Summary of Harold Schechter's Ripped from the Headlines!

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The book was made into a movie in 1958, and it was groundbreaking for its frankness on sexual matters at the time. It was seen as a testament to the unwritten law, which stated that a husband who found another man in bed with his wife was justified in killing him. But the law was a myth.

#2 Anatomy of a Murder is a film noir, and it is largely because of its atmospheric, black-and-white cinematography. Laura, the vixen-like beauty in the habit of dolling herself up, is an archetypal femme fatale.

#3 The book is a thinly disguised version of an actual, highly sensational case in Michigan. In July 1960, exactly one year after the movie’s release, both Voelker’s publisher and Preminger’s studio were hit with a $9 million libel suit filed by a Michigan nurse, Mrs. Hazel A. Wheeler, the widow of a man named Maurice Mike Chenoweth.

#4 In 1952, a newly married couple, the Petersons, visited the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay. Coleman, a first lieutenant in the US Army, was napping in their trailer when his wife, Charlotte, was raped by the bar's owner, Mike Chenoweth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822548015

IRB Media

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Book preview

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The book was made into a movie in 1958, and it was groundbreaking for its frankness on sexual matters at the time. It was seen as a testament to the unwritten law, which stated that a husband who found another man in bed with his wife was justified in killing him. But the law was a myth.

#2

Anatomy of a Murder is a film noir, and it is largely because of its atmospheric, black-and-white cinematography. Laura, the vixen-like beauty in the habit of dolling herself up, is an archetypal femme fatale.

#3

The book is a thinly disguised version of an actual, highly sensational case in Michigan. In July 1960, exactly one year after the movie’s release, both Voelker’s publisher and Preminger’s studio were hit with a $9 million libel suit filed by a Michigan nurse, Mrs. Hazel A. Wheeler, the widow of a man named Maurice Mike Chenoweth.

#4

In 1952, a newly married couple, the Petersons, visited the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay. Coleman, a first lieutenant in the US Army, was napping in their trailer when his wife, Charlotte, was raped by the bar's owner, Mike Chenoweth.

#5

Peterson was charged with first-degree murder and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was declared sane. He was released, and the court ordered him to undergo an examination by court-appointed psychiatrists to see if he warranted confinement in a hospital for the criminally insane.

#6

The 1950s saw the rise of a real-life legal hero who had achieved celebrity status five years earlier, during the so-called McCarthy era. This shameful episode in American history was named after Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, who rose to political prominence and power by fueling a nationwide hysteria over the supposed infiltration of every corner of American life by Communist sympathizers.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

There is a common misconception that all serial killers are men. However, this does not mean that there is no such thing as a female serial killer. Women and men commit serial murder in different ways. Female serial killers usually poison their victims, while male serial killers usually prey on strangers.

#2

In 1910, James Archer died suddenly after taking out a life insurance policy. His wife, Amy, then married her second husband, Michael W. Gilligan, a wealthy widower nearly twenty years her senior. Three months later, Mr. Gilligan died of acute indigestion. The mortality rate at the Archer Home for Elderly People had increased dramatically in the five years following Archer’s death.

#3

Amy Archer-Gilligan was sentenced to hang for the murder of Franklin Andrews. The trial took place in 1917, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after four hours of deliberation.

#4

The case of Amy Archer-Gilligan is an exception to the rule of movies being based on real-life multiple murderers. The 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace is a screen adaptation of Joseph Kesselring’s Broadway smash, which opened three years earlier and ran for over