Ever wonder what evil lurks in your hometown? Spine-Chilling Murders in the Northeast takes you behind the scenes of some old-time killings in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and more.

Joseph Elwell, the Whist Wizard of Manhattan, was shot to death in his home overnight on June 11, 1920. Roy Harris, an aspiring novelist, confessed to the crime, but it soon turned out to be nothing more than a publicity stunt to help sell his new book.

Louise Lawson led a double life. The folks back home in Walnut Springs, Texas, knew her as a shy young girl aspiring to a big-time musical career. Her friends in New York knew her as a Broadway Butterfly, one of those kept girls who lived in a fancy apartment. When she was found dead in 1918, it turned out she was the victim of a gang that targeted the working girls of New York.

Marie Williams (aka Boots) was the prettiest girl ever arrested in West Virginia. She told police that she, and her boyfriend, Peter Treadwell, were in the room when Henry Pierce was murdered, but they did not have anything to do with the crime. The police wanted to believe her, but...

When 19-year-old Avis Linnell turned up dead at the Y. M. C. A. in Boston, suspicion quickly fell on her fiance, Reverend Clarence V. T. Richeson. The Boston Globe said Richeson had a "soft" and "musical" voice, almost too much for a girl to resist. It didn't help the reverend any that he was carrying on with Avis, while he announced his upcoming marriage to wealthy Boston socialite, Violet Edmands.

Pretty Josephine Amore killed her neighbor and lover Michael Martelle in Newark, New Jersey, in August 1908. Martelle kissed her and threatened to harm her family unless she ran away with him. "I got me a great big gun," said Josephine, "and killed him." Detectives didn't believe her for a minute. They were convinced her husband, Carmine Amore, was the killer, but could never quite pin the killing on him.