My Grandfather's Prison: A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City

James Patrick Lyons abandoned his family for a life on Kansas City’s skid row. A town drunk, he was arrested eighty times for public intoxication. On the night of his last arrest, he was taken to the city jail and held in solitary confinement. The next morning he was dead. Officials said it was natural causes—yet they could not explain his broken neck.
When Richard Serrano learned of the grandfather he had never known, the longtime journalist embarked upon a search that led him deep into t...