Murder on Rouse Hill
Murder on Rouse Hillcan be likened to an extended episode ofLaw and Order, bookended by eerie segments ofThe Twilight Zone. It is an intriguing read. Alan Terry Wright is a true history detective who left no leaf unturned in seeking the truth of this 1915 brutal murder in rural Missouri. --Al Wiman, former investigative reporter, KABC and KCBS, Los Angeles; He helped the LAPD break the Charles Manson cult murder case in 1969Inspired by his mother s reminiscence of a fearful childhood encounter on a country road, Alan Terry Wright brings to life a long-ago murder in another era: backwoods Missouri, in 1915.Murder on Rouse Hillis an absorbing tale of law and order and the vagaries of justice. Wright's story is a tapestry of extravagant women, shifty bankers, sturdy lawmen, frustrated lynch mobs, clever lawyers, and survival of the only eyewitness to the gruesome crime a horse! Was justice thwarted by cunning and well-connected defense attorneys, or was the impassioned prosecutor s case against Charlie Blackburn just too thin? Wright provides a wealth of detail, but readers will have to make up their own minds. --Judge Robert H. Dierker, Jr., Missouri Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit; Author of <it>The Tyranny of ToleranceMurder on Rouse Hillmakes 1915 Stoutland, Missouri, come alive with a cast of real characters from our past: the prosperous bachelor farmer who mistakenly believed that a man's word was his bond; the village's haughty and proud would-be aristocrats; the town square idler and busybody; and a roused mob ready to take justice into their own hands. Wright's feeling for the period is impeccable. This is a remarkable work of historical reconstruction . . . without the endnotes, it would hardly be possible to know where history ends and fiction begins. --Kenneth H. Winn, PhD, State Archivist of Missouri; Co-editor ofThe Dictionary of Missouri Biography