The Grace Lusk Murder Case

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 21, 1917, Miss Grace Alberta Lusk, a 39-year-old public school teacher in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a few miles west of Milwaukee, shot and killed Mrs. Mary Newman Roberts, the 51-year-old wife of 52-year-old veterinarian David Roberts, Doctor of Veterinary Science, a wealthy man, and as would soon be reported, a serial adulterer in a time in America when sexual relations outside marriage were punishable crimes. While the Grace Lusk murder case understandably scandalized Waukesha and environs, Heartland America if ever there was such place, in the time of the world’s Great War the act could not compete with other daily sensations, and has essentially been forgotten. The present book recovers the event, providing a superb model of procedural crime reporting.