The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who

THE UNTOLD TRUE STORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL KILLERS WHO DAZZLED A CITY AND INSPIRED THE ICONIC MUSICAL CHICAGOChicago, 1924. -There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of bathtub gin in the gangland capital of the world. -But a pair pf murders that spring had something special.For intrepid girl reporter Maurine Watkins, a ministers daughter from tiny Crawfordsville, Indiana, big city life offered unimagined excitement.- Newspaperwomen were supposed to write about clubs, cooking and clothes, but within weeks of starting at the Chicago Tribune, Watkins found herself embroiled in two scandalous sex-fuelled murder cases.- The first involved Belva Gaertner, the witty, sophisticated millionaire divorcee who feared returning to the poverty of her childhood.- Then there was Beulah Annan a Kentucky farm girl turned jazz baby whose wistful beauty obscured an ice-cold narcissism.- Both had gunned down their lovers under mysterious circumstances.In Chicago, Watkins learned, the all-male juries didnt convict women-especially beautiful women.- The young reporter was determined to change that.- She mocked Stylish Belva and Beautiful Beulah on the front page and made them the talk of the town.- But the public reaction was not what she expected.- Love-struck men sent flowers to the jail; newly emancipated women sent impassioned letters to the newspapers.- Soon more than a dozen murderesses preened and strutted in Cook Country Jail as they awaited trial, desperate for the same attention that wa being lavished on Watkinss favourites.- None of these women-nor the police, the reporters, or the public-could imagine the bizarre way it would all end Douglas Perry vividly captures the sensationalized circus atmosphere that gave Chicago its most famous story.- Fueled by rich period detail and a cast of characters who seemed destined for the stage.- The Girls of Murder City is crackling social history that simultaneously presents the freewheeling spirit of the Jazz Age and its sober repercussions.