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Mrs. Cook and The klan
A torturous struggle with the bottle in the heartland, a right turn into American fascism, and a brutal, unsolved murder at the crossroad.
The murder of Myrtle Underwood Cook in a small eastern Iowa farm town took place 96 years ago and remains an unsolved mystery. Until now.
The victim, Myrtle Underwood Cook, was shot through the heart at close range on Sept. 7, 1925. She was president of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union and a leader in the county chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
Clifford Cook, the victim's estranged husband, was strongly suspected by the local sheriff and state investigators of either hiring his wife's killer or doing the job himself. The evidence suggests, however, she was murdered by a member of a Chicago gang.
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