The Sodder Family Tragedy

The Sodder Family Tragedy

Author: Douglas MacGowan

Publisher:

Published: 2016-02-07

Total Pages: 27

ISBN-13: 9781942294085

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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.


The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes

The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes

Author: Michael Newton

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1438119143

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Over 800 entries examine the facts, evidence, and leading theories of a variety of unsolved murders, robberies, kidnappings, serial killings, disappearances, and other crimes.


The WVU Coed Murders

The WVU Coed Murders

Author: Geoffrey C. Fuller

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2021-10-04

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1439673969

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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.


Peasant Fires

Peasant Fires

Author: Richard M. Wunderli

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9780253367259

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One night in 1476 in the small southern German town of Niklashausen, an illiterate shepherd and street musician by the name of Hans Behem had a vision of the Virgin Mary. This work sets the pieces of the story into their cultural, religious, and political context. It explores important questions about the period and about historical memory.


Bluebeard of West Virginia

Bluebeard of West Virginia

Author: Douglas MacGowan

Publisher:

Published: 2017-03-05

Total Pages: 28

ISBN-13: 9781942294108

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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.


The Restless Sleep

The Restless Sleep

Author: Stacy Horn

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2006-07-25

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1440649243

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Between 1985 and 2004 a staggering 8,894 unsolved homicides were committed in New York City. Here is the first ever inside look at the elite NYPD squad that cracks these “unsolvable” cases. In this fascinating, in-depth narrative, Stacy Horn uses her unprecedented access to the NYPD Cold Case Squad to immerse herself into four unsolved murder cases—cases going back as far as 1951—investigated by three indefatigable Cold Case detectives. Each detective uses his own contacts, informants, and resources and sifts through decades-old evidence, searching for new leads, looking for what others missed, and uncovering any possible connections. These Cold Case detectives are on a constant hunt for the needle in the haystack, and Stacy Horn puts you there every step of the way. From the grisly circumstances and desperate reconstructions of the crimes, through the endless legwork, the scientific advances that don’t always yield hoped-for answers, and the harrowing politics and tangled history of the storied NYPD, Horn depicts the drama of each case, and lays out the puzzle as seen through the eyes of the detectives. At once contemplative and energetic, The Restless Sleep is a completely addictive, fly-on-the-wall story of a subculture of crime solving, and of the people who must beat the odds to offer a final resolution for the unavenged.


At Swim, Two Boys

At Swim, Two Boys

Author: Jamie O'Neill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 607

ISBN-13: 0743222946

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Two young men, Jim, the naive, scholarly son of a Dublin shopkeeper, and Doyler, a rough working boy, struggle with issues of political, religious, and sexual identity in the year leading up to the Easter uprising of 1916.


American Hauntings

American Hauntings

Author: Troy Taylor

Publisher: Whitechapel Productions

Published: 2017-04-13

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9781892523990

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From the mediums of Spiritualism's golden age to the ghost hunters of the modern era, Taylor shines a light on the phantasms and frauds of the past, the first researchers who dared to investigate the unknown, and the stories and events that galvanized the pubic and created the paranormal field that we know today.


Murder on Staunton Road

Murder on Staunton Road

Author: Charlie Ryan

Publisher:

Published: 2020-09

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780578723624

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Murder On Staunton Road is a fast-paced narrative of a sensational unsolved homicide that captured the attention of the nation in 1953-when Juliet Staunton Clark was savagely beaten to death in her home in the haute monde neighborhood of South Hills in Charleston, West Virginia. She was the owner of the Charleston Daily Mail, the capital city's prosperous afternoon newspaper. Her murder set off a flurry of investigation under the direct supervision of Charleston's flamboyant Mayor "Jumpin" John Copenhaver. Accusations and rumors flew as the investigation swept through the town. Many charged then, and some repeat the charge today, that there was manipulation to protect prominent Charlestonians who were being questioned as possible persons of interest in the Clark murder.