For more than a century, Terre Haute earned its reputation as a sin city. One of the most notorious red-light districts in the Midwest, the West End, housed sixty brothels and nearly one thousand pros
Muckraking journalist Walter Liggett dubbed Pittsburgh the "Metropolis of Corruption" in 1930 when he reported the city had more vice per square foot than New York, Detroit, Cleveland or Boston. Decad
Author Tobin T. Buhk recounts the thrilling tales of Detroit's most violent, clever and misunderstood female criminals. "Queen of the Underworld" Sophie Lyons faced off with detective Teresa Lewis in
Early Wichita earned a wicked reputation from newspapers across Kansas thanks to a bevy of madams and murderers, bootleggers and bank robbers, con men and crooked cops. Gambler and saloonkeeper "Rowdy
The Cream City of yesteryear was a dingy haven for scofflaws and villains. Red-light districts peppered downtown's landscape, but none had the enduring allure of River Street, where Kitty Williams and
Fairfax County is far more than just a bedroom community for Washington, D.C. The county has been the site of crimes as shocking and fascinating as anything that happens across the Potomac. In 1898, t
Asheville is a wonderfully strange city, but it has a few shadows in its past. Teenager Helen Clevenger was brutally murdered at the luxurious Battery Park Hotel in 1936. William Dudley Pelley called
The Motor City boasts a long and sordid history of scoundrels, cheats and ne'er-do-wells. The wheeling and dealing prowess of founding father Antoine Cadillac is the stuff of legend. Fur trader and ch
The Buckeye State produced its share of wicked women. Tenacious madam Clara Palmer contended with constant police raids during the 1880s and '90s. Only her death could shut the doors of her gilded bor
Vermont is a picturesque landscape, but the idyllic setting hides a sometimes dark and desperate past. H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer, may have been the University of Vermont's deadliest s
