True Murder Mysteries Of Southwestern Pennsylvania

In the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, beyond the picturesque scenes of the Monongahela River Valley, there are long-forgotten mysteries of scandal and murder. Amid the hardship of life on the frontier of Washington County in 1795, young Isabel Stewart was found dead and her killer never identified in the oldest unsolved murder in the region. La Mano Nera (the Black Hand) gangs from Calabria, Italy, extorted and slaughtered their way into the 1920s as Sicilian-style vendettas became a common occurrence. The disappearance of local huckster Harry Lane in 1893 caused a flurry of murder conspiracies, yet all that could be found was a bloodied hat; it took another one hundred years before the mystery was solved. Local author Parker Burroughs details gruesome homicides and puzzling whodunits in Pennsylvania coal country.

"Explore the history of murder and other crimes in Washington County, Pennsylvania"--

“The book recounts a brutal string of murders committed by John Lesko and Michael Travaglia, who face the death penalty.” —TribLIVE During the winter of 1979, southwestern Pennsylvania was rocked by a series of sensational murders, sparking a thirty-year criminal justice saga. A week of brutal, seemingly random killings culminated in the provocation and fatal shooting of Patrolman Leonard Miller, an officer new to the town of Apollo’s police force and only twenty-one years old. Little more than a year later, two men were convicted of the rash of homicides and sentenced to death—yet both are alive today. Incorporating details of the central characters’ personal lives as well as the state’s court system, criminologist Michael W. Sheetz here relays the awful story of the so-called “kill for thrill” crime spree with the drama of a novelist and the insight of an officer of the law.

Abolitionists, rebels and innovators have all tracked across the pages of Washington County history. Their stories and more were chronicled by beloved local historian Harriet Branton, who introduced readers of the "Washington Observer-Reporter "to the history hidden in plain sight. In the earliest tales, European settlers clashed with the Shawanese and Delaware Indians, and fiery local lawyer" "David Bradford led the Whiskey Rebellion. With the coming of the Civil War, the people of southwestern Pennsylvania overwhelmingly united to the cause of the Union--the LeMoynes of Washington and the McKeevers of West Middletown shepherded slaves to freedom, and Washington and Jefferson College sent its alumni to the key battles of the war. Join Branton as she journeys from the rough-and-tumble frontier days of Washington County to the twentieth century ushered in by coal, oil and iron rail.

Violent bank heists, bold train robberies and hardened gangs all tear across the history of the wild west--western Pennsylvania, that is. The region played reluctant host to the likes of the infamous Biddle Boys, who escaped Allegheny County Jail by romancing the warden's wife, and the Cooley Gang, which held Fayette County in its violent grip at the close of the nineteenth century. Then there was Pennsylvania's own Bonnie and Clyde--Irene and Glenn--whose murderous misadventures earned the "trigger blonde" and her beau the electric chair in 1931. From the perilous train tracks of Erie to the gritty streets of Pittsburgh, authors Thomas White and Michael Hassett trace the dark history of the crooks, murderers and outlaws who both terrorized and fascinated the citizenry of western Pennsylvania.

Murder and mystery haunt the shadowy corners of the Victorian Era in Southwest Michigan. Decades after his supposed death in 1846, a litigious bachelor was discovered to have been buried alive. In 1865, a Battle Creek woman, yearning for her lover, used Spiritualism to conceal poisoning her three children. An 1883 unsolved quadruple homicide near Jackson caused two suicides, one attempted suicide and two assassination attempts. In 1891, a ten-year-old girl adopted from the State School in Coldwater one morning was found dead in an icy river two counties away that same afternoon. Researcher and author Michael Delaware unfurls these and other stories that shocked Michigan and the nation over a century ago.

In the summer of 1978, a mother and her four-year-old were stabbed to death in the quiet town of New Castle. Police suspected the husband, Lou Kadunce, but were unable to find either a weapon or a motive. Sitting in a Lawrence County jail in 1981, convicted serial killer Michael Atkinson accused Frank Costal--a carny, petty thief and Satanist--of having an affair with the Kadunce husband and participating in the murder. A series of intense trials ensued as Costal was convicted of the homicides and a jury found the husband not guilty. Questions surrounding the case gripped the region and grabbed headlines in the Pittsburgh Press. Author Dale Richard Perelman tells this tragic story.

Part of the Myths and Mysteries series, Myths and Mysteries of Pennsylvania explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Pennsylvania’s history. Each episode included in the book is a story unto itself, and the tone and style of the book is lively and easy to read for a general audience interested in Pennsylvania's history.