Wicked Decatur

In 1854, Decatur was nicknamed Hell’s Half Acre. ? By the 1910s and 1920s, the town was referred to as the Second Most Corrupt City in Illinois, ? gaining notoriety as a place where murder, bootlegging, prostitution, kidnapping, gambling and political corruption were common. Members of the Decatur police force, like Troy Taylor’s great-grandfather, were hard-pressed to bar the door against crime in a town that seemed determined to remain wide-open. Wicked Decatur presents a rogue’s gallery of those who have slipped through the cracks of legality over the past century and a half.