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An Agatha Nominee for Best Non-Fiction

On a bitter November night in 1945, a widow shot her young boarder, a WWII veteran, and left him to die on the floor of his room.

Helen Clark tossed the gun under the neighbor’s porch and then took a taxi to join her teen daughters at a movie in Bristol. When the body was found, after several conflicting statements, she settled on the claim that he shot himself–four times, twice in the back. The Commonwealth of Virginia called it murder in a jealous rage. The trial enthralled the nation.

Local author Greg Lilly uses newspaper coverage of the murder, the investigation and the trial to reveal the facts of the Abingdon boardinghouse murder.

Did her rival for a man's love get away with murder? It was a story of violence, bigamy, race and a quest for justice. The strange but true story of James and Susan Watkins.

A drama played out in the mountains of southwestern Virginia in 1891 that attracted nationwide attention and held the citizens of the Roanoke Valley spellbound. The tale of the trial of Charles Watkins for the murder of his wife was marked by threats of lynching, a fugitive manhunt, a disappearing witness, mistaken identities, claims of insanity and finally a secret letter to break the case wide open. In its day, the story was as closely followed as a modern televised murder trial. Despite the rapt attention of the public then, it has entirely faded from the history books - until now. Historian John Long resurrects the truth of who killed Susan Watkins.

A Story of Hard Spirits and Defiant Souls Franklin County, Virginia has long been known as the Moonshine Capital of the World. That history can seem romantic, but the county has a dark and violent past. The descendants of the Scots-Irish who settled its rugged mountains openly defied the law and employed their own notions of justice to defend their traditions and livelihood. During Prohibition, the production of moonshine skyrocketed, but the liquor didn't stop flowing from the mountains when the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. County and state officials struggled to maintain order in a region where unsolved murders, strange disappearances, and senseless killings were a way of life. The peak came in 1978, with nine murders linked to moonshine and drugs in the county. Historian and Virginia native Phillip Andrew Gibbs tells story of that horrific year and the history behind it.

Explore the dark side of the history of the River City… Richmond has a curious share of horrific accidents, coolly calculated slaughter, and incidents of implacable deceit in its history. Here, the wronged, the devious, and the heartbroken enact their lives on the stage set of the River City's ostensibly genteel neighborhoods, where a tree-shaded city street may have been the site of a crime of passion and an innocuous path in the woods recalls a grisly unsolved murder. Discover these and other lesser-known stories, from a young bride poisoned by her husband to the horrific fate of an entire airliner. Local historian Selden Richardson explores tales from a time when murder and mayhem stalked the streets of Richmond.

Discover crimes that made headlines across northern Virginia in the 1950s and 60s.

As the suburbs of Washington, D.C. expanded in the mid-twentieth century, growth inevitably led to increasing crime, and grisly murders began to shock local communities. Learn the story of the killer and his victim who are buried only a few yards apart. The truth behind the tale of the murderous toddler and the sad story of the death of an agent at National Airport belie the picture perfect image of those decades. Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church and Prince William witnessed atrocities that grabbed headlines in their day but have since faded from collective memory. Local author Zachary Ford uses detailed research drawn from contemporary accounts to bring these stories to life.

In 1932, a black man was found hanging on Rattlesnake Mountain in Fauquier County. A mob set fire to his body. Officials identified the remains as Shedrick Thompson, wanted for the abduction and rape of a local white woman. Some claimed Thompson killed himself--the final act of a desperate fugitive. But residents knew better, calling the tragedy a lynching--the last one known in Virginia. Author Jim Hall takes an in-depth look at the events to expose a complex and disturbing chapter in Virginia history.

Fairfax County is far more than just a bedroom community for Washington, D.C. The county has been the site of crimes as shocking and fascinating as anything that happens across the Potomac. In 1898, troops from a Spanish-American War training camp looted their way across the area, even robbing a few graves. The twentieth century brought horrific murders, hysteria over a hatchet-wielding rabbit and an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. The tenacity of suffragists jailed in the Lorton Workhouse changed the very character of our nation. Later, spies crisscrossed the county, leaving our country's Cold War secrets and millions in cash stuffed under bridges. Join author Cindy Bennett as she chronicles the wicked and wild side of Fairfax County.

In 1853 Lexington, Virginia, Mary Evelyn Anderson, one of the most beautiful women in the Commonwealth, spurned the advances of a young law student named Charles Burks Christian. Humiliated and heartbroken, Christian confronted, stabbed and killed the man he believed responsible for Anderson's decision. The man was her cousin, Thomas Blackburn, a VMI cadet and student of Stonewall Jackson. What followed was a circus of inept and brilliant lawyers dragging members of the most prominent families in antebellum Virginia through and all-too-public discussion of seduction, courtship, honor and self-defense. Author and historian Daniel S. Morrow chronicles the history of the events that led to Blackburn's death, the trials that followed and the impact on Lexington, its two colleges and the men and women who would soon find themselves engaged in a great Civil War.