Dennis Whitehead
Series of murders in mid-1960s enveloped Cincinnati, Ohio in fear, triggering racial hostilities
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Dennis Whitehead is a longtime journalist who's written the narrative nonfiction true crime book, The Cincinnati Strangler; Murder, Mayhem, and Racial Injustice in the Queen City.
In the mid-1960s, older women across Cincinnati, Ohio were being strangled and sexually assaulted, but police were left without clues to the killer, or killers.
Based upon anecdotal sightings, police settle on the theory the killer is one man, a Black man, and proceed to randomly round-up men of color without cause. The entire police force was given free rein to stop suspicious persons and, if they don’t give the right answers, bring them in. Officers had the full support of the department, backing them “one-thousand percent.”
After police got their man and he was convicted, sentenced to die in the electric chair, public suspicions about the fairness of the trial, particularly in the Black community, led to violence in the long hot summer of 1967.
Whitehead researched thousands of pages of police investigation files, court transcripts, and prison records, along with contemporary accounts, to bring the story of The Cincinnati Strangler to light.