Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I Murdered Family Members and Other Schemes -- Chapter 1 Viragos and Unnatural Mothers -- Chapter 2 The Demons Decline -- Chapter 3 Husbands and Other Family Members -- Chapter 4 Other Schemes -- PART II Jazz Journalism and the Execution Story As Drama -- Chapter 5 Excesses in 1920s Louisiana -- Chapter 6 Female Mass Murderers -- Chapter 7 Execution Stories As Serial Dramas -- PART III Race, Ethnicity, and Sexual Preference -- Chapter 8 Pre g Civil War Press and Slave Executions -- Chapter 9 Twentieth- Century Black Defendants -- Chapter 10 The Irish -- Chapter 11 Sexual Preference -- PART IV Hollywood, Female "Tough Guys," and Love Triangles -- Chapter 12 Southern California Defendants -- Chapter 13 The Female "Tough Guy" -- Chapter 14 Little Attention for "First" Executions -- Chapter 15 Love Triangles -- Chapter W6 Little Support for Changes to Execution Laws -- Chapter 17 Government Secrecy of Executions under Federal Authority -- PART V The Late 1990s and Beyond -- Chapter 18 The High- Tech Media at the End of the Twentieth Century -- Epilogue -- Works Cited -- Index.