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Wicked Decatur
In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed Hell's Half Acre."? By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the "Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, "? gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor's great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue's gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half."
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Wicked Decatur
In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed Hell's Half Acre."? By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the "Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, "? gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor's great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue's gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half."
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Wicked Decatur

Wicked Decatur

by Troy Taylor
Wicked Decatur
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Wicked Decatur

Wicked Decatur

by Troy Taylor

Overview

In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed Hell's Half Acre."? By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the "Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, "? gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor's great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue's gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781609491604
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date: 04/04/2011
Series: Wicked
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Troy Taylor is an occultist, supernatural historian and the author of seventy-five books on ghosts, hauntings, history, crime and the unexplained in America. He is also the founder of the American Ghost Society and the owner of the Illinois and American Hauntings Tour companies. Taylor shares a birthday with one of his favorite authors, F. Scott Fitzgerald, but instead of living in New York and Paris like Fitzgerald, Taylor grew up in Illinois. Raised on the prairies of the state, he developed an interest in things that go bump in the night"? at an early age. As a young man, he channeled that interest into developing ghost tours and writing about haunts in Chicago and Central Illinois. Troy and his wife, Haven, currently reside in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Carved Out of the Prairie: Decatur's Early Years 11

Death Rides the Rails: Murder, Crime and Decatur's Railroads 23

Law and Disorder: History of the Decatur Police Department 33

"If You Can't Find a Drink, You're Not Trying Hard Enough!": Prohibition in Decatur 41

Rolling the Bones: Gambling in Decatur 49

Decatur: Kidnapping Central 55

Decatur's Vice Districts 57

Red Lights on the Prairie: Prostitution in Decatur 77

The End of the Crime Era 83

Death by Another's Hand: A Collection of Decatur's Most Infamous Murders 89

Bibliography 123

About the Author 125

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