hometown? Spine-Chilling Murders in the Chicago takes you behind the scenes of some old-time killings in Chicago. Nineteen-year-old Amelia Olesen was outraged, strangled, and dragged across the prairie in Northwest Chicago. Rumors spread through the city, that she was drugged and hauled away by a group of young men, or that a married neighbor stalked and murdered her. The primary suspect, Tom Shehan, had an airtight alibi, but police held him for over a month hoping for a break in the case. The Lady’s Murder Club consisted of six women incarcerated in the Cook County Jail. They all had one thing in common. They murdered their husband, lover, or some other close relative and were set free because no jury would convict a woman for committing a capital crime. The club members included Rene Morrow, Louise Vermilya, Sadie Blaha, Jane Quinn, Lena Musso, and Florence Bernstein. Detectives believed Augusta Dietz waited until her husband, George Dietz, fell asleep, then crept into his bedroom and bashed his head in with a hammer. Afterward, she planted a false trail of evidence, placing a note from the killer under the hammer where the police could not help but find it. Chicago serial killer Henry Spencer took credit for killing twenty-nine people (mostly women) during his twenty-year run. He bragged to detectives he bagged twelve of them in as many months after being released from the Joliet Prison in 1912. The so-called “Man-Girl Murderer” was one of the most baffling cases to confront the Chicago Police Department in the 1920s. Mrs. Richard Tesmer told detectives Freddy Frances was the “girl bandit” she saw murder her husband, but when officers caught up with her, they discovered Freddy was a man in woman’s clothes. Add to that, he had a husband and a wife, and things got confused. Someone bludgeoned twenty-year-old Theresa Hollander to death in the St. Nicholas Cemetery in Aurora, Illinois, in 1914. The police quickly focused their attention on a former suitor, Anthony Petras, but a jury failed to convict him after two trials. William Bartholin killed his mother and fiancé, Minnie Mitchell, in what came to be known as the Calumet Avenue Death House. Several months and suspects later, Bartholin’s body turned up in a field in Riceville, Iowa. Detectives found a suicide note that cleared the other suspects yet refused to release them pending the decision of the grand jury. Six-year-old Paul Paszkowski disappeared from his home in 1903. A week later, his body was discovered buried in a gunny sack in a shallow grave. Suspicion immediately fell on eleven-year-old Julius Wiltrax. After being interrogated for a week, he blamed his parents, John, and Elizabeth Wiltrax. Actress Margaret Leslie was found dead in room 420 at the Palace Hotel in Chicago on October 18, 1906. Suspicion quickly fell on a one-legged theatrical producer, Howard Nicholas. He broke after a week of extreme “sweating” and gave police a 24-page confession implicating his partner, Leonard Leopold. Nicholas later recanted his confession, saying Assistant Chief Herman Schuettler hypnotized him into making it.

Genres: True Crime

196 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2020

About the author

Hey there Nick Vulich here.

Ever since I was a kid I had this crazy urge to read and write. There is something about a book that can open up new worlds to you. When I was younger I read every Max Brand and Zane Grey western I could get my hands on. Then, I found Kenneth Roberts and his historical novels – Arundel, Northwest Passage, A Rabble in Arms. The detail he worked into them was mind blowing.

In college I was turned on to Frodo Baggins and the world of the Hobbits. I found Kurt Vonnegut downright inspiring. I still remember sitting in David Morrell’s classroom at the University of Iowa back in the late seventies, listening to his lectures on early American literature.

After graduation, I lost touch with my writing self for over thirty years, until I was brought face-to-face with this new-fangled thing they called Kindle. It reminded me of what I was all about.

In the years since then I have penned over twenty books, most of them with an e-commerce bent – How to sell on eBay, Amazon, and Fiver. I have written innumerable history books, started and given up on over a dozen novels.

The most amazing thing is, I can say whatever I want to say. I can write it today, put it out there for sale tomorrow, and within a day – sometimes two or three, someone else in this world is going to connect with what has been rattling around in my brain. How cool is that!

Indie Authors Toolbox is just that, a collection of gadgets and doodads you can whip out when you need them to spice up your writing; learn a little more about self-publishing; or connect with one troubled brain that is focused on figuring out this thing we call Indie Publishing.

Welcome aboard. Hold on because you are in for one hell of a ride.

Reviews

[MKF · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author of these ebooks really need to pick a font color because the bright white and pale gray is terrible. My eyes are already bad especially reading the small text of these ebooks and the pale gray text is also very difficult for me to see. Going from difficult to read gray to bright white and back over and over is giving me headaches.