Murder Most Criminous: The Cases of William Roughead, Father of Modern True Crime Literature

William Roughead is among the founders and one of the great popularizers of the "true crime" genre as it blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By those truly familiar with the genre, he is well-known as the father of modern true-crime writing.

Roughead called himself a "historian of homicide." He was a reporter in that he recorded the facts and evidence of a case. But he was much more. As an attorney, he understood procedures, the legal actors in a trial and their appropriate...