Watch ‘Murder & Mayhem in the Mohawk Valley’ Unfold This Week

Sordid tales of murder and crime have always scored with audiences. Of course, all the more alluring if it's close to home.

Jim Greiner, a contributing author of "Murder & Mayhem in Herkimer County," will be talking bloody murder live on Zoom, Wednesday, August 26, from 12:30 to 1:30 PM. It's a free, virtual lecture hosted by the Oneida County History Center and the Herkimer County Historical Society. There's more information on this website.

As for the book (and the topics Greiner will discuss), a description on Amazon of some of the details serves as a good appetite whetter:

Roxalana Druse murdered her abusive husband and became the last woman to be hanged in New York in 1887. The death of Grace Brown on scenic Big Moose Lake became one of the most famous cases in the country in 1906, inspiring author Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy. Psychological tests of intelligence were admitted into court for the first time in an acquittal of sixteen-year-old Jean Gianini in 1914.

Other tales in the book are titled The Black Widow of Warren, The People Versus Eleven-Year-Old John Bowman, A Rocky Marriage Ends in an Axe Blow, and Mashed to Death. The authors used accounts from The Utica O-D, The Rome Daily Sentinel, The Schenectady Gazette and other newspapers. The book was published in 2019 and is available on Amazon in hardcover, paperback or kindle.

If you can't catch the Zoom video of this special presentation on August 26th, a recording of the video is coming out September 1, 2020.