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"Murder & Mayhem" in SLC Book Release - 7/26/2010
MURDER & MAYHEM IN ST. LAWRENCE COUNTY!
MASSENA—New, from the author of the Haunted Northern New York series, a book more chilling than any ghost story ever written….Murder & Mayhem in St. Lawrence County. The author’s latest effort chronicles, in horrifying detail, a hundred years of the most shocking, sensational murders in county history. From the Louisville triple ax murders in 1816 to the unsolved, bludgeoning death of Bessie White in Massena in 1917, the author takes us on a tour of murder and mayhem that will forever change the way you look at yesteryear.
You can come in now. I have killed her. Those were the actual words spoken by wife killer Frank Conroy, after he butchered his young wife in Ogdensburg as a crowd gathered outside the door. Waddington’s Maria Shay was another victim of butchery. A botched abortion by two prominent physicians led to her untimely death…and that of the twins she was carrying, one of which was placed in a weighted cigar box and tossed callously into the Oswegatchie by the doctor, as the other doctor fled the country. But guns and poison were the weapons of choice in most of these stories. Sarah Jane Gould was poisoned by arsenic, hotel owner Almon Farnsworth was poisoned by the dreaded strychnine, and Joseph Kipp was poisoned by carbolic acid. Death came much faster for Mary Van Dyke, shot by her 19-year-old husband just one week after an arranged marriage. He followed her quickly to the grave, being hastily hanged in Canton—even as doubts mounted about his guilt. Sumner Hazen had just married John Hall’s sister in 1905 when Hall gunned the newlywed down before taking his own life. His reasoning was that if he couldn’t keep his sister to himself, nobody would have her. But jealousy had nothing to do with the bloodbath at Buck Farm, where Alvah Briggs (alias Frank Driggs) took young Harriett LaDue captive and raped her. He tied her to the bed posts as he killed her entire family so they wouldn’t get in the way of his plan to take her deep into the woods near Potsdam to live happily ever after. By the time she convinced him to stop the wagon and turn himself in, five victims lay dead. The History Press said:
St. Lawrence County is known for its picturesque waters and pristine seasons. But underneath this fair façade lies a sordid past, rife with tales of killings and cunning, like the man who slashed his wife to death after instructing a constable to close the door and depart; a robbery that descended into the brutal axing of a mother and her two small children; the unsolved case of a young woman bludgeoned to death on school grounds in an upscale neighborhood; and the gruesome poisoning of one man at the hands of his son, his wife and her lover.”
Join author Cheri Farnsworth as she signs Murder & Mayhem in St. Lawrence County at Waldenbooks in the St. Lawrence Centre Mall on Saturday, August 7, from noon until 3 p.m. |
Archived News: August July 2010 |
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