While studying the array of officials who made up New Jersey’s 19th-century criminal justice system, I often pore over aging coroner’s reports, trial transcripts, and police blotters. While doing that in South Jersey, I came across an unsettling Salem County Cold Case, the murder of Abigail Dilks in 1874. From the beginning, the mystifying case…
Tag: csi
Researching Cold Cases For a Lecture on the 19th Century Criminal Justice System
I have been traveling throughout the Mid-Atlantic researching the dark underside of history, shocking murders from long ago that once stunned communities and filled newspapers with sensational headlines. From the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Atlantic Coast, these terrible crimes, many lingering as unsolved cold cases, provide a stark look at the…