The Naked City

January 27 2025

A MATCH MADE IN HELL

The couple that slays together pays together.

We’ve dug deep into the archives today for a magazine we bought about ten years ago, back when we were writing a lot about historical crimes. We stopped because all the online newspapers we used for research got locked behind Newspapers.com’s pay interface, but we still have some crime magazines sitting around. Above you see a January 1950 cover of Uncensored Detective featuring lovers/killers Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez, who were convicted of murdering a lonely window and her toddler daughter, and ended up dying in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. Juries tend to look with particular disfavor upon child murderers, but especially when the method is to swing the kid by her feet in order to shatter her skull against a brick wall. Few mourned when Beck and Fernandez met their fate. We have about twenty-five scans from the magazine below.

Uncensored Detective, Martha Beck, Ray Fernandez, true crime magazine, murder

Vintage Pulp

December 31 2024

EL MUNDO VIOLENTO

Mexican magazine highlights creativity in crime.

First of all, we love Mexico. It’s one of our favorite countries. In fact, we’re going there in a couple of months and it would be our ninth visit. Gore oriented true crime magazines, known as notas rojas, have long held a mirror up to the country’s criminal sector. Above you see the front and rear covers of two issues of the venerable Mundo Policiaco, one from December 1969 and the other from December 1971. These are insane, as usual for this publication. One shows a doctor apparently about to transplant a goat organ into a human. Or maybe the other way around. Could be his favorite goat. On another a woman is about to be executed and dumped over a cliff. The lurid art is signed by the still-unidentified AZ, who hopefully we’ll unmask one day. In the meantime you can see more items like these by clicking the keywords Mundo Policiaco below.

Mexico, Mundo Policiaco, magazine art, true crime magazine

Vintage Pulp

October 31 2024

OUT OF HER HEAD

Crime victim loses the north of her body south of the border.

Above: the front and rear covers of Mundo Policiaco, a Mexican nota roja or true crime magazine, with bizarre art on the front of a woman murdered by a “cazador de cabezas” or headhunter, and another woman being strangled on the flipside. The issue came this month in 1971. The artist, who signed as “AZ,” is unidentified. Inside, these looked like other true crime mags of the era, with detailed articles about various current and historical crimes accompanied by black and white photos, sometimes gruesome. To see a bit more art from this magazine click its keywords below.

Mexico, Mundo Policiaco, magazine art, true crime magazine

Vintage Pulp

May 10 2024

EMERGENCY DISSERVICE

Police! Help! I only have a few moments! I've been kidnapped and they said they'll— *sigh* Yes, I can hold.

Above: a cover of the true crime magazine Crime Detective, published in 1941. These are core pulp, and they usually have extremely interesting stories. With titles like “Romantic Poetess and the Sonnet of Doom,” what’s not to like? Well, one thing. They’re usually overpriced. Vendors ask forty, sixty, even eighty dollars, while excellent crime novels are often obtainable for ten dollars or fewer. So our focus has always been on the latter. Still, this is a nice cover. It’s by Delos Palmer.

Crime Detective, Delos Palmer, magazine art, true crime magazine

Vintage Pulp

January 20 2024

CASES IN POINT

Times change but crimes stay the same.

Above: the cover and selected interior scans from an issue of Complete Detective Cases that appeared on newsstands seventy-six years ago, in January 1947. The magazine was published quarterly by Postal Publications and based in New York City and Chicago. A reading of the stories shows how little we’ve changed in that long span of time: a man is murdered and dumped in a river, cops get cruel to capture a man who killed one of their own, adultery leads to a savage killing, and a cabbie is senselessly shot in the stomach though he’s unarmed and acquiescent. The cover story deals with Sherry Borden, who authors an autobiographical tale of descent into serial robbery. The art in Complete Detective Cases is posed by professional models. You can see more examples of these sort of publications by clicking the keywords “true crime magazine” below.

New York City, Chicago, FBI, Complete Detective Cases, magazine art, true crime magazine, murder

Vintage Pulp

December 1 2021

SHE’LL TAKE MANHATTAN

Oooo... he's rich, widowed, and has a pig valve in his heart? I guess I could learn to love an older man.

Above: Carl Sturdy’s classic digest novel Confessions of a Park Avenue Playgirl, 1947, from Phoenix Press. Sturdy specialized in medical romances with efforts like Unlicensed Nurse, Test Doctor, Doctor De Luxe, Suburban Doctor, et al, but this seems to be the book most people remember. Possibly that has partly to do with the striking art. The artist is unidentified, but it felt to us like a zoom of something larger, and it reminded us of George Gross. Working on those two assumptions, it wasn’t hard to track down the source. As you see below, it came from the cover of a 1949 issue of Line-Up Detective Cases. It isn’t really a much larger piece, but it is George Gross. Add another fun effort from his lengthy résumé.

Phoenix Press, Line-Up Detective Cases, Carl Sturdy, George Gross, true crime magazine, magazine art, cover art, literature

Femmes Fatales

August 25 2021

SAINT OF STRIPTEASE

She was a higher being in the church of burlesque.

Is this Lili St. Cyr’s most beautiful photo? Maybe, but why choose? They’re all great, such as the ones we showed you here, here, and here. This shot is usually tagged with a date of 1956, but it’s actually from no later than 1952. St. Cyr certainly could have worn this eye catching bustier for multiple photo sessions, but if you look at the cover of the true crime magazine Uncensored Detective below, you’ll notice that she looks identical all the way down to the cowlick on her forehead and the curls above her ear. Her eye makeup is a little different, but that could have happened mid-shoot. The minutely identical hair leaves no doubt that both images are from the same session. The magazine is from May 1952, so we’ll go with 1952 on the shot. But really, she’s timeless.

Uncensored Detective, Lili St. Cyr, true crime magazine, burlesque

Vintage Pulp

August 1 2021

MAN OF STEAL

You're going burgling again, aren't you? Don't lie to me, buster. I always know the signs.

David Goodis’s novel The Burglar is one of our recent favorites. Above is a nice edition from Banner Books, which we gather was a British sub-imprint of Lion Books, but one that must not have been around long, since we can’t locate any mention of it except in the seller’s auction. Indeed, the vendor could simply be wrong. It happens. The art on this is uncredited. You can read our rave of the novel here.

Update: the May 1955 cover of Justice you see below is attributed to Julian Paul, so that solves the mystery of The Burglar.

Lion Books, Justice Magazine, Banner Books, The Burglar, David Goodis, Julian Paul, true crime magazine, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

June 18 2018

UNSAFE EX

*sigh* Sense of safety. Last shred of dignity. Trust in people's basic goodness. I think I lost all those tonight.

Sleazemeister general Orrie Hitt’s Ex-Virgin is the story of a gaggle of youthful characters with zero life prospects stuck on the worst street in a jerkwater town. Abysmally dumb boys and girls have sex, cheat on each other, and roll the dice on pregnancy. In the midst of all this an innocent beauty hopes to make a good life for herself. But she lets a boy sample her wares, and once that becomes known her reputation goes down the tubes, with detrimental effects. Put this in the scare-kids-out-of-having-sex category. It’s all very monotonous thanks to Hitt’s colorless writing style. The cover art on this 1959 Beacon edition, which does not depict a scene that occurs anywhere in the story, is by Fred Rodewald, and was adapted from a piece that originally appeared on a September 1949 cover of True Crime Cases.

Beacon Signal, True Crime Cases, Fred Rodewald, Orrie Hitt, cover art, literature, true crime magazine, magazine art

Hollywoodland

May 11 2018

REWARD OFFERED

Crime magazine gives readers the gifts of death and mayhem.

Produced by the J.B. Publishing Corp. of New York City, Reward was a true crime magazine, another imprint designed to slake the American public’s thirst for death and mayhem. Inside this May 1954 issue the editors offer up mafia hits, Hollywood suicides, domestic murder, plus some cheesecake to soothe readers’ frazzled nerves, and more. The cover features a posed photo of actress Lili Dawn, who was starring at the time in a film noir called Violated. It turned out to be her only film. In fact, it turned out to be the only film ever acted in by top billed co-star William Holland, as well as supporting cast members Vicki Carlson, Fred Lambert, William Mishkin, and Jason Niles. It must have been some kind of spectacularly bad movie to cut short all those careers, but we haven’t watched it. It’s available for the moment on YouTube, though, and we may just take a gander later. Because Reward is a pocket sized magazine the page scans are easily readable, so rather than comment further we’ll let you have a look yourself.

New York City, Reward True Crime Cases, Violated, Maxwell Bodenheim, Ruth Fagen, Dutch Schultz, Arthur Flegenhiemer, Frances Farmer, Thelma Todd, Vivien Leigh, Carole Landis, Ruth Snyder, Jeanne O'Connor, Xavier Cugat, Abbe Lane, Lili Dawn, mafia, true crime magazine

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

February 14

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.