Being born and raised in an area that was homesteaded by my ancestors has always piqued my curiosity about local legends. This can often leave one biased because we tend to accept things our parents and grandparents tell us as whole truths. Often this is not the case. Sometimes being passed down by word of mouth a few facts get misconstrued. I find this book very interesting because some of my family lived near these places during the time these events happened. I travel the same streets and visit the towns where this took place. Desperados of the Ozarks by Larry Wood takes a stab at presenting the facts in an unbiased manner, if that truly is possible. Most of the facts presented occurred in the later part of the 1800’s going through the 1930’s with the Bonnie and Clyde era. It is hard to imagine that such criminal acts occurred by people on horseback or hopping trains, but they did. Eventually the automobile plays a big part, as we saw with Bonnie and Clyde. Douglas County has always had a reputation for lawlessness and violence. This was clearly seen during the 1870’s …show more content…
I would not have finished reading his book had it not been about places that I have traveled to and names of people I am familiar with. It is confusing and choppy. Sometimes it had to be read more than once to make sure I was following his thoughts correctly. This does bring to light the story of Wilber Underhill, “The Tri-State Terror”. He started out with small crimes in Joplin Missouri, but later became involved in numerous robberies and killings in a three state area. He was greatly feared by people in Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. His criminal career ended in a gun battle with the FBI in Shawnee Oklahoma. Wilber Underhill was the first criminal ever killed by the newly formed federal agency. By 1933, at the age of 32, he was at the top of America’s most wanted list. Very little was known about him until reading this
Peltier allegedly was in a shootout with two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler were trying to find a wanted man in the area in connection to assault and robbery. A man named Jimmy Eagle was the suspect and he was said to have a red pick up truck. The undercover agents had spotted the truck and called in that there was firing from the truck. Although there were many Native Americans involved in the shooting only 3 men were taken in and had to go through a trial. The two other men besides Peltier were let go on account of self-defense. Peltier was later arrested because a woman named Myrtle Poor Bear claimed she was in a relationship with Leonard and saw him shoot and kill both detectives. Later in court, Myrtle denied the claims and said the FBI threatened her into saying those things. All sorts of recanting and reclaiming words began. An FBI agent said that the agents were following a red and white van, not the pick up truck he first mentioned. Three teenage Native Americans said the FBI made them claim Peltier was the shooter. Pages upon pages of documents containing the case information were withheld in court and unable to be
In their attempts to maintain an accurate depiction of the organization, the authors do not cloud details to try and uphold any political or social agenda. They show how Mexicans felt justified in their struggle and how the Texas Rangers often misrepresented their own actions. One incident revolved around Captain William Warren Sterling of Hidalgo County. In his own memoirs, he made claims that he never shot, or even pistol-whipped a man. He wrote, “Throughout my lifetime, I have held a high regard and deep esteem for Latin Americans. Some of my best friends are members of that important segment of our citizenship” (p.270). Yet, the writers published a claim that Sterling shot and killed, among others, an innocent Mexican boy accused of
John Norman Collins committed the “Michigan Murders” as it was named by media and locals, between 1967 and 1969, during this period of time he committed eight murders of women ranging from 13 to 23 years old. The murders were committed in the “Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area of Southeastern Michigan” (Crime One). Collins “was arrested based on a tip provided by his uncle” (Ejk), who was a Michigan State Trooper. Collins was “six feet tall and weighed 224 lbs” (Mylifeofcrime), he was a student at Eastern Michigan University as were several of his victims. Collins was staying at the Leik’s home while they were on vacation, and evidence found in their home lead to his eventual arrest in “Washtenaw County, Michigan 1970” (Mylifeofcrime).
The subject of the book “The Midnight Assassin” by Skip Hollandsworth is focused on uncovering the truth behind who is truly at fault for the murders of Mollie Smith and, several other victims. The murders occurred in Austin, Texas during the 19th century. Based on the first three chapters, three prominent characters have been introduced. All three characters are currently prime suspects. At the time, Austin was a prestigious town, equipped with the finest law enforcement made first hand by god himself, the Texas Rangers. When the young yellow skinned slave Mollie Smith was murdered, terror truly struck Austin. News reporters from all over Texas came to cover the story, thus creating conspiracies about each suspect. Evaluation of each suspect and their motives to perpetrate such a gruesome murder-Walter Spencer, a hardworking slave, who had never done any harm; Tom Chalmers, the brother of the land owner where the murder took place; Lastly, Dr. Ralph Steiner, the esteemed doctor.
Long before Laredo existed, this area had some semblance of law and order. Native American bands of our region lived in accord with their own tribal laws. Chiefs oversaw maintenance of these, which were easily enforced in a society of hunter warriors. Each had individual responsibilities to the tribe. Thus it was among Carrizo, Lipan Apache, and Comanche, who roamed this stretch of the Rio Grande River that a tradition of concern for law and order, and public safety was established which serves as the bedrock for our law enforcement and public safety function today. In Laredo’s early days, the “Alcalde” was often the local militia captain. Every able-bodied man served in the militia company, ready to ride in response to any emergency. This
Because of this mastery of multiple languages I feel it has provided him an advantage on getting insight on the different cultures he has studied since knows the language. The reason I say this is due to the fact that all languages have different meanings and innuendoes built that none speakers might not pick up. One example of this in the English language is sarcasm. Also, it has always been said that little things get missed through translation, because not all languages translate verbatim with each other. For this book, he elected the help from several sources. He spent a page and a half listing out people such as Ehud Sprinzak (Israel), Zaid Abu-Amr (Hamas movement), Warden David Rardin (prison interviews), and many more to that could be listed.
On November 15, 1959, the Clutter family was found murdered in their home in Holcomb, Kansas. Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith were arrested for murdering the family of four six weeks after the crime was committed. During my research, I found that prior to the murder, Hickock and Smith were both in jail when a fellow prisoner, Floyd Wells, told Hickock about Mr. Clutter and the amount of cash he had stashed in a safe in his house. Hickock contacted Smith and convinced him to commit the robbery with him and start a new life in Mexico with the money.
As whites and blacks both went to the fields and worked on plantations, racial issues arose due to the competition of jobs. Whites were afraid that the blacks were going to take their jobs. The majority of night riding, white capping, and lynching occurred during the Reconstruction era, but many highly publicized lynchings still occurred during the Progressive period. Throughout “Nightriding and Racial Cleansing in the Arkansas Valley,” the majority of the cases of night riding involved whites harming blacks because they were scared that they were attempting to steal their job from them. The whites tried everything they could to drive the blacks out of their towns and counties so the threat of them taking their jobs would vacate. In one instance, white townspeople went to a farm and took the farmers fence and posts and would not return them until he had fired or gotten rid of all the black hired hands. The color line within the state was a huge challenge that the communities of Arkansas encountered throughout the Progressive
The story starts in Deerfield, in October of 1703 with a time of trouble. The town is in danger of being ransacked and taken over by Indians. The townspeople contemplate reinforcing their stockade but before
In regards to violent crime in Arkansas, it appears it has been steadily increasing, for the most part, since 1960. A pattern that can be noticed in the graph shows that it has increased from 1960 to 2012; it also shows that there were years where the crime rate dropped slightly,
Being an historical account it reports the events from a historian’s perspective. Although it is somewhat biased, it is from a Native American historian’s perspective, it doesn’t attempt to dramatize the history. The text is pragmatic. The stating of the facts is boring and almost tedious in places throughout the book. It contains no dialogue with the exceptions of quotes meant to give credence to an account. There are parts of the book that, to me, read like the bible book of Genesis, as it gives names and family stories in a similar fashion. An example of this can be found in chapter 7 which reads:
I feel as if he had a lot of good points but tends to also contradicts himself quite a bit. I think he is repetitive throughout the book but somehow still keeps my focus. I think that I can relate to a lot of the concepts that he tries to get across i had just never gone that in depth with the thought or idea. Throughout this book i had payed a lot of attention to the moral of the point he was trying to get across and diction.
I selected this book because I consider it to be the first chapter book I read just for the sake of reading. The length of the book was intimidating at first, but it allowed the author to describe many different places and tell a grand story. Although I enjoyed the book, I never sought out more books by the same author. The author makes good use of imagery to help readers get a sense of what these mystical characters look like and locations are in the real world so you do not have to try very hard to visualize them.
This question is honestly the most difficult to answer. The entire book was intriguing from start to finish. I would say that what I liked the most about this book is all the pictures he placed on there. He captured every image with so much meaning. It is as it’s said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I got to see the faces of the fellow heroes in Fallujah.
Behind the pen, at the end of her back yard, we walked past her rambling, smooth-skinned Crepe Myrtle, my go to reading spot. I’d lost count of how many Hardy Boys mysteries I’d read at the base of that old tree. At the back of her property, the land sloped gently down towards 1st Street, before ending at the cliff and the CSX train tracks below. The land directly behind her house was empty and in the fall and winter, the tops of the railroad cars were visible as they whizzed by, east towards Newnan or west to Carrollton.