Crime of Magnitude: The Murder of Little Annie

In his first book, Lemberger, a former computer salesman, re-investigates the highly publicized 1911 death in Madison, Wis., of seven-year-old Annie Lemberger, who, had she lived, would have been his aunt. Lemberger writes deftly, relying mainly on newspaper sources as he recreates the case. Annie was apparently abducted from her bedroom in the Lemberger home in Madison's immigrant ghetto, and her body was found three days later. Police arrested an ex-convict neighbor, John Johnson, who confessed to the crime but later retracted his guilty plea. In 1921 Johnson's Progressive lawyer Ole Stolen produced a witness who claimed Annie's mother and brother had implicated Annie's father, Martin. Since the statute of limitations for manslaughter had expired, Lemberger was not prosecuted, and Johnson's sentence was commuted. The author argues that Johnson's claims of being railroaded into his confession were hollow, and shows that an error in the surprise witness's chronology--an error that vindicates Martin Lemberger--can be blamed on Stolen. The author's assertion that Stolen was being blackmailed by the witness is speculation and leads to a lengthy digression in this otherwise interesting account. Photos not seen by PW. (June)