Gruesome Quad-Cities: Murder, Madness, and the Macabre Along the Mississippi

Gruesome Quad-Cities is a collection of true-life stories - most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this book have ever made it into print. Except maybe in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph.

Included inside:

Albert Kling threatened to kill his wife and behead his seven children if she did not prostitute herself to support him. After he beat her nearly to death, Mrs. Kling told authorities, she loved him "more than life."

Edwin Cochran asked Davenport barber John Hassam for a job. When Hassam laughed at him, he returned with a Savage Automatic revolver and unloaded five shots into the barber.

Henry Bastian murdered nine people on his Milan Murder Farm rather than pay them. He escaped justice by hanging himself, just as the final murder was discovered.

Almost 2,000 men died at the Rock Island Military Prison during its two short years of existence during the Civil War. Life was no easier for the guards. Over fifty members of the 108th Colored Infantry died during their short tenure on the Island.

When Allie Dool died after eating some poisoned chocolates at her workplace, Felix's Store, in Aledo, Illinois, suspicion quickly fell on her best friend, Marie Antoinette Dunlap. The newspapers quickly spread the word that Marie killed her friend to get her $4.00 a week job at Felix's Store. Was it true?

The death of Officer Theodore Gerischer, while patrolling streets during the Muscatine Button Workers Strike moved the confrontation between police and strikers up a notch. "The police took no chances after the cowardly murder of one of their members," wrote The Davenport Democrat, "and sailed in right and left, leaving many a cracked head and sore body in their wake."

Of course, there's more, but you get the idea. Gruesome Quad-Cities covers 16 brutal murders that occurred in Davenport, Moline, Rock Island, Bettendorf, Silvis, Muscatine, and more between 1867 and 1920.

Read them now, if you dare!