Spine-Chilling Murders in the Quad-Cities

Spine-Chilling Murders in the 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.

Cities covered include Davenport, Bettendorf, Muscatine, and Clinton, Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline, and Silvis, Illinois.

Stories include:

The murder of Herman Peetz by his former friend, Walter J. Hill, in Rockingham, West Davenport, Iowa.

When Anna Kilduff shot and killed her husband John at the Bar Fish and Oyster Market on Brady Street in Davenport.

The Black Hand killing of Beni Scatura on West Third Street in Davenport by Joe Campanelli.

The story of how Irene Dolph shot and killed her husband, Fritz, in Lyons, now Clinton, Iowa.

A pair of shootings in the Silvis Railroad Yards in the early 1900s. Dan Chasteen killed Special Officer Hugo Alvine, and Alfonanso Petrone fell victim to the Black Hand.

Ethel Collicott was murdered at the River-to-River Garage on Davenport's Main Street during an attempted robbery. His killer Norman O. Luce was captured nine years later in Plattsburgh, New York.

Lulu Bennett whacked her neighbor Mary Mason over the head and killed her over a racial slur.

Manuel Rocha killed his friend Harry Carey with an ax on Brown Street in Davenport.

Rudolph Brandenburg's stepfather Claus Muenter was a mean drunk who constantly abused Brandenburg's mother. One day Brandenburg snapped, and unloaded seven rounds from his Colt Automatic into Muenter, then turned the gun around and beat his head with the butt of his revolver.

Maria Mota and her lover, Antonio Silva, murdered her common-law husband, Pedro Medjia in the boxcar settlement outside of Walcott, Iowa, so they could run away and get married.<

Fred Smith shot and almost killed Davenport Policeman Henry Janssen on a routine burglary call. After he was caught, Smith said he didn't want to be taken in with a gun in his pocket.

Maurice Meyer killed Rose Gendler and tossed her warm body over the Rock River bridge in Moline, Illinois three days before Christmas in 1932. He said she took a fall on the ice and he disposed of the body rather than face questioning. The coroner said she didn't die until her body hit the ice below the bridge.

Read them now, if you dare!