Ebook: Ugly prey: an innocent woman and the death sentence that scandalized jazz age Chicago

Ugly Prey tells the riveting story of poor Italian immigrant Sabella Nitti, the first woman ever sentenced to hang in Chicago, in 1923, for the alleged murder of her husband. Journalist Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi leads readers through the case, showing how, with no evidence and no witnesses, Nitti was the target of an obsessed deputy sheriff and the victim of a faulty legal system. She was also-to the men who convicted her and reporters fixated on her-ugly. For that unforgiveable crime, the media painted her as a hideous, dirty, and unpredictable immigrant, almost an animal. Featuring two other fascinating women-the ambitious and ruthless journalist who helped demonize Sabella through her reports and the brilliant, beautiful, 23-year-old lawyer who helped humanize her with a jailhouse makeover-Ugly Prey is not just a page-turning courtroom drama but also a thought-provoking look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class within the American justice system.;Front Cover -- Front Flip -- Title Page -- Half Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Key Figures -- Part I: Guilty -- 1. That Means a Hanging! -- 2. Give Them the Extreme Penalty -- 3. I'll Tell Her If I Have To -- 4. Send a Woman to the Gallows? How Could You? -- Part II: The Year Before -- 5. Gone -- 6. The Crime in Dasso's Head -- 7. The Widow's Award -- 8. We Laid Him on the Prairie -- Part III: To Shield and Protect -- 9. Unraveling the Safety Nets -- 10. You Would Have Wanted It Too -- 11. I Ought Not Tell You How to Try Your Case -- 12. You Don't Know What Burdens I Am Carrying -- 13. The White Widow -- 14. Do You Love Your Mother? -- 15. Just the Bare Skull -- 16. He Took the Body on His Back -- 17. Oh, Dough -- 18. Sabella on the Stand -- 19. Don't Think of Her as a Woman -- Part IV: Ninety-Five Days to Die -- 20. The Guilt of Others -- 21. Eighty-Nine and Ninety -- 22. The Surratt Effect -- 23. Dust of the Feet -- 24. You've Got Me -- 25. Given Under My Hand and Seal -- Part V: Passing Through the Fire -- 26. Monkey Meets a Tiger -- 27. My God! What Did They Do? -- 28. Slumming in the Police Station -- 29. Hula Lou, the Gal Who Can't Be True -- 30. A Delicate Condition -- 31. Goldfish -- 32. A Hanging Case -- Epilogue: All That Jazz -- Acknowledgments -- Chronology -- Notes -- Index -- Back Flip: About the Author -- Back Cover.