Join us as we begin a new book group centered on true crime and its impact on society. Copies of the book will be available to check out from the Service Center 60 days before the event. This program is for adults and teens 16 and older. We will be discussing Blood & Ink : the Scandalous Jazz Age double murder that hooked America on true crime by Joe Pompeo.
Blood & Ink : the Scandalous Jazz Age double murder that hooked America on true crime by Joe Pompeo
The notorious 1922 double murder of a high-society minister and his secret mistress was a Jazz Age mega-crime that propelled tabloid news in the 20th century. On September 16, 1922, the bodies of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick, New Jersey. The killer had arranged the bodies in a pose conveying intimacy. The murder of Hall, a prominent clergyman whose wife, Frances Hall, was a proud heiress with illustrious ancestors and ties to the Johnson & Johnson dynasty, would have made headlines on its own. But when authorities identified Eleanor Mills as a choir singer from his church married to the church sexton, the story shocked locals and sent the scandal ricocheting around the country, fueling the nascent tabloid industry.