Melina Druga

Heinous Melina Druga

What do a bubbly six year old, a Christian Scientist and a farmhouse boarder have in common? They were all brutally murdered by a person that society least expected.

In Heinous: Forgotten Murders From the 1910s, you'll travel back to a violent decade - a time when "idiots and morons" were police departments' first suspects, when journalists had the opportunity to conduct interrogations and when forensics was in its infancy. It also was a decade when crime of all varieties was surging, and experts blamed everything from immigration to lax parenting.

If you're fascinated by true crime history, you'll enjoy these 17 tales of murder and mysterious deaths. The people you'll meet include Hans Schmidt, a priest who believed his crime was divinely inspired; Russell Pethrick, a 22-year-old grocery delivery boy who was caught based on a new technology - fingerprint analysis; Thomas Fitzgerald, a pedophile who enjoyed showing little girls "pretty" pictures of dead people; and Nathan Swartz, a murder suspect whose family experienced intense shame after he went on the lam.

Heinous: Forgotten Murders From the 1910s also includes a bonus case: What Happened to Dorothy Arnold? The socialite's baffling disappearance made headlines for decades and remains unsolved to this day.

These stories made headlines more than a century ago and provide insight into how the media covered sensational crimes.