Washington County Murder Mayhem

Explore the chilling history behind some of southwestern Pennsylvania's most horrifying murders. In 1907, a young girl was found dead in the Lyric Theatre, leaving behind an unwanted pregnancy and an abusive lover. On an otherwise quiet morning in 1891, a cartful of nitroglycerin exploded. The remains of the driver had to be gathered in a peck basket. The Cannonball Express lived up to its name in 1888, when an open switch caused it to shoot off the track, sending two cars flying. Local journalist A. Parker Burroughs resurrects these and other stories from southwestern Pennsylvania's shadowy past. From foul play at the Burgettstown Fair to the tragic murder of North Franklin's Thelma Young, follow the trail with Burroughs as he uncovers the crimes and intrigues of Washington County.

Rhode Island's Washington County hides a dark past riddled with macabre crimes and despicable deeds. In 1890, an argument over wages turned deadly when former hotelier George Kenyon shot and killed his carpenter on the grounds of the Gilbert Stuart House in Saunderstown. Senator Charles Burdick was shot and left for dead at his Charlestown home in 1930. Even the peaceful village of Woodville has a veritable rap sheet of thieving maids, speakeasies and murderously jealous wives. From chilling acts by the KKK to physicians practicing under the influence of narcotics, author Kelly Sullivan Pezza's collection of articles from the Chariho Times uncovers the violence and vices of Washington County.

Crime ran rampant at the turn of the twentieth century across Central Washington, from jail breaks, lethal bootleggers and assassinations in Kittitas County to shootouts and burglaries in Benton County. In Zillah, the Dymond Brothers Gang were known for stealing horses between prison stints. In Yakima, residents reeled in shock over the premeditated killing of a gambler, a riot and the discovery that a respected brewer had committed murder. Through it all, sheriffs like Jasper Day tried to keep the peace with mixed success. Author Ellen Allmendinger recounts the tales that once made this the roughest region of the Pacific Northwest.

In the states of the former Confederacy, Reconstruction amounted to a second Civil War, one that white southerners were determined to win. An important chapter in that undeclared conflict played out in northeast Texas, in the Corners region where Grayson, Fannin, Hunt, and Collin Counties converged. Part of that violence came to be called the Lee-Peacock Feud, a struggle in which Unionists led by Lewis Peacock and former Confederates led by Bob Lee sought to even old scores, as well as to set the terms of the new South, especially regarding the status of freed slaves. Until recently, the Lee-Peacock violence has been placed squarely within the Lost Cause mythology. This account sets the record straight. For Bob Lee, a Confederate veteran, the new phase of the war began when he refused to release his slaves. When Federal officials came to his farm in July to enforce emancipation, he fought back and finally fled as a fugitive. In the relatively short time left to his life, he claimed personally to have killed at least forty people--civilian and military, Unionists and freedmen. Peacock, a dedicated leader of the Unionist efforts, became his primary target and chief foe. Both men eventually died at the hands of each other's supporters. From previously untapped sources in the National Archives and other records, the authors have tracked down the details of the Corners violence and the larger issues it reflected, adding to the reinterpretation of Reconstruction history and rescuing from myth events that shaped the following century of Southern politics.

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.

The authors have combed the Mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Washington, DC, to write about and visit the graves of some of the most horrendous murders, massacres, and calamities in our nation's history. Included in the volume: Enoch Brown School MassacreMollie MaguiresLattimer MassacreHerman MudgettJohnstown FloodPhiladelphia SinnersHarry ThawBabes in the WoodsFlight 93Kelayres MassacreMary MeyerTitanicMalcolm XMary MallonNY MobTriangle Factory FireAlexander Hamilton & BurrJoe PetrosinoAnthony WayneJack JablonskiMenendez MurdersLincoln AssassinsRhoads Opera House FireGeneral Slocum Disaster

A shocking true chronicle of some of Portland, Oregon’s most infamous criminal cases—from its wild roots as a frontier town to post-war 20th century. Here are some of the most horrifying crimes that made headlines and shook Portland, Oregon. The brutal Ardenwald axe murders. The retribution killings by Chinatown tongs. The fiendish acts of the Dark Strangler. In this compelling account, author JD Chandler chronicles the coverups, false confessions, miscarriages of justice, and the investigative twists of Portland’s sordid past. From the untimely end of the Black Mackintosh Bandit to the convoluted hunt for the Milwaukie Monster, Murder & Mayhem in Portland, Oregon is a true crime account that acknowledges the officers who sought justice and remembers the victims whose lives were claimed by violence—all while providing important historical context.

Murder, Mayhem and Whitecapping is set in northwest Georgia 1894. It is the story of two men who were attacked by a group of whitecappers, men sworn by a blood oath to protect moonshiners, remove immoral people from their communities, but most of all to protect their own. The area of northwest Georgia had a membership of 800-1000 men. Henry Worley, a whitecapper himself, turns on his brotherhood, and manages to survive the hangman's noose but a week later is shot and killed by men he once called friends. A few months later, William Roper, who has been turning in moonshiners for a profit, finds himself a target as well. He is attacked in the middle of the night by whitecappers, who shoot him and leave him for dead in an abandoned copper pit. After six days, he is rescued from the pit and eventually testifies in federal court against his attackers. The federal government would eventually charge 30+ men, many of them prominent individuals in the county, with conspiracy. These two trials, as well as subsequent pleas, would eventually lead to the demise of the whitecappers in northwest Georgia. The trials would be covered extensively by The Atlanta Constitution. It along with federal court transcripts, essays on moonshining and whitecapping, and other historical references, serve as sources for this historical, nonfiction book.