Courtroom trials are the most entertaining of American spectacles. Joining fastidious research with masterful story-telling, author Dan Brabender presents tales of captivating murders and the fascinating personalities involved, told only the way a judge can tell them. Erie's Sensational Murder Trials is a collection of accounts of nine distinctive homicides that shocked the city with their gruesome violence and spell-binding trials. It is left to the reader to decide whether these cases would stand the scrutiny of today's statutes, case law, rules of court and social mores.

The author, Dan Brabender, is a graduate of the University of Dayton and the University of Dayton School of Law. After a general practice of law spanning over 31 years, he was elected Erie (PA) County Court of Common Pleas judge in 2009, and remains in that position to the present. Judge Brabender has written and published several local best sellers, including RAMBLERS! The History of Cathedral Prep Football (2000); That Championship Season: The Story of the 2000 Cathedral Prep Ramblers (2001); The Cathedral Prep Basketball Chronicles (2018); and Sports Heroes of the Erie School District: 125 Profiles (2019). This is his first attempt at authoring a book outside the athletic arena.