Kansas City Star's '100 best books of 2014'...
A household massacred. A family feud. A sheriff found dead. Neighbor turned against neighbor. Reports of ghosts, curses, deathbed confessions, and legacy gold fortunes.
The never-before-told story of the 1874 Saxtown massacre that rocked a nation reeling from economic depression and shattered a small German immigrant farming community in Illinois. The murder of the Stelzriede family led investigators through forests and farmland, chasing footprints, bloody tobacco leaves, the branches of a family tree, and the marks of an ax dragged away from the scene.
Nicholas J. C. Pistor's The Ax Murders of Saxtown is a true murder-mystery that warns of the dangers of greed and jealousy and anger; a gripping tale of suspense and suspicion that exposes brand new information about the century-old crime and showcases the flaws of the nineteenth-century justice system.
Nicholas J. C. Pistor is a reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who has broken stories on some of the biggest crimes in the Midwest and has been a consultant for CBS’s 48 Hours true-crime series. He has appeared on nearly every major television news network, including NBC’s Today Show, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN’s Nancy Grace. He grew up a few miles from the Saxtown murder scene, where talk of the crime kept him awake as a boy. He currently lives in downtown St. Louis.