MI BAD: Robbers, Cutthroats & Thieves in Michigan’s Past & Present

Train robberies, stage-coach holdups, posses, breakouts and shoot-em-ups step out of the darker pages of Michigan’s past and spring to life in Tom Carr’s MI Bad: Robbers, Cutthroats & Thieves in Michigan’s Past & Present.

The Great Lakes State has seen more than its share of sensational crimes in the last couple of centuries. MI Bad shines a searchlight on several of the most jaw-dropping capers and rogues, including:

• A couple of 1880s prostitution procurers roll drunken lumberjacks for their wages in a whorehouse and bury bodies in shallow graves. The two die drunk and destitute in a freezing shack.

• Baby Face Nelson gets his big-time career start — with an actual baby — in a bank holdup in Depression-era Grand Haven.

• A 1970s, cinema-esque escape from Jackson State Prison that falls apart quickly once outside the razor wire.

• Train-robbing brothers who get away with fortunes all over the Midwest, until one of them puts a bullet in the head of a well-liked Grand Rapids cop.

• A 1960s cop and a 2010s fifth-grade teacher break bad.

• Huge posses of armed Michiganders rush out to help — and sometimes hinder — a bank stickup.

• A 19th Century U.P. boomtown finally has enough of a brothel owner who beats the women he holds captive.

• Plus many more blood-and-money tales of Wolverine-state intrigue, suspense or just plain awfulness.

MI Bad is author Tom Carr’s follow-up to his successful, Michigan historical true crime debut, Blood on the Mitten: Infamous Michigan Murders, 1700s-Present, also published by Mission Point Press/ Chandler Lake Books.