Train robberies, stage-coach holdups, posses, breakouts and shoot-em-ups step out of the darker pages of Michigan's past and spring to life in Tom Carr's MI Bad: Robbers, Cutthroats and Thieves in Michigan's Past and Present.
The Great Lakes State has seen more than its share of sensational crimes in the last couple of centuries. MI Bad shines a searchlight on several of the most jaw-dropping capers and rogues, including:
- A couple of 1880s prostitution procurers who roll drunken lumberjacks for their wages in a whorehouse and bury bodies in shallow graves. The two die drunk and destitute in a freezing shack.
- Baby Face Nelson gets his big-time career start -- with an actual baby -- in a bank holdup in Depression-era Grand Haven.
- A 1970s, cinema-esque escape from Jackson State Prison that falls apart quickly once outside the razor wire.
- Train robbing brothers who get away with fortunes all over the Midwest, until one of them puts a bullet in the head of a well-liked Grand Rapids cop.
- A 1960s cop and a 2010s fifth-grade teacher break bad.
- Huge posses of armed Michiganders rush out to help -- and sometimes hinder -- a bank stickup.
- A 19th Century U.P. boomtown finally has enough of a brothel owner beating the women he holds captive.
- Plus many more blood-and-money tales of Wolverine-state intrigue, suspense or just plain awfulness.
MI Bad is author Tom Carr's follow-up to his successful, Michigan historical true crime debut, Blood on the Mitten: Infamous Michigan Murders, 1700s-Present, also published by Mission Point Press/Chandler Lake Books.
