Explore the investigative intricacies and courtroom drama of crimes of passion, greed, and revenge in Stark County, Ohio.
Rendered in painstaking detail, accounts of high-profile killings and courtroom intrigue filled the pages of Stark County's early newspapers. The triple hanging of three teenage boys in 1880 seized the attention of the entire community. When George Saxton, notorious womanizer and President McKinley's brother-in-law, was shot dead on the front lawn of his widowed lover in 1898, the whole nation looked on. For the brutal slaying of his wife, James Cornelius became the first local prison inmate executed in the electric chair in 1906.
Using contemporary local newspaper accounts, Kim Kenney, author of
Canton's Pioneers in Flight
and coauthor of
Stark County Food
tells the story of eight Stark County murders, unfolding the grisly details while honoring the lives cut short by violence.