Midwest Mystery Conference

In 1992, a store clerk was found shot to death in broad daylight at the Boot Village in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing was stolen and there was no sexual assault. This bizarre and seemingly isolated murder was quickly connected with others in Indianapolis, Wichita, Terre Haute, and Raytown. The media dubbed the suspect “The I-70 Serial Killer.” He has never been captured, and the story quickly fell out of the media’s attention. But the cases never went cold for the officers in those cities.

In 2021, with the advancements in DNA, St. Charles Police Captain Raymond Floyd launched a task force, bringing all jurisdictions together along with federal agencies to take one final crack at solving the crimes. The task force selected Bob Cyphers of KMOV-TV to follow them along, city by city, in the hunt for the killer. Cyphers and his KMOV crew produced a seven-part award winning series called “Chasing the I-70 Serial Killer.” Their work led to national exposure of the case in People magazine and on the Discovery Channel, winning an Edward R. Murrow Award and being nominated for an Emmy.

Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer follows on the work done by the task force with the important goal of keeping the story alive in the public eye. New evidence, never before available to the public, is revealed here, with the hopes of triggering a memory or revealing a new lead. The task force may be closed, but the drive to find this killer is alive and well.

Anyone who may have information about the case should contact the I-70 hotline at 1-800-800-3510.

The stench of death hung in the air as John Altar studied the massacre and tried to convince himself that his younger brother, Bobby, couldn’t have been part of this. Torn apart by the Civil War, the two brothers had fought on opposite sides, and in defeat, Bobby had fallen in with a group of Confederate raiders when released from a prisoner of war camp. Their mother’s wish was for her wayward son to be brought back to her, and Altar has sworn to do it. But how much had the war changed his brother? Riding into the Dakotas, Altar must face an unsavory lawman with a rapacious posse, rampaging Indians, and finally battle the brutal renegades in a climactic showdown.

Charlotte Wilson is an investigative journalist reporting on a global pandemic that seems to have no identifiable cause. When she is contacted by the COO of a multinational biotech company claiming he has the answer to what’s making people sick, Charlotte and her producer Nick start dreaming of Pulitzers and national syndication.

 But as she begins to uncover the truth, Charlotte discovers she is at the center of a conspiracy that is 12 years in the making, one that touches every part of her professional and personal life. Millions of lives depend on her breaking the news, but the story is so big, will anyone believe it? Charlotte may not live long enough to find out.

 Steven Booth’s The Orchard is many things – an intriguing mystery, an intense suspense tale, a terrifyingly plausible bio-thriller – but overall it’s just plain great. Pick it up at your own risk. You’ll be in its grip from the first page to the last…and thinking about it long after you put it down.

—Steve Hockensmith, author the Holmes on the Range mysteries and The White Magic Five and Dime

25 Frozen, 1 Thawed (Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest) takes readers deep into the heart of unsolved and unforgettable crimes from America’s Midwest—cases as haunting as the winter nights they were born from. Through meticulous research and vivid storytelling, veteran journalist Bob Cyphers unravels the chilling details behind murders, disappearances, and mysteries that refused to fade with time.

From the quiet streets of St. Louis to small towns where everyone knows everyone—and no one will talk—these true accounts lay bare the human stories behind the headlines. A young mother gunned down steps from her home, her life cut short by a killer who may have been closer than anyone guessed. A teenager snatched from a bike ride and never seen again, her absence still echoing through her community decades later. A journalist-in-training whose promising future ended in a shallow creek, leaving two suspects and questions that still divide a town. And a sorority sister found beaten on her own front lawn just before Christmas break, in a case that still unsettles a college campus.

Blending compassion for the victims with a reporter’s drive for facts, Frozen doesn’t just revisit the evidence—it brings readers into the emotional center of each story. These are not distant, cold cases; they are stories of lives interrupted, families searching for truth, and communities forever changed.

California: Surf, Sand & Murder traces the darker side of the Golden State through a series of real cold cases, each rooted in a different town and each carrying the weight of lives cut short. From the still-unsolved Black Dahlia case in Los Angeles to the haunting disappear-ance and death of Elaine Davis near Santa Cruz, the book follows stories that are grim, hu-man, and hard to forget. It also revisits the murder of Dorothy Scott in Anaheim, a case made even more chilling by the phone calls that came after she vanished, and the heart-breaking death of young Kathy Harlan in North Highlands. 

What gives this book its force is not shock alone, but sorrow. Again and again, the stories return to families left waiting, searching, and grieving for answers that never fully came. Some cases are famous, while others belong to people who were nearly lost to time. To-gether, they form a portrait of fear, loss, and the long shadow violence casts over ordinary lives. Rather than turning these crimes into spectacle, the book keeps its focus on the vic-tims and the quiet hope that memory, evidence, or time might still bring justice.

In the vast reaches of the Indian Territory, danger rarely stays buried for long. After weeks on the trail, Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves finds himself drawn into a new and growing threat that spreads across the frontier like wildfire. A violent prison break unleashes three desperate men—killers with nothing left to lose. Led by a former Confederate colonel with fierce ambitions and old grudges, the fugitives head west with a reckless plan that could ignite trouble across the Territory.

As rumors travel faster than riders, Reeves and the Lighthorse lawmen begin to piece together the trail of violence left behind. Each clue reveals a larger scheme—one involving stolen gold, rising unrest, and talk of stirring old loyalties back to life. With every mile, the stakes grow heavier, and the line between justice and vengeance becomes harder to see.

Across trading posts, settlements, and lonely stretches of open land, alliances shift and tempers flare. Settlers whisper of uprisings. Merchants close their doors early. And the name of the escaped colonel begins to echo like a storm rolling in from the horizon.

Set against a land where memory is long and justice rides hard, this new chapter in the Legends of the West series follows Bass Reeves as he tracks a danger that threatens far more than one town or one badge. It marks a turning point in a struggle shaping the future of the frontier—one forged in grit, shadows, and the relentless pursuit of what is right.