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Back on DelmarvaLife to Talk Delaware Behaving Badly
8/19/2026 9:11:00 AM
by Dave Tabler
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| I returned to WBOC's DelmarvaLife in Salisbury on August 17 to talk about Delaware Behaving Badly: First State True Crimes. The conversation ranged from 17th century witchcraft prosecutions to a Lewes pediatrician arrested in 2009. |
I was back in studio T at WBOC in Salisbury this week, talking with the DelmarvaLife hosts about Delaware Behaving Badly: First State True Crimes.
They opened by asking why true crime has such a hold on people. My answer is that it could happen to anyone. The stories in this book are not about unusual people. How often do you hear somebody say they can't believe so and so did that, they seemed like such a good neighbor. It is all around us.
I covered the breadth and length of Delaware in this book, all 14 inches of it. There are rural stories out of Sussex County and stories with a heavy urban feel from Wilmington. When I first handed the manuscript to my editor, she called it a Whitman sampler. A little bit of everything. Murder, kidnapping, bigamy, embezzlement.
We talked about Dr. Earl Bradley, the Lewes pediatrician arrested for abusing more than 100 children, some as young as three. The state eventually bulldozed the building he practiced in. Nearly everyone I interviewed had a connection to that case. We also went back to the 1600s, where the book opens with witchcraft. We think of Salem, but witchcraft prosecutions happened here too, with less ferocity because the Puritans were not here to drive them. Delaware had Quakers and Mennonites instead. Even so, witchcraft laws stayed on the Delaware books until 1953.
The host asked what I hope readers take away. I did not write these stories to be salacious. I want people to get a feel for how crime fits into the context of history. What did a crime of the century change? Did it change laws? Did it change how people behave? Ordinary crime happens every day and most of it is not worth commenting on. The cases I want to look at are the ones that moved society.
Delaware Behaving Badly is available online and at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth, Huxley & Hiro in Wilmington, and Books-A-Million in Dover.
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Web Site:
Dave Tabler
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The Book of Pilar Grace
by Mary Lynn Plaisance
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 An eye-opening look into the world of human trafficking. Pilar thought she was destined to die until she met Becky. A fairy tale ending to this story with the help of Tess is called Justice. It was time for someone to hit back because the courts in S |
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