Author: Douglas MacGowan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942294108
Category : Clarksburg (W. Va.)
Languages : en
Pages : 28
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Book Description
He killed his victims in an airless dungeon and buried them in a sewer. How could a quiet man carry out such sadistic murders?How many did he kill? Where are the bodies of his victims that were never found? These unanswered questions can all be posed about the infamous killer Harry Powers of Clarksburg, West Virginia, who went to the gallows in 1932, still insisting his innocence of a series of murders that shocked the city, the state, and the nation.The fairy tale "Bluebeard" details an evil nobleman who marries a string of women and then kills them. It is probably French in origin and was first written down in a 1697 collection of fables and fairy tales collected by Charles Perrault. The term "Bluebeard" today is generally used for any killer who has killed a succession of fiancées and/or wives.The gruesome story inside was used for the inspiration to the classic book and movie, Night of the Hunter.
Author: Jayne Anne Phillips
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448190843
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 467
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Book Description
A Story of Love, Murder and Obsession Chicago, 1931. Asta Eicher, a lonely widow with three children, is thrilled when Harry Powers asks her to marry him, and agrees to travel with him to West Virginia. She and her children are never seen alive again. Emily Thornhill, one of the few women in the Chicago press, is sent to cover their disappearance. Obsessed with trying to find out what happened to the family, her investigations lead deeper into the case, uncovering the terrifying truth behind the tragedy. ‘Extraordinary’ Observer ‘Brilliant’ Sunday Times
Author: Vance McLaughlin Phd
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615480121
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
In the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter, greedy self-ordained minister, Reverend Harry Powell, portrayed by Robert Mitchum, kills women and terrorizes children. The hackneyed expression that truth is stranger than fiction, in this case, is not hyperbole. On a small farm in Quiet Dell, eight miles southeast of Clarksburg, West Virginia, two middle-aged women and three children were starved and murdered in the summer of 1931. The five bodies recovered were only intended to be a beginning. Others were scheduled for the abattoir. Meet Harry Powers, also known as Bluebeard, Mail Order Romeo/Don Juan, Slaughterhouse Harry, Human Tarantula, and Love Racketeer, one of the most enigmatic and until now, unstudied, sociopaths of the 20th century.
Author: Davis Grubb
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101910062
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
The bestselling, National Book Award–finalist novel that inspired Charles Laughton’s expressionist horror classic starring Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters. Two young children, Pearl and John Harper, are being raised alone by their mother in Cresap’s Landing, Ohio. Their father Ben has just been executed for killing two men in the course of an armed robbery. Ben never told anyone where he hid the ten thousand dollars he stole; not his widow Willa, not his lawyer, nor his cell-mate Henry “Preacher” Powell. But Preacher, with his long history of charming his way into widows’ hearts and lives, has an inkling that Ben's money could be within his reach. As soon as he is free, Preacher makes his way up the river to visit the Harper family where—he hopes—a little child shall lead him to the fortune that he seeks. Foreword by JULIA KELLER
Author: Ruth Ann Musick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 9780813101361
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
" West Virginia boasts an unusually rich heritage of ghost tales. Originally West Virginians told these hundred stories not for idle amusement but to report supernatural experiences that defied ordinary human explanation. From jealous rivals and ghostly children to murdered kinsmen and omens of death, these tales reflect the inner lives—the hopes, beliefs, and fears—of a people. Like all folklore, these tales reveal much of the history of the region: its isolation and violence, the passions and bloodshed of the Civil War era, the hardships of miners and railroad laborers, and the lingering vitality of Old World traditions.
Author: Douglas MacGowan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942294085
Category : Missing children
Languages : en
Pages : 27
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Book Description
One Christmas Eve in 1945, the Sodder family goes to sleep, the kids dreaming of Santa. By morning, their house is in ashes and five young children have vanished. Cursory policing, planted "evidence", Italian politics, and small town crime all play into the picture. The FBI was called in, but no records remain of their investigation. This is a story that has fueled speculation well beyond Fayetteville, West Virginia for decades. Coincidences, highly unusual unexplainable events, and peculiar behavior are present at every turn in this true-life tragedy. Read about nationwide when it happened, and investigated and reported on in West Virginia all the way up till the 1970s, this is a story you will never forget. This is indeed a most unbelievable yet true story; and the title of the 1970 report on the subject called The Saddest Christmas Story Ever Told still rings true.
Author: Harold Schechter
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345472004
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
THE DEFINITIVE DOSSIER ON HISTORY’S MOST HEINOUS! Hollywood’s make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can’t hold a candle to real life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon. Rigorously researched and packed with the most terrifying, up-to-date information, this innovative and highly compelling compendium covers every aspect of multiple murderers–from psychology to cinema, fetishism to fan clubs, “trophies” to trading cards. Discover: WHO THEY ARE: Those featured include Ed Gein, the homicidal mama’s boy who inspired fiction’s most famous Psycho, Norman Bates; Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, sex-crazed killer cousins better known as the Hillside Stranglers; and the Beanes, a fifteenth-century cave-dwelling clan with an insatiable appetite for human flesh HOW THEY KILL: They shoot, stab, and strangle. Butcher, bludgeon, and burn. Drown, dismember, and devour . . . and other methods of massacre too many and monstrous to mention here. WHY THEY DO IT: For pleasure and for profit. For celebrity and for “companionship.” For the devil and for dinner. For the thrill of it, for the hell of it, and because “such men are monsters, who live . . . beyond the frontiers of madness.” PLUS: in-depth case studies, classic killers’ nicknames, definitions of every kind of deviance and derangement, and much, much more. For more than one hundred profiles of lethal loners and killer couples, Bluebeards and black widows, cannibals and copycats– this is an indispensable, spine-tingling, eye-popping investigation into the dark hearts and mad minds of that twisted breed of human whose crimes are the most frightening . . . and fascinating.
Author: Ivan M. Tribe
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813187370
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
Jamboree! To many country music fans the word conjures up memories of Saturday nights around the family radio listening to live broadcasts from that haven of hillbilly music, West Virginia. From 1926 through the 1950s, as Ivan Tribe shows in his lively history, country music radio programming made the Mountain State a mecca for country singers and instrumentalists from all over America. Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, Little Jimmy Dickens, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Red Sovine, Blaine Smith, Curly Ray Cline, Grandpa Jones, Cowboy Loye, Rex and Eleanor Parker, Lee Moore, Buddy Starcher, Doc and Chickie Williams, and Molly O'Day were among the many who came to prominence via West Virginia radio. Wheeling's "WWVA jamboree," first broadcast in 1933, attracted a wide audience, especially after 1942, when the station increased its power. The show's success spawned numerous competitors, as new stations all over West Virginia followed WWVA's lead in headlining country music. The state also played an important role in the early recording industry. The Tweedy Brothers, Frank Hutchison, Roy Harvey, Blind Alfred Reed, Frank Welling and John McGhee, Cap and Andy, and the Kessinger Brothers were among West Virginians whose waxings contributed to the state's reputation for fine native musicianship. So too did those who sought out and recorded the Mountaineer folksong heritage. As Nashville's dominance has grown since the 1960s, West Virginia's leadership in country music has lessened. Young performers must now seek fame outside their native state. But, as Ivan Tribe demonstrates, the state's numerous outdoor festivals continue to keep alive the heritage of country music's "mountain mama."
Author: Casie Hermansson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 9781604732313
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A study of the ever-evolving fairy tale about the murderous aristocrat and his endangered wife
Author: George Steiner
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300017106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
The author presents a penetrating analysis of the collapse of Western culture during the last half of the twentieth century
