murder

KN, p. 55 “Murder During the Civil War.”

It’s Summer and for us that means road trips to nearby American battlefields to learn about our military history or to watch a reenactment. New Jersey has plenty of battlegrounds because of the Revolutionary War, but since I have more time on my hands these days, we decided to drive to rural Pennsylvania, to the area where the bloodiest battle of the Civil War was fought over 150 years ago – Gettysburg.

We discovered at the Visitor’s Center that there were over 50,000 casualties in the three days of Gettysburg, more than the entire population of our hometown in New Jersey. The records also show that of the 600,000 + who died during the four years of the Civil War, 520 were murdered. The totals are staggering, but the fact that murders were counted separately tells me that someone was trying to follow the law during the war, even though standards for justice were not the same in the 1860s as they are now.


Motives for murder have not changed: greed, love, revenge. But, what would be considered murder now, might have been accepted as ‘he had it coming,’ back then. Tons of western movies (and history books) tell us that if a man caught a thief stealing his horse in the mid 19th c., nobody would have blamed him for shooting the culprit dead in his tracks.


Keeping that in mind, after looking at a couple of pamphlets from the Visitor Center gift shop, I’m suspicious about that official Civil War murder count. I read:


*The Union and Confederacy viewed acts of war differently. The North considered Sherman’s burning of Atlanta acceptable. Southerners thought it criminal.


*Officers needed in battle, got away with killing fellow officers. Confederate Gen. Marmaduke killed Gen. Walker in an illegal duel, but only spent a few hours in jail.


*The side holding the upper hand wrote, interpreted, and enforced the law. Henry Wirz was convicted of crimes/murders committed at Andersonville, but similar offenses at a Northern prison were ignored at the end of the war.


Setting aside the appalling conditions at the P.O.W. camps that caused the deaths of thousands, the murder count is probably off.


*Source: www.civilwarhome.com

*Source: Buhk, Tobin T., “True Crime in the Civil War” Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2012.

*Photo by Patti Phillips

 

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KN, p. 176 “Is that a body in the fridge?”

 

FridgeCindy

A pal of ours recently acquired a new refrigerator. Not just any refrigerator. A back-to-basics 1950s era fridge that is smaller than today’s ‘big-bigger-monstrous’ sized appliances that need special spaces in the kitchen created for them. Today’s models even come with apps that will tell you what’s on the shelves inside while you are standing in the store. (Now I ask you, doesn’t anybody know what lists are for?) But, I digress. Cynthia St-Pierre, a multi-talented mystery writer from Canada, tells me that the fridge needs to be defrosted once a month. Yup. I told you it was a back-to-basics variety. She sent us a photo of it – nice creamy hue that blends effectively with her color scheme and the retro look that she has been working toward in her home.

On the silly side, I started seeing the fridge everywhere. We watch a lot of British mysteries on TV and suddenly, it was in every kitchen in every show that is set in the late 1940s thru the 1950s. The refrigerators have most likely been in the scenes all along, but now there was a background detail that had jumped into the foreground for us.

FridgeAquaIt got me thinking. Quite a few TV shows featuring characters that need to store a body until they can get rid of it, have freezers in the cellar. More than one show has featured refrigerators or freezers in the storyline – sometimes in room sized freezers – remember Castle & Beckett turning into popsicles before our eyes? They made it out alive, but not all unfortunate souls do. If the show is directed by a horror buff, then the discovery is all the more startling or even gruesome. We may even have show overspill – imagine opening your refrigerator (especially your freezer) after watching one of these masterpieces? I might be tempted to eat only fresh food for a while.

The concept of hiding bodies in cold household places goes all the way back to the “Green Lantern,” in episode #54, and to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” in the episode titled, “Lamb to the Slaughter.” I watched that one during a Hitchcock retrospective. Ewwwww!

It is only fair to note that not all retro freezers or refrigerators come with bodies included. Some current shows set in the 50s feature the retro fridge, but so far, no bodies have been found in them. The “Doctor Blake Mysteries” (from Australia) and the “Father Brown Mysteries” (from England) have plenty of bodies to be tripped over, but none have been found refrigerated. So far.

Just in case you don’t think this happens in real life, think again. In December, 2015, the fully clothed body of a woman was found in a refrigerator in a California garage being cleaned out after tenants had moved. The body was left inside the fridge and wheeled off by handcart to the coroner’s office.

https://ktla.com/2015/12/17/body-found-in-refrigerator-in-santa-ana-garage-investigation-underway/

Just last month (June, 2016) a woman found a body in a freezer that she had purchased in a yard sale in North Carolina. She was asked not to open it for a while because of a Sunday School project contained in it. The preliminary thinking about the seller is that the deceased was a relative and that she didn’t know what to do when the person died. It was discovered that the body was the seller’s 75 year old mother. The daughter was arrested.

https://www.cbs17.com/news/wncn-coms-most-popular-stories-of-2016/

FreezerUpright

Keeping lots of chops and roasts in your cellar freezer? Hmmmm…
Ever notice that it is the size of a coffin?  

Make sure that only a trusted few have access to it. If you happen to observe on a dark and stormy night that all the shelves have been removed and are leaning against the outside, you might need a witness standing next to you when you open the door.

😉

Just to reassure you: no bodies were discovered during the writing of this post. Honestly.

 

Photo credits

 Kelvinator photo: Cynthia St-Pierre

Freezer and the aqua refrigerator: internet photos

 

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KN, p. 162 “Fan Favorites of 2015”

 

TexasRangersMountedStatueIMG_3585

Kerrian’s Notebook readership was up again in 2015! Double wahoo!! More than ever, it seems as if readers and professional writers that follow the Notebook most enjoy learning about the nuts and bolts of crime as well as the crime fighters that take care of the bad guys.

The Top Ten favorites from 2015 are listed in reverse order. Click on the title to read that post.

Did your fave post of the year make the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

  1. “Irish Brown Bread” (p. 139)   Tasty, easy, and taste-tested by us.
  1. “Murder at the Conference” (p. 154)   Nefarious? Why, yes!
  1. “Could you be a detective?” (p. 134)   Do you have what it takes?
  1. “Could you be a sniper?” (p. 135)   It’s harder than just being a crack shot.
  1. “What does the TSA really do?” (p. 137)  It’s more than baggage handling.
  1. “Is that a body under the deck?” (p. 148)  The snakes were bummed that their own post (“About the snakes..”) didn’t make the Top Ten, but promised to keep the slithering to a minimum when they saw they had a mention in this post that did make the cut.
  1. “Who are the Texas Rangers?” (p. 144)  Many, many thanks to the Johnsons for their valuable insights, and years of service to the great State of Texas.
  1. “What does a Texas Ranger do?” (p. 145)  Soooooo much!
  1. “What poisons were in Agatha Christie’s books?” (p. 133)  Christie is a perennial favorite of mystery readers around the world and the poisons she used to dispatch many of the victims in her books were well researched.
  1. “How to Become a Texas Ranger” (p. 146) Apparently, there are either a LOT of people that are curious about the qualifications for becoming a Texas Ranger, or there will be a ton of books with Rangers as the featured characters published in the future. This post was read by more people than any other Top Ten Kerrian’s Notebook post in previous years.

 

To all the Kerrian’s Notebook readers all over the globe:

Your comments, reactions and enthusiastic participation through Facebook, Twitter, emails, and on the site itself, mean the world.

Many thanks for continuing to follow us as we travel around the country doing research, collecting odd stories and sharing weird facts about fires, EMS scenes, crime, and the people charged with helping the community when bad things happen.

 

Kerrian’s Notebook fans are the best on the planet!

 

*Photo taken by Patti Phillips at the Texas Ranger Museum in Waco, Texas.

 

 

 

 

 

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