How to Murder Your Wealthy Lovers and Get Away with It: Money & Mayhem in the Gilded Age

What's a gal to do when her loaded lover is getting to be a nuisance? Why, just murder him and take all his money, of course. If you want to be fabulously single with tons of cash, just follow the lead of the beautiful and conniving Minnie Wallace Walkup Ketcham, who left a trail of broken hearts, empty wallets, and corpses.

Minnie was just 16 when she stood trial in 1885 for the wrongful death of her first husband, a successful businessman and politician almost 40 years her senior. Despite overwhelming witness testimony that the Creole beauty from New Orleans had purchased the arsenic that killed him, Minnie's own testimony brought the entire courtroom to tears. She was acquitted. Minnie returned to New Orleans with James Walkup's fortune, life insurance, Civil War pension, and all the expensive clothes she had shipped home before he even died.

Minnie still didn't have enough cash for her liking, so she successfully targeted, seduced, and murdered two more wealthy older men while evading justice in the courtroom (and escaping her lawyer's fees, too). How to Murder Your Three Lovers and Get Away with It is an extraordinary and off-the-wall true story of intrigue, scandal, and murder.

Jane Simon Ammeson is the author of 13 books including Hauntings of the Underground Railroad: Ghosts of the Midwest, Murders that Made Headlines: Crimes of Indiana, and A Jazz Age Murder in Northwest Indiana. She writes about travel, food, murders, and history for many publications, including weekly columns in the Herald Palladium and the Times of Northwest Indiana.

A James Beard Foundation judge as well as a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and Midwest Travel Journalists Association, Jane's home base is on the shores of Lake Michigan in Southwest Michigan. Follow Jane on Facebook, Twitter (@HPAmmeson and @travelfoodIN), and on her blogs, Will Travel for Food with Jane Ammeson and janeammeson.blog.