Ashes on the Wind
The Love Story Behind The Crime of the Century
This crime happened 100 years ago in 1924. There are many books about the crime. Brandy Purdy gets a bit more intimate about what the Leopold and Loeb crime was about and why would two young wealthy men with the world at their feet commit such a crime. With impeccable research, Brandy tells the intimate story of Leopold and Loeb on a different level than other people have done. A very important fiction book written by an author who takes her time to tell a story. She has 9 other historical fiction books of which 2 others are highlighted here.
What is the book about?
"Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were the defendants in the infamous Leopold and Loeb case. They were wealthy and highly intelligent students who committed a heinous crime in 1924. The duo kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy named Bobby Franks in Chicago, believing they could commit the perfect crime.
Their motive was to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by committing a flawless act of violence. However, their arrogance led to their eventual capture and trial.
Clarence Darrow, a renowned defense attorney, represented them during the trial, which became a significant legal spectacle. Ultimately, Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life imprisonment for their crime. Their case raised questions about criminal responsibility, punishment, and rehabilitation."
What motivated them?
"Leopold and Loeb’s motive for the crime was rooted in their misguided belief in their own intellectual superiority. They sought to prove their brilliance by committing a “perfect” murder. Unfortunately, their arrogance led to their capture and a significant legal trial"
Nathan Leopold and Richard (Babe) Loeb
575 pages
Kindle Edition
Published April 15, 2024
Ashes on the Wind
(Leopold and Loeb 1924)
As he packed up his medical bag Dr. Frankenthal shook his head glumly and muttered "You'd both be better off if you said goodbye right now."
Naturally, I ignored him. He didn't understand us, nobody did. It was all so much drunken drama, but in the cold light of morning and sobriety the fire always burned out. It was like our love endured a nightly cremation and then at dawn we watched it rise anew, reborn, a phoenix from the ashes. It truly was a beautiful thing!
Link to Interview with Brandy Purdy
The Secrets of Lizzie Borden by Brandy Purdy
(Lizzie Borden 1892)
"Was it worth it? Another scandal-ridden and society-shunned scoundrel, Oscar Wilde, said it best I think: "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." For me, yes and no are twins conjoined, most inconveniently, but perpetually; one cannot exist without the other. I can only tell you this, for whatever it is worth to you, all those old adages about money embroidered on so many samplers are absolutely true; it cannot buy happiness and it is the root of all evil."Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was an American woman who was tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892, axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was charged in the murders, and, despite ostracism from other residents, Borden spent the remainder of her life in Fall River. She died of pneumonia at the age of 66, just days before the death of her older sister, Emma.
The Borden murders and trial received widespread publicity throughout the United States and, along with Borden herself, they remain a topic in American popular culture to the present day. They have been depicted in numerous films, theatrical productions, literary works, and folk rhymes that are still very well-known in the Fall River area.
The Ripper's Wife Brandy Purdy(Jack the Ripper 1888)
"My life had turned out to be a fairy tale after all, only not one of the pretty, happily ever after stories, but the most sinister one of all--I was Bluebeard's bride, Jack the Ripper's wife. And amongst the many secrets my husband was harboring was a cachet of murdered, butchered, women, like the dead wives in Bluebeard's secret chamber. When I had opened the cover of that diary I had peeked into that secret room..."
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
It begins as a fairytale romance-a shipboard meeting in 1880 between vivacious Southern belle Florence Chandler and handsome English cotton broker James Maybrick. Courtship and a lavish wedding soon follow, and the couple settles into an affluent Liverpool suburb.
From the first, their marriage is doomed by lies. Florie, hardly the heiress her scheming mother portrayed, is treated as an outsider by fashionable English society. James's secrets are infinitely darker-he has a mistress, an arsenic addiction, and a vicious temper. But Florie has no inkling of her husband's depravity until she discovers his diary-and in it, a litany of bloody deeds...
The Rippers Wife by Brandy Purdy reimagines a story, true or not, that is for the reader to decide. Ms. Purdy takes the reader into the affluent Liverpool suburb. They meet, fall in love, then Florie finds out what a person that James is, after the discovery of the diary she is forced to come to terms that her husband may not be who she thinks she is. Another of Ms. Purdy's tales that is deeply researched and put into this very readable novel.
"Was it worth it? Another scandal-ridden and society-shunned scoundrel, Oscar Wilde, said it best I think: "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." For me, yes and no are twins conjoined, most inconveniently, but perpetually; one cannot exist without the other. I can only tell you this, for whatever it is worth to you, all those old adages about money embroidered on so many samplers are absolutely true; it cannot buy happiness and it is the root of all evil."
Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was an American woman who was tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892, axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. No one else was charged in the murders, and, despite ostracism from other residents, Borden spent the remainder of her life in Fall River. She died of pneumonia at the age of 66, just days before the death of her older sister, Emma.
The Borden murders and trial received widespread publicity throughout the United States and, along with Borden herself, they remain a topic in American popular culture to the present day. They have been depicted in numerous films, theatrical productions, literary works, and folk rhymes that are still very well-known in the Fall River area.
The Ripper's Wife Brandy Purdy
(Jack the Ripper 1888)
"My life had turned out to be a fairy tale after all, only not one of the pretty, happily ever after stories, but the most sinister one of all--I was Bluebeard's bride, Jack the Ripper's wife. And amongst the many secrets my husband was harboring was a cachet of murdered, butchered, women, like the dead wives in Bluebeard's secret chamber. When I had opened the cover of that diary I had peeked into that secret room..."
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
It begins as a fairytale romance-a shipboard meeting in 1880 between vivacious Southern belle Florence Chandler and handsome English cotton broker James Maybrick. Courtship and a lavish wedding soon follow, and the couple settles into an affluent Liverpool suburb.
From the first, their marriage is doomed by lies. Florie, hardly the heiress her scheming mother portrayed, is treated as an outsider by fashionable English society. James's secrets are infinitely darker-he has a mistress, an arsenic addiction, and a vicious temper. But Florie has no inkling of her husband's depravity until she discovers his diary-and in it, a litany of bloody deeds...
From the first, their marriage is doomed by lies. Florie, hardly the heiress her scheming mother portrayed, is treated as an outsider by fashionable English society. James's secrets are infinitely darker-he has a mistress, an arsenic addiction, and a vicious temper. But Florie has no inkling of her husband's depravity until she discovers his diary-and in it, a litany of bloody deeds...
The Rippers Wife by Brandy Purdy reimagines a story, true or not, that is for the reader to decide. Ms. Purdy takes the reader into the affluent Liverpool suburb. They meet, fall in love, then Florie finds out what a person that James is, after the discovery of the diary she is forced to come to terms that her husband may not be who she thinks she is. Another of Ms. Purdy's tales that is deeply researched and put into this very readable novel.
