A Death in Canaan - A Classic Case of Good and Evil in a Small New England Town

Joan Barthel

Summary

A “riveting” true crime classic: The trial of Connecticut teen Peter Reilly, accused of killing his mother, and the community that defended him (People). In the sleepy hamlet of Canaan, Connecticut, Barbara Gibbons stood out. She and her eighteen-year-old son, Peter Reilly, lived in a drab one-bedroom house on a desolate stretch of road. An intelligent, lively woman with a wicked sense of humor, Barbara also had dark moods and drank too much. She fought loudly with neighbors and her son, and appeared to have a messy, complicated love life. When Peter came home from the Teen Center one night to discover his mother lying naked on the bedroom floor with her throat slashed, the police made him their prime suspect. After eight hours of interrogation and a polygraph test, Peter confessed. Investigators were convinced they had an open-and-shut case, but the townspeople disagreed. They couldn’t believe that the naïve teenager was capable of such a gruesome crime, and blamed detectives for taking advantage of the boy’s trust. With the help of celebrities including Mike Nichols and William Styron, who contributes an eloquent and persuasive introduction to Joan Barthel’s account of the case, the community of Canaan rallied to Peter’s defense. A gripping murder mystery and an intimate portrait of the loyalties, resentments, and secrets lurking beneath the placid surface of quiet towns across America, A Death in Canaan is a masterpiece of “first-class journalism” (The New York Times).

Available since: 01/19/2016.

Print length: 351 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Summary of Bill O'Reilly &...

Falcon Press

Buy now to get the key takeaways from Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard’s Killing The Mob. 
  
Sample Key Takeaways: 
1) In 1924, John Edgar Hoover, a law school graduate, possessed an exceptional work ethic that led President Calvin Coolidge to put him in charge of America’s first national law enforcement agency, the Bureau of Investigation, BOI. 
2) The BOI was known for being a corrupt agency, which led Congress to limit its powers. Its agents were not allowed to carry weapons and had to call either the US Marshals or the local police when it came to taking a suspect into custody.

Show book

Nemesis - One Man and the Battle...

Misha Glenny

Nemesis is the story of an ordinary man who became the king of the largest slum in Rio, the head of a drug cartel, and perhaps Brazil's most wanted criminal. It's a gripping tale of gold-hunters and evangelical pastors, bent police and rich-kid addicts, quixotic politicians and drug lords with math degrees. Traversing through rain forests and high-security prisons, filthy slums and glittering shopping malls, this is also the story of how change came to Brazil. Of a country's journey into the global spotlight, and the battle for the beautiful but damned city of Rio, as it struggles to break free from a tangled web of corruption, violence, drugs, and poverty.

Show book

21st Precinct The - The Red...

Stanley Niss

Cop shows have been a staple of the media almost from the beginning. These fictional accounts created the easy to understand formula of ‘’diabolical crime plus brilliant detective equals the sometimes not-so-obvious solution’’. 
 
But in the early years of the 1950s something radically different came along. 
 
21st precinct was a very dramatic police drama and based on the workings of a true life Police Department, described in the programme as ‘’just lines on a map of the city of New York, most of the 173,000 people wedged into the nine-tenths of a square mile between 5th Ave and the East River wouldn't know if you ask them they lived or worked in the 21st. Whether they know it or not, the security of their persons, their homes, and their property is the job of the men of the 21st.’’ 
 
From the opening phone call the listener is right in the middle of the drama. Privy to the actual workings from start to conclusion. 
 
The 21st’s manpower was made up of 160 patrolmen, eleven sergeants, and four lieutenants, under the command of one captain - Frank Kennelly, played by Everett Sloane, who was also the show’s narrator.  
 
He’s about to take that call….

Show book

The Butcher Embezzler and the...

Gretchen Cherington

Three powerful men converge on the banks of the Red Cedar River in the early 1900s in southern Minnesota—George Albert Hormel, founder of what will become the $10 billion food conglomerate Hormel Foods; Alpha LaRue Eberhart, the author's paternal grandfather and Hormel's executive vice president and corporate secretary; and Ransome Josiah Thomson, Hormel's comptroller. Over ten years, Thomson will embezzle $1.2 million from the company's coffers, nearly bringing the company to its knees.The Butcher, The Embezzler, and The Fall Guy opens in 1922 as George Hormel calls Eberhart into his office and demands his resignation. Hailed as the true leader of the company he'd helped Hormel build—is Eberhart complicit in the embezzlement? Far worse than losing his job and the great wealth he'd rightfully accumulated is that his beloved young wife, Lena, is dying while their three children grieve alongside. Of course, his story doesn't end there.In scale both intimate and grand, Cherington deftly weaves the histories of Hormel, Eberhart, and Thomson within the sweeping landscape of our country's early industries, along with keen observations about business leaders gleaned from her thirty-five-year career advising top company executives.

Show book

FBI's Most Wanted – Incredible...

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list arose from a conversation held in late 1949 between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, and William Kinsey Hutchinson who were discussing ways to promote capture of the FBI's "toughest guys". For sixty years, the FBI has sought the public's assistance in a special way through one of our most effective and longest running publicity programs, which, since 1950, has led to the location of more than 460 of our nation's most dangerous criminals. 
Content:
FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" Program:
The Beginnings
Today
The Program
Criteria for Placement on the List
The List
Removal from the List
How the FBI Gets Its Men and Women:  
A 20-Year Study of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" Program 1989-2009
Today's "Top Ten" List More Likely to Include Terrorist, Organized Crime Figures and Child Predators 
"Top Tenners" Cannot Hide for Long
Many Fugitives Found far from Home 
"Top Ten" Fugitives Increasingly Caught Through Publicity 
Conclusion
Project Pin Point
Project Welcome Home
America's Most Wanted
Famous Cases:
Thomas James Holden
William Raymond Nesbit
Isaie Beausoleil 
Clyde Edward Laws
James Earl Ray
Richard Lee Tingler, Jr.
Ruth Eisemann-Schier
Theodore Robert Bundy
Eric Robert Rudolph
Warren Jeffs
Service Martyrs

Show book

A Checklist for Murder - The...

Anthony Flacco

Robert Peernock appeared to have the ideal life; working as a pyrotechnics engineer and computer expert and coming home to his wife and daughter, he projected the American dream. Even when he and his wife separated, it seemed amicable, just a small bump for the well-to-do family. But there was madness in his house: in private, Peernock was violent, subtly manipulative, and bordering on psychotic. But the horrifying details of his home life would only come to light after Peernock finally lost all control.Peernock had come home, brutally beaten both his wife and daughter, force-fed them alcohol, and deliberately sent them to their deaths behind the wheel, staging it to look like a drunk driving accident. He didn't foresee that his daughter would survive, and even with years of abuse, her attempted murder, and horrendous injuries, he never anticipated that she would speak so powerfully against him. Here New York Times bestselling author Anthony Flacco chronicles the sensational trial and all the terror that preceded it, looking deep into the mind of a deranged killer whose American dream was a waking nightmare for those trapped within it.

Show book