Ruthie Shelton and Jon Musgrave to hit Olney and Mt. Carmel
MARION – Ruthie Shelton and Jon Musgrave will sign copies of their books Friday, Dec. 12, 2014, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Olney Public Library and from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Wabash County Museum in Mount Carmel as part of the downtown Christmas activities.
Shelton, a granddaughter of one of the infamous Shelton Brothers and Musgrave, a Southern Illinois historian and author published their book “Inside the Shelton Gang: One Daughter’s Discovery,” early last year which tells the story of her family’s decades-long crime wave and their eventual exile out of the state.
Now, she has a new novel as well, appropriately titled, “The Untold Story,” inspired by her family’s past as well as some second-generation Shelton stories still too hot to be detailed with names in a non-fiction book.
Musgrave’s new book is a new edition of the Civil War classic, “A Boy of Battle Ford,” by W. S. Blackman for which he edited and wrote a new introduction. The book tells of Blackman’s experiences growing up in Southern Illinois in the years before the Civil War, and the young man’s struggles both on the battlefield as well as with issues of faith and God. The 2014 reprint comes 150 years after his wartime salvation.
With both books still hot off the press coming out just last month the two authors have been busy with signings and interviews. This Saturday they will appear on “The Spiel” which airs at 11 a.m. on KBSI Fox 23, and online at www.spielon.com. Last month Musgrave also appeared nationwide on the Investigation Discovery channel’s hit show “Deadly Women” on their “Hidden Rage” episode which covered the love-sick murders connected with Flora’s own Elsie Malinsky back in the 1920s.
Shelton’s father, “Little Carl” Shelton, was one of the nephews in his uncles’ gang during the 1940s and remained in the family business in later years.
As a girl and young woman Ruthie grew up not knowing anything of her father’s past and only learned of it about 11 years ago when her father suffered a bad reaction to anesthesia and started reliving the violent days of his youth.
“Inside the Shelton Gang,” not only tells of her own journey of discovery into learning her family’s secrets, but a more complete history of the gang and the subsequent attacks on her family than has ever been told. Some of it comes from an insider’s standpoint, and other parts from new research into what really happened.
The Shelton brothers started in crime before World War I in St. Louis, but it wasn’t until they moved to Williamson County and joined with other bootleggers and anti‐Klansman did their war with the Ku Klux Klan racked up headlines across the country.
They subsequently joined an even more deadly fight with former ally turned foe in the form of Charlie Birger and his gang which also rivaled for control of the Egyptian Coal Belt of the 1920s. By the 1930s the gang moved their headquarters to the St. Louis MetroEast region and controlled gambling everywhere in Illinois outside of Chicago and its immediate environs.
Although initially at peace, if not outright partnership with Al Capone and his gang, by the 1940s Capone’s Chicago Syndicate began making in‐roads downstate due to the defection of a couple of former key Shelton gangsters such as Frank “Buster” Wortman, Monroe “Blackie” Armes and Wayne County’s own “Black Charlie” Harris.
A series of deadly ambushes in the late 1940s and early 1950s left three of the Shelton brothers dead and wounded a fourth brother, a sister and brother‐in‐law, as well as a nephew. The family found themselves exiled to Florida where Ruthie was born a decade after the last Shelton assassination.
In addition to the new 256-page paperback, Musgrave will also have his other Southern Illinois books available for purchase, including his previous Prohibition Era works, “Secrets of the Herrin Gangs,” which deals with the Sheltons, Charlie Birger and the Klan Wars, as well as his posters of the Birger Gang at Shady Rest in 1926.
His other titles available include “The Bloody Vendetta of Southern Illinois” about the Klan and family feuds of the 1870s – sort of the prequel to Bloody Williamson, “Lincoln,” a collection of anecdotes told by the president during his first term in the Civil War, and the “Handbook of Old Gallatin County,” covering the 19th and early 20th Century history of the first county in southeastern Illinois.
Just before Halloween Musgrave’s publishing arm, IllinoisHistory.com, published Bruce Cline’s new book, “History, Mystery and Hauntings of Southern Illinois” which he will have as well. Cline is the founder of the Little Egypt Ghost Society and the book covers the group’s investigations into the region’s haunted places, history and folklore.
Musgrave will also have the books of James T. Carrier, a 94-year-old retired educator from West Frankfort, who’s unable to do book signings anymore.
His books includes “Killer Tornado,” personal reports from the 1925 Tri-State Tornado; “Killer Mine Disaster,” about the Christmastime mine explosion at West Frankfort in 1951; “A Little Bit of Heaven and a Whole Lot of Hell,” a story of a coal mining settlement during the Great Depression; “Them Good Old Wild Greens,” about hard times in the 18 Patch mining camp; and “Wilderness Survival,” how sons of coal miners survived the Great Depression and kept from starving.
More information about the books as well as ordering, can be found online at IllinoisHistory.com. The Olney library is located at 400 W. Main St. and the Wabash Area Museum at 320 N. Market St. in Mt. Carmel.
Since her late father’s revelations Shelton splits her time between her home in Florida and her newly-discovered home country in south central Illinois. Musgrave writes and serves as a Realtor in his hometown of Marion, Illinois