The Russian Fox and the Queen of the Memphis Underworld

In the early hours of October 9, 1916, gunfire erupted inside a Victorian home on Rayburn Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee. Mae Goodwin, a wealthy madam whose diamonds and reputation had earned her a place among the city's most notorious figures, was mortally wounded. The man accused of killing her was John Revinsky, a scar-faced criminal with a missing thumb, numerous aliases, and a remarkable talent for escaping custody. Their encounter would become a story that newspapers revisited for decades. The Russian Fox and the Queen of the Memphis Underworld follows the intersecting lives of two people who concealed much of their past behind names, stories, and carefully fashioned identities. Goodwin built a prosperous life in Memphis, operating a bordello, acquiring property, and accumulating expensive jewelry. Behind her public notoriety lay a family history far removed from the glamorous accounts that circulated in the press. Revinsky, meanwhile, became known as the "Russian Fox," a fugitive whose resourcefulness repeatedly frustrated the officers pursuing him. At the center of the book is the fatal confrontation in Goodwin's home and the sensational trial that followed. Witnesses described a masked intruder, threats at gunpoint, and shots fired behind a bedroom door. Revinsky offered his own dramatic version of events, claiming that Goodwin had fired at him and that a struggle over their weapons followed. The courtroom became a battleground of conflicting testimony, circumstantial evidence, and competing explanations of what had happened that night. But the verdict did not end the story. Jailbreaks, stolen automobiles, searches with bloodhounds, disguises, and captures far from Memphis carried Revinsky's name into headlines across the country. His repeated encounters with the law reveal both the difficulties of pursuing a fugitive in the early twentieth century and the growing importance of fingerprint identification. Alongside him stand the detectives, sheriffs, prosecutors, judges, witnesses, and reporters whose lives became entangled with the case. Drawing on contemporary newspaper coverage, courtroom testimony, and historical records, Thomas W. Thrailkill examines the people behind the sensational headlines. He traces Goodwin's family roots and the questions surrounding her estate, while following Revinsky through years of flight, imprisonment, and efforts to secure his freedom. Set against a Memphis shaped by vice, wealth, racial divisions, and political influence, this historical true-crime account explores how a killing became a lasting part of the city's memory. It is a story of reinvention and deception, determined pursuit, and the distance between what the newspapers proclaimed and what the surviving evidence can tell us.