Book Description

Headless Man In Topless Bar contains studies of over 700 cases of strip club related homicides. Individual chapters cover the murders of dancers, the murders of customers, organized crime related killings in the strip club business and murders of bouncers, managers and other employees. Homicides committed by strippers and other strip club employees are covered, as are killings by customers of other customers, homicides that were committed during robberies of these clubs, and killings that arise out of struggles over their control among outlaw biker gangs. Cases of attempted murders, contract murders and several strip club related mass and serial murders are also included. There are several cases of justifiable homicides, some by police, and a few strip club killings that resulted in.not guilty verdicts. Most of the cases come from the United States and Canada. This is the first and only book on the subject and it is inclusive. Every case of strip club related homicide since 1964, which the author was able to locate in newspaper files and appellate court decisions, has been included. Some of these cases are quite ftagmentary, and other cases doubtless exist that have not been discovered by the author. The reader is invited to join in further research on the subject and the Introduction contains information on how that can be done. At the end of the book are an additional one hundred or so cases, on which very little information could be discovered by the author. Interested readers are invited to look over these cases and, if they like, further investigate them, with a view toward working up full case studies. Homicide studies generally, and strip club related homicides specifically, are at the point where they need investigative and research input from intelligent and interested members of the public. One of the goals of this book is to stimulate such research. The book contains a short annotated bibliography; the dozen or so book-length case studies cited therein constitute, along with this volume, the entire body of knowledge on strip club related homicides now in existence. A sample case study ftom the Chicago Homicide Project is reprinted in an appendix, as an example of the direction in which homicides studies is now moving. Dr. Kevlin spent a number of years in the police service and holds advanced degrees in history and criminology. His interests are in the fields of vice-related homicides and in the history of commercial vice in the British Isles, North America and the British South Pacific.