We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,749,818.28 | Books Available: 731,082 | Members Online: 39

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Fall Guys: False Confessions and the Politics of Murder

Fall Guys False Confessions and the Politics of Murder
Author: Jim Fisher

Jim Fisher, criminal justice professor and former FBI agent, reveals how he uncovered the framing of two boys in a pair of unrelated murders committed in 1956 and 1958. — In the first of the cases, eleven-year-old Charlie Zubryd confessed that at the age of eight, he had murdered his widowed mother by driving a hatchet into her skull. The ... more »crime was committed in the basement of the modest Zubryd home in a rural section of Sewickley Township in western Pennsylvania, an area not far from Pittsburgh. Following intense police questioning, young Zubryd confessed to the crime in March 1959, a full twenty-eight months after the bloody murder of his mother.

Too young to prosecute, Charlie Zubryd was adopted after his confession and a brief stay in a mental ward. A childless couple gave Zubryd a new name and identity. It would be twenty years before Charlie Zubryd?now going by the name Chuck Duffy?would have any contact with his biological family.

When Zubryd/Duffy made an effort to get his real family back, he was rejected because his relatives still believed he had murdered his mother. In fact, until Fisher began to investigate the case in 1989, Chuck Duffy himself was not sure he had not killed his mother during some kind of mental blackout.

The second murder occurred in 1958, two years after the Zubryd case. Thirteen-year-old Jerry Pacek endured forty-one hours of police grilling before he confessed to raping and killing fifty-year-old Lillian Steveck as she walked home one evening from a bus stop in Breckenridge, Pennsylvania. Pacek told the same Allegheny County homicide detective who had framed Charlie Zubryd that he had killed the woman with a variety of blunt objects, none of which were ever found. The thirteen-year-old boy was tried and convicted of the murder the following spring. He was sent to Camp Hill Prison, where he remained incarcerated for ten years.

Fisher?s investigation cleared the names of both the wrongfully accused boys. Because of his investigation, the Zubryd case was reopened, which led to the identification of a vicious killer. In 1991, Fisher?s investigative efforts convinced the governor of Pennsylvania to grant a full pardon to Jerry Pacek, who as a teenager had served ten years in an adult prison for a murder he had not committed.

Jim Fisher and the Zubryd and Pacek stories have been featured on a number of nationally broadcast television programs.

ISBN-13: 9780809321032
ISBN-10: 0809321033
Publication Date: 12/14/1996
Pages: 304
Edition: 1st
Rating:

Currently 3/5 Stars.

3 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 2
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Politics & Social Sciences >> Crime & Criminals >> Criminology
Politics & Social Sciences >> Crime & Criminals >> Forensic Science
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Sociology >> General
Biographies & Memoirs >> True Crime >> Murder & Mayhem

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Fall Guys: False Confessions and the Politics of Murder

Loading...