Jay Robert Nash

American writer (1937–2024)
the Australian footballer (born 1985)

Jay Robert Nash (November 26, 1937 – April 22, 2024) was an American author of more than 70 books on myriad aspects of true crime. Among Nash's crime anthologies are Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen and Outlaws, Look For the Woman, Bloodletters and Badmen, and The Great Pictorial History of World Crime. He has also compiled his exhaustive research of criminal behaviour into a CD ROM entitled Jay Robert Nash's True Crime Database.

Born in Indianapolis, Nash grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin and attended Marquette University. He served in the U. S. Army and then started his career working for publications in Milwaukee before coming to Chicago about 1962. Nash won Best Reference citations from the American Library Association for four of his books, including Darkest Hours. However, he said that his books are "seeded with information to detect any unauthorized use or duplication"; the precise nature of these copyright traps may include incorrect information in otherwise factual entries, or wholly fictitious entries. Sally G. Waters, writing for the Library Journal, called Nash's work "fascinating yet flawed" and recommended that it be used only for background research, verifying the information based on the sources in Nash's bibliography. In the Journal of American History, Richard Maxwell Brown also noted the "numerous errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and anomalies" in Nash's encyclopedias. In 2008, The Library of America selected Nash's story "The Turner Stompanato Affair" for inclusion in its two century retrospective of American True Crime.

Nash once filed a lawsuit against CBS for producing an episode of Simon & Simon with a plotline based around his notion that bank robber John Dillinger was not killed by the FBI in 1934 (Nash focused two separate books on his theory). His claim of copyright infringement was dismissed on summary judgment, a ruling upheld by an appeals court. The court compared Nash's writing to "speculative works representing themselves as fact" and concluded that he could not claim a copyright on his analysis of historical facts, only his expression of them. The court added that Nash should not be surprised at the result, pointing out, "His own books are largely fresh expositions of facts looked up in other people's books."

Nash lived in Wilmette, Illinois, and described himself as an "entrepreneurial businessman". Nash died of lung cancer on April 22, 2024, at the age of 86.