BUTCHER'S DOZEN

A direct, documentary approach for the retelling of six criminal cases which have been told as ""stories"" rather than as ""studies in criminology"", and have been selected for their unfamiliarity as well as their interest in character, milieu and motivation. These are those of Chicago's Bookie Gang which ended up by fighting the Syndicate as well as the police; of Clara Belle Penn who was strangled in Houston, Texas; of Cleveland's unsolved mass murder mystery (the title story); of the Shelton Boys, three brothers who operated for twenty years in Illinois as masters of the frame, the fix, the double-cross; of Milt Babich, who loved Kathleen Birmingham but murdered her younger sister; and of Murl Daniels, a chronic delinquent who became a national headline desperado. An efficient, experienced handling which subdues none of the details which may offend, allows little interpretative interference, these accounts are authenticated for the true crime fancier.