A lot of people ask me when my next book is coming out. I always tell them, I’m open to suggestions but it’s hard to find a good story that meets my criteria:

1. A crime that happened in the U.S. at the turn of the century
2. It was heavily covered in the media at the time
3. It’s been forgotten now (no other books written about it)

Once I find a case, the first thing I do is look for court transcripts and other legal documentation. It’s a strange thing but ten or twelve times since I’ve been writing books, I find out the records I’m looking for were destroyed in a courthouse fire. I’ve seen this in several different states. Until very recently, all court transcripts were on paper and were usually stored somewhere inside the courthouse. So if the building went up, the records were gone forever.

The same thing happened to the 1890 national census, by the way.  A 1921 fire in the Commerce Department building destroyed almost all of the 1890 census.  Realistically, that’s probably not a problem for most people, but it’s often a pain in the neck for me!

I still don’t know how widespread the courthouse fire problem was, but I found this graphic in the Alabama State Archives that shows when and where fire destroyed courthouses in the state. A couple of the counties lost their courthouses four times!

It amazed me!