True Murder Mysteries of Southwestern Pennsylvania

True Murder Mysteries of Southwestern Pennsylvania
Author: A. Parker Burroughs
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467145912

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.

True Murder Mysteries of Southwestern Pennsylvania

True Murder Mysteries of Southwestern Pennsylvania
Author: A. Parker Burroughs
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2020-10-05
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1439671435

Historical true crime stories from the southwestern corner of the Keystone State, reaching as far back as 1795. 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.

Gangs and Outlaws of Western Pennsylvania

Gangs and Outlaws of Western Pennsylvania
Author: Thomas White
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2012-07-24
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1614236097

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.

Kill for Thrill

Kill for Thrill
Author: Michael Sheetz
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

This is the horrifying tale of the random crime spree that shocked residents of southwestern Pennsylvania in 1979. 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.

Washington County Murder & Mayhem

Washington County Murder & Mayhem
Author: A Parker Burroughs
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2014-07-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1625849311

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.

Born to Lose

Born to Lose
Author: James G. Hollock
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Criminals
ISBN: 9781606350973

The story of Stanley Barton Hoss, a small-time Pittsburgh hoodlum who became one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

Hell's Wasteland

Hell's Wasteland
Author: James Jessen Badal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 9781606351536

Did the Mad Butcher of Cleveland also strike in Pennsylvania? From 1934 to 1938, Cleveland, Ohio, was racked by a classic battle between good and evil. On one side was the city's safety director, Eliot Ness. On the other was a nameless phantom dubbed the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run," who littered the inner city with the remains of decapitated and dismembered corpses. Never caught or even officially identified, the Butcher simply faded into history, leaving behind a frightening legend that both haunts and fascinates Cleveland to this day. In 2001 the Kent State University Press published James Jessen Badal's In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland's Torso Murders, the first serious, book-length treatment of this dark chapter in true crime history. Though Murder Has No Tongue: The Lost Victim of Cleveland's Mad Butcher--a detailed study of the arrest and mysterious death of Frank Dolezal, the only man ever charged in the killings--followed in 2010. Now Badal concludes his examination of the horrific cycle of murder-dismemberments with Hell's Wasteland: The Pennsylvania Torso Murders. During the mid-1920s, a vast, swampy area just across the Ohio border near New Castle, Pennsylvania, revealed a series of decapitated and otherwise mutilated bodies. In 1940 railroad workers found the rotting remains of three naked and decapitated bodies in a string of derelict boxcars awaiting destruction in Pennsylvania's Stowe Township. Were all of these terrible murders the work of Cleveland's Mad Butcher? Many in Ohio and Pennsylvania law enforcement thought they were, and that assumption led to a massive, well-coordinated two-state investigation. In Hell's Wasteland, Badal explores that nagging question in depth for the first time. Relying on police reports, unpublished memoirs, and the surviving autopsy protocols--as well as contemporary newspaper coverage-- Badal provides a detailed examination of the murder-dismemberments and weighs the evidence that potentially links them to the Cleveland carnage. Hell's Wasteland is the last piece in the gigantic torso murder puzzle that spanned three decades, covered two states, and involved law enforcement from as many as five different cities.

The WVU Coed Murders

The WVU Coed Murders
Author: Geoffrey C. Fuller
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439673969

Some said that the killer couldn't be a local. Others claimed that he was the wealthy son of a prominent Morgantown family. Whispers spread that Mared and Karen were sacrificed by a satanic cult or had been victims of a madman poised to strike again. Then the handwritten letters began to arrive: "You will locate the bodies of the girls covered over with brush--look carefully. The animals are now on the move." Investigators didn't find too few suspects--they had far too many. There was the campus janitor with a fur fetish, the "harmless" deliveryman who beat a woman nearly to death, the nursing home orderly with the bloody broomstick and the bouncer with the "girlish" laugh who threatened to cut off people's heads. Local authors Geoffrey C. Fuller and S. James McLaughlin tell the complete story of the murders for the first time.

Forgotten Tales of Pittsburgh

Forgotten Tales of Pittsburgh
Author: Thomas White
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2010-11-09
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1614235406

Such was the wisdom of the Pittsburgh Daily Gazette and Advertiser in 1866 when describing a railway boss's threat to decapitate a former employee. Pittsburgh has many such stories of strange but mostly true events. Local author Thomas White delves into these lost tales, from Lewis and Clark's inauspicious start involving an intoxicated boat builder to the death ray of inventor Nikola Tesla. A 1907 lion attack at Luna Park, death by spontaneous combustion, Jack the Ripper's rumored visit to the city and an umpire who was rescued from an angry crowd by Pirates players are all part of the forgotten history of the Steel City.

New Castle’s Kadunce Murders: Mystery and the Devil in Northwest Pennsylvania

New Castle’s Kadunce Murders: Mystery and the Devil in Northwest Pennsylvania
Author: Dale Richard Perelman
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467144029

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.