Overview
Ugly Prey tells the riveting story of poor Italian immigrant Sabella Nitti, the first woman ever sentenced to hang in Chicago, in 1923, for the alleged murder of her husband. Journalist Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi leads readers through the case, showing how, with no evidence and no witnesses, Nitti was the target of an obsessed deputy sheriff and the victim of a faulty legal system. She was also—to the men who convicted her and reporters fixated on her—ugly. For that unforgiveable crime, the media painted her as a hideous, dirty, and unpredictable immigrant, almost an animal. Featuring two other fascinating women—the ambitious and ruthless journalist who helped demonize Sabella through her reports and the brilliant, beautiful, 23-year-old lawyer who helped humanize her with a jailhouse makeover—Ugly Prey is not just a page-turning courtroom drama but also a thought-provoking look at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and class within the American justice system.
Reviews
“Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi’s riveting and creepy tale of violence, betrayal, and injustice is an uncomfortable yet all-too-familiar story of anxious Americans’ willingness to believe that illiterate, poor immigrants can be guilty of a crime because of who they were, not what they did.” —Kate Clifford Larson, author of The Assassin’s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln
“An elegantly researched and beautifully written example of investigative journalism. Sabella Nitti’s story is a cracking-good mystery. It’s a monument to Jazz-era misogyny, true crime, women’s rights, immigrant prejudice, and the brutal inequities in the system of jurisprudence in 1920s Chicago.”
—Jeffrey Gusfield, author of Deadly Valentines: The Story of Capone’s Henchman “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn and Louise Rolfe, His Blonde Alibi
"Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi has told a long-neglected story that needed telling—a story about class, fear of the Other, and justice denied. Her rigorous history is shocking and moving. It has a lot to tell us about both who we were then and who we are today." —Douglas Perry, author of The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers Who Inspired Chicago
"The author’s inclusion of contemporary sensational Chicago trials helps readers place the importance of the case. VERDICT For lovers of historical true crime." —Library Journal
“Lucchesi’s writing is lean and vivid as she recreates Nitti’s trial as well as the legal and social issues it put in the spotlight.”—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
Author Biography
Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi has contributed to the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Baltimore Sun, Detroit Free Press, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, and Crain’s Chicago Business. She has taught courses in media history, media criticism, and journalism and is a frequent guest lecturer in graduate and undergraduate media courses. She is also a regular presenter at conferences in the topics of communication history and journalism studies. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois.
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