What do you think?
Rate this book
The Brown's Chicken Massacre
On the night of January 8, 1993, seven helpless employees of a Brown's Chicken & Pasta restaurant in Illinois were herded into coolers and systematically assassinated with a .38-caliber revolver.
After carefully erasing all the evidence, two assailants fled with $1,800 in cash. The savagery of the crime stunned and haunted the quiet town of Palatine. Embroiled in notoriety and controversy, multiple lawsuits, false suspects, and dead-end leads, the slayings would go unsolved for nearly a decade. But the "perfect crime" was tripped up by damning evidence the killers never even knew they left behind. In 1999, a breakthrough in the forensic science of DNA testing finally gave authorities the key to unlocking the mystery behind one of the worst mass murders in Illinois history.
After carefully erasing all the evidence, two assailants fled with $1,800 in cash. The savagery of the crime stunned and haunted the quiet town of Palatine. Embroiled in notoriety and controversy, multiple lawsuits, false suspects, and dead-end leads, the slayings would go unsolved for nearly a decade. But the "perfect crime" was tripped up by damning evidence the killers never even knew they left behind. In 1999, a breakthrough in the forensic science of DNA testing finally gave authorities the key to unlocking the mystery behind one of the worst mass murders in Illinois history.
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 2003
88 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 28, 2015
This book gives great detail and insight to a story that everybody in Chicagoland knows, the massacre of January 8, 1993 at a Brown's Chicken restaurant. Seven people were brutally murdered by being shot execution style or being stabbed, and the bodies were thrown in the walk-in cooler and freezer. It tells of the pain, the sorrow, and the investigation. The secrets were held for nine years until finally they were brought to light and two evil men were arrested. This book does an amazing job of bringing us into those nine years and explaining the whole story.
While this is a very hard topic to research since it was long ago and not much has been made available, Maurice Possley does an incredible job. He brings details to life that readers could have never known. His extensive research is obvious and it makes the book all that more informative. Although, Possley didn't really explain the lives of the murders and who they really are. It is understandable to leave as much out as possible about those two monsters but it may have been good context for understanding the motive, which there doesn't seem to be much of anyway. Possley could have talked less about the legal process and the law and focused more on the national impact of this crime. It would have showed that those seven murders were not in vain and that they changed how America's fast food restaurants run today.
Overall, I really loved reading this book. I could not put it down through the entire read. The research was incredible and Possley's ability to bring the story to life rather than just a report on the crime was very impressive. I would recommend this book to anybody who has heard about this crime and wonders what really went on that cold January night and the nine years of perseverance that followed. Since I grew up just a mile away from the site, this book helped greatly to clarify the horror story I grew up hearing about that forever changed the city I love.
While this is a very hard topic to research since it was long ago and not much has been made available, Maurice Possley does an incredible job. He brings details to life that readers could have never known. His extensive research is obvious and it makes the book all that more informative. Although, Possley didn't really explain the lives of the murders and who they really are. It is understandable to leave as much out as possible about those two monsters but it may have been good context for understanding the motive, which there doesn't seem to be much of anyway. Possley could have talked less about the legal process and the law and focused more on the national impact of this crime. It would have showed that those seven murders were not in vain and that they changed how America's fast food restaurants run today.
Overall, I really loved reading this book. I could not put it down through the entire read. The research was incredible and Possley's ability to bring the story to life rather than just a report on the crime was very impressive. I would recommend this book to anybody who has heard about this crime and wonders what really went on that cold January night and the nine years of perseverance that followed. Since I grew up just a mile away from the site, this book helped greatly to clarify the horror story I grew up hearing about that forever changed the city I love.
May 3, 2019
A quick read, but it felt padded to me. I felt most of the story could have just as easily been covered in a longform article. Not that there was anything wrong with the book. A real tragedy for the victims and family. Solved, as it seems to be in so many cases, by someone finally coming forward with information that lead to the killers. I think the investigators did the best they could.
May 6, 2022
Maurice Possley discusses the shockingly, true story of the massacre of the staff of a Brown's Chicken in Illinois, as they closed down the store one night in January of 1983. It took 10 years and the advances in DNA testing before they could solve the case. Well researched and written.
May 20, 2010
The problem with The Brown's Chicken Massacre is a simple - but critical - one: it lacks a determined focus.
The story itself is a tragedy, a look into the extreme cruelties man is capable of inflicting upon others, for no reason other than to "do something big" (as one of the two accused men had stated shortly after killing the seven employees in Palatine, Illinois Brown's Chicken franchise back in 1993). It also portrays the nine-year suffering undergone by the surviving relatives and loved ones after at least two sources close to the murderers refused to come forward with their knowledge, although they had known of the information for close to a decade.
The book delves into (all too briefly) the lives of those killed. The picture-perfect portrayals of the men and woman murdered does no service to those who never knew them (as human as they were, this book serves only to gloss over their noted traits, almost deifying them, and thereby making them attain a standard by which the rest of the world cannot honestly relate). The bulk of the text looks into the aftermath of the tragedy from a local historical standpoint, with irrelevent details about other cases, people, and hstory thrown in for filler.
This is not to say that the book did not need to be written, for a tragedy of this magnitude ought not to be forgotten, or left as a brief piece on yellowed newsprint. But the subject matter - in fact, the people involved - did deserve a more thorough treatment by the author.
Perhaps the real problem arises from the fact that the killers were, at time of press, not seen at trial (in fact, only in recent months have the murderers been sentenced by a judge, while this book saw release in 2003). Or perhaps the extensive time delay between the incident and the arrests proved to allow for too much passage of such detail.
Though not a badly-written book, per se, it does suffer the same short-fallings of a large number of other true-crime books, which is that of extraneous material not relevant to the the case, and the lack of proper point-of-view, either that of an outsider, of law enforcement, or family member / loved one. The overwhelming sense is one of exploitation, although it is clear that the author's intent was far from such base interest.
Maurice Possley is a good writer. It is unfortunate that this book is not amongst the best of his written materials.
The story itself is a tragedy, a look into the extreme cruelties man is capable of inflicting upon others, for no reason other than to "do something big" (as one of the two accused men had stated shortly after killing the seven employees in Palatine, Illinois Brown's Chicken franchise back in 1993). It also portrays the nine-year suffering undergone by the surviving relatives and loved ones after at least two sources close to the murderers refused to come forward with their knowledge, although they had known of the information for close to a decade.
The book delves into (all too briefly) the lives of those killed. The picture-perfect portrayals of the men and woman murdered does no service to those who never knew them (as human as they were, this book serves only to gloss over their noted traits, almost deifying them, and thereby making them attain a standard by which the rest of the world cannot honestly relate). The bulk of the text looks into the aftermath of the tragedy from a local historical standpoint, with irrelevent details about other cases, people, and hstory thrown in for filler.
This is not to say that the book did not need to be written, for a tragedy of this magnitude ought not to be forgotten, or left as a brief piece on yellowed newsprint. But the subject matter - in fact, the people involved - did deserve a more thorough treatment by the author.
Perhaps the real problem arises from the fact that the killers were, at time of press, not seen at trial (in fact, only in recent months have the murderers been sentenced by a judge, while this book saw release in 2003). Or perhaps the extensive time delay between the incident and the arrests proved to allow for too much passage of such detail.
Though not a badly-written book, per se, it does suffer the same short-fallings of a large number of other true-crime books, which is that of extraneous material not relevant to the the case, and the lack of proper point-of-view, either that of an outsider, of law enforcement, or family member / loved one. The overwhelming sense is one of exploitation, although it is clear that the author's intent was far from such base interest.
Maurice Possley is a good writer. It is unfortunate that this book is not amongst the best of his written materials.
December 1, 2013
Not a bad book. Unfortunately it chronicles a kind of case that has happened all too often at fast food restaurants across the U.S. I disagree that it was written as exploitation, and I think the book--and the case it chronicles--contain valuable lessons as to how to make fast food restaurants less of a target for this type of violence. Tragically, the giants of the industry often don't pay attention.
March 28, 2020
An engrossing book about robbery and murder at a fast-food restaurant near Chicago; it held my interest despite the fact that the crimes went unsolved until the eleventh hour. I re-read this book after finishing MURDER AT McDONALDS by Phonse Jessome, a similar case in Canada that was wrapped up much more quickly.
June 9, 2010
I vaugely remember this happening; I was too young to follow the story on the news. This takes you from the crime to the punishment, years later.
March 21, 2018
Crackling crime read about families who await their family members arrival at home, when they do not arrive they go to the store where the police tell them to GO HOME. Eventually it is discover that there has been a shooting. This follows the family members and police over YEARS in efforts to figure out what all happened, insightful. RIP. B/W images.
October 5, 2018
This book is missing a conclusion. What happened to the court cases against the the two killers? Fine to end with a focus on the victims, but there is nothing about how the case ended. It's basically half a book. The case investigation overview was good, but it just stops when they catch the two suspects. Thanks wikipedia for info on the conclusion.
February 16, 2021
Not a bad book by any means, but it spent far more time on the police screwups than they did on the victims.
I was hoping for more info on the families and the aftermath, not 1/2 the book about procedural mistakes and police infighting.
I was hoping for more info on the families and the aftermath, not 1/2 the book about procedural mistakes and police infighting.
August 10, 2021
RIP victims ;( Taken too soon.
June 25, 2007
This book seemed like it was written based on the barest of information, and then that tiny bit of information was stretched for about 120 pages longer than it should have been. This whole book could have been condensed into one US Weekly story.
September 12, 2016
Not great.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews