Murder Has a Public Face

In his popular Strange Days, Dangerous Nights, Larry Millett delivered Weegee-style images of Midwestern noir from the photo files of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He returns in this new volume with a focus on the "dangerous" murder cases from the forties and fifties, memorialised in intimate and telling photographs. There is Arthur DeZeler, accused of bludgeoning his wife, Grace, and sinking her body in a northern lake. Laura Miller, single and pregnant, ran for help after gunshots killed her married lover. Arnold Axilrod, a mild-mannered dentist with a penchant for over-sedating his female patients, was arrested when the lifeless body of one of those patients was discovered in a Minneapolis alley. And, finally, there is Arnold Larson, the personable salesman with a winning smile and a bad temper. Millett traces these four sensational crimes from the moment the victim was found, through the search for the killer, to the court trial and resulting imprisonment or acquittal -- there are two of each. All are copiously illustrated with shots from the bulky Speed Graphic camera, which yielded rich, textured views in an era when photographers enjoyed unrestricted access to police matters ranging from found bodies to jail cells. The images dramatically evoke these crimes of passion now more than a half-century old, offering a thrilling immersion into Minnesota noir.