The Girls of Murder City: Fame, lust and
the beautiful killers who inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry. HV6517.P475 2010.
In 1924, with Prohibition
the law of the land, booze in Chicago was more prevalent than ever. Speakeasies, illegal gin joints and jazz
clubs were everywhere, well supplied by Dion O’Banion, Johnny Torrio and Johnny’s
lieutenant, Al Capone. It was also a
time when women journalists were hired for the Sunday articles—home and
fashion—and the men did the hard news.
But Maurine Watkins, a
preacher’s daughter from Indiana was determined to make it as a newswoman; she
started at the Tribune covering
homicides. Chicago, after all, was rich
with murder, even before the gang wars, and nothing was more peculiar than the
tendency of women in the Second City to get drunk and shoot their boyfriends;
nothing, that is, except the other peculiar fact that all-male jurors seemed to
find an attractive young woman accused of murder “Not guilty.”
For
Maurine, with her religious morals, this was unconscionable. Two beauties, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner
were both coming to trial, both of them guilty as hell. Maurine tried to become the voice of justice
and morals for the city, all the while swimming against the tides of sexism and
sensationalism.
But eventually, she
would get a hit Broadway play out of it.
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