Nutcracker: Money, Madness, Murder: A Family Album

The New York Times–bestselling classic true-crime story of Frances Bradshaw Schreuder, the Manhattan socialite who persuaded the one assassin who couldn’t refuse her—her teenage son—to kill her multimillionaire father

In August of 1983 Shana Alexander, acclaimed journalist and chronicler of the lives and criminal trials of Jean Harris and Patty Hearst, wrote to New York City ballet patron Frances Schreuder on the eve of her murder trial. Schreuder stood accused of unlawfully causing the death of her father, Franklin Bradshaw, and of soliciting, encouraging, and aiding her prep school–student son in the homicide in the hope of financial gain. Alexander never received a response, but she flew to Salt Lake City and met with Schreuder’s mother, the matriarch of the Mormon dynasty—eighty-year-old Berenice Bradshaw.
 
Nutcracker is the true story of this crime—the twisting four-year police investigation, the derailed cover-up and conspiracy, the dramatic trials. It is also the tale of a family riven by greed and madness. Drawing on interviews with all the major players, Alexander paints a powerful portrait of a psychopathic woman driven by avarice, so depraved that she persuaded her own son to commit grand-patricide.
 
Nutcracker was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime of 1986.