North Carolina

Did the phrase "That's what I was wondering…" solve a murder?

In the morning hours of July 16, 1936, Helen Clevenger's uncle discovered her bloodied body crumpled on the floor of her small room in Asheville's grand Battery Park Hotel. She had been shot through the chest. Buncombe County Sheriff Laurence Brown, up for reelection, desperately searched for the teenager's killer as the public clamored for answers. Though witnesses reported seeing a white man leave the scene, Brown's focus turned instead to the hotel's Black employees and on August 9 he arrested bell hop Martin Moore. After a frenzied four-day trial that captured the nation's attention, Moore was convicted of Helen's murder on August 22. Though Moore confessed to Sherriff Brown, doubt of his guilt lingers and many Southerners feared that justice had not, in fact, been served.

Author Anne Chesky Smith weaves together varying accounts of the murder and investigation to expose a complex and disturbing chapter in Asheville's history.

In the summer of 1967, 19 year old Brenda Joyce Holland disappeared.

A mountain girl who had come to Manteo to work on The Lost Colony, Brenda's body was found three days later, floating in the Sound. This riveting narrative, built on unique access to state investigative files and multiple interviews with insiders, searches for the truth of the unsolved murder. This island odyssey of discovery includes séances, a suicide, and a supposed shallow grave.

Journalist John Railey cuts through the myths and misdirections to finally arrive at the long-hidden truth of what happened to Brenda Holland that summer on Roanoke Island.

Explore the international headlines and the little-known crimes, the solved and the wrongly solved, in these tales of the North Carolina mountains.

Western North Carolina is known for mountain vistas and wild, rocky rivers, but remote wilderness and quaint small towns can have a dark side. Learn the truth behind the famous murder ballad Tom Dooley. Delve into the criminal history of moonshine, and the tales of two unexpected bombers in idyllic Mayberry.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist's eye to Western North Carolina's crime stories that define the sinister--and quirky--side of the mountains.

Eastern North Carolina is a land of contrasts, and its crime stories bear this out. A lovelorn war hero or a stalker? Conniving wife or consummate homemaker? Murder or suicide? The answers can be as puzzling as the questions. Mystery author Cathy Pickens details an assortment of quirky cases, including a duo of poisoning cases more than one hundred years apart, a band of folk hero swamp outlaws, sex swingers and a couple of mummies. Each story has, in its way, helped define Eastern North Carolina and its history.

North Carolina holds a special place in the history of moonshine. For more than three centuries, the illicit home-brew was a way of life.

NASCAR emerged from the illegal moonshine tradeas drivers such as Junior Johnson, accustomed to running from the law, moved to the racetrack. A host of colorful characters populated the state's bootlegging arena, like Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, known as the Paul Bunyan of moonshine, and Alvin Sawyer, considered the moonshine king of the Great Dismal Swamp. Some law enforcement played a constant cat-and-mouse game to shut down illegal stills, while some just looked the other way. Authors Frank Stephenson and Barbara Mulder reveal the gritty history of moonshine in the Tar Heel State.

A news media frenzy hurled the quiet resort community of Pinehurst into the national spotlight in 1935 when hotel magnate Ellsworth Statler's adopted daughter was discovered dead early one February morning, only weeks after her wedding day.

A politically charged coroner's inquest failed to determine a definitive cause of death, and the following civil action continued to expose sordid details of the couple's lives. More than half a century later, the story was all but forgotten when local resident Diane McLellan spied an old photograph at a yard sale and became obsessed with solving the mystery. Her enthusiastic sleuthing captured the attention of Southern Pines resident and journalist Steve Bouser, who takes readers back to those blustery winter days so long ago in the search to reveal what really happened to Elva Statler Davidson.

Down-home sayings, turns of phrase and expressions that have stood the test of time and tell the story of Eastern North Carolina word by word.

Growing up on a farm in the heart of eastern North Carolina's tobacco country, author Phil Beaman has been surrounded by country folk and their colorful language his entire life. Though these communities continue to change, the bond of their phrases, expressions, colloquialisms and just plain talk has remained within the hearts and minds of their people. Beaman chronicles this language in a humorous and fascinating collection of eastern North Carolina's most down-home sayings. Everything from the weather to drunken sayings to gobbledygook is presented straight from the horse's mouth. You may not know how to pronounce some of the words, but you will surely enjoy a trip back to the halcyon days of livin' off the land and chewin' the fat..

Explore the dark side of the South…

The South boasts a rich storytelling tradition--and a rich history of criminal behavior. From Texas to the Virginias, each place has different stories to tell. Several involve writers of the first order: Harper Lee researched true crime in Alabama and Zora Neale Hurston reported on a landmark murder trial in Florida. A serial killer leaves Louisiana to travel the country, a lonely-hearts swindler visits Texas, Arkansas witnesses a surprising spate of unrelated strychnine poisonings, a West Virginia murder is revealed in a dream, and a one-armed conjure-man commits murder-for-hire in North Carolina. Forensic science expands the crimefighters' toolkit in this tour of some of the South's true crime cases.

Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist's eye to the sinister South and its defining--and quirky--crime stories.

"A roving, shiftless fellow…" That's how the newspapers described Jesse C. Walker, who in 1908 was served with an arrest warrant by Brunswick County sheriff Jackson Stanland, with tragic results. Little did Walker know that he was about to set off on twenty-five years of headline-grabbing exploits. Two murders, two wives, three prison escapes, and thousands of miles of travel across eight states are only the surface of the adventures of this North Carolina desperado. Local author Mark W. Koenig relates the untold saga of a man who rocketed to notoriety in the first years of the twentieth century and found atonement decades later.

North Carolina's Triangle region is known for universities, research facilities and politics, but even in such a prosperous, diverse, modern environment, crime helps define the edges. These cases cover several decades of murder, fraud and betrayal. Read about the nation's largest prison escape and a couple of North Carolina's poisoners. From a civil rights-era clash of Old South and New and a suspected Cold War spy to new-tech sleuths and tales of diligent as well as discredited investigators, these stories will keep you entertained and aghast at the dark side of daily life. Crime writer Cathy Pickens explores a collection of headline-grabbing tales that shows the sinister side of the Triangle's cities.

A thrilling account of a hundred years of sensational and sinister deeds that marked and shaped one southern town.

Crimes that captivated attention in the Charlotte area over the years run the gamut from missing people to the wrongly accused. This collection of headline stories features violent motorcycle gangs, crusading mothers, a fraudster who claimed a president was poisoned by his wife, a serial killer who broke all the rules and even a man who made Bigfoot. With a mystery novelist's ear for a good tale, Cathy Pickens presents more than a century of sensational sinister deeds that marked this diverse and dynamic city.

In the wake of a love affair and a mysterious chain of events, Tom Dooley was convicted and hanged for the murder of Laura Foster.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, Wilkes County, North Carolina, was the site of this nationally publicized crime of passion, the nation's first. This notorious crime became an inspiration for musicians, writers and storytellers ever since, creating a mystery of mythic proportions. Through newspaper articles, trial documents and public records, Dr. John E. Fletcher brings this dramatic case to life, providing the long-awaited factual account of the legendary murder. Join the investigation into one of the country's most enduring thrillers.

In this unique look at historic crimes of the Piedmont, Frances Casstevens offers readers a glimpse into the criminal mind and the consequences of criminal actions. No matter what piques your interest - be it Civil War stories or young love torn apart by tragedy - Casstevens provides sure-fire ammunition to keep the pages turning. Discover the true-life tales of the outlaw Jesse Dobbins, or of Daisy Hunt, a pregnant twenty-year-old who watches helplessly as her beloved bleeds to death in the snow. Read the story of the infamous Charles Lawson, a man who did the unthinkable - kill himself, his wife and his six children on Christmas Day, 1929. These are but a few examples of the featured tragedies that have shocked the North Carolina Piedmont in the last 150 years.

Frances Casstevens, historian, genealogist, and former professor at Wake Forest University, delivers facts in a spellbinding manner. Death in North Carolina's Piedmont: Tales of Murder, Suicide and Causes Unknown meticulously presents the details of each case and leaves it to you, the reader, to draw your own conclusions.

No suspect was ever indicted or tried for the murder of scalawag politician John W. Chicken" Stephens in a North Carolina courthouse; and the Ku Klux Klan not only rid itself of a troublesome adversary, but also set up a showdown between the state's old guard and the radical regime of Governor William Woods Holden. Follow this little-known tale from the murder, through the "Kirk-Holden War," through the courts and to the finale, when Holden became the United States' first governor impeached and removed from office. Newspaper reporter and historical columnist Jim Wise takes us beyond the final days of the Civil War in North Carolina, amidst the destruction and poverty and debt, to chronicle the men whose clashing agendas and personalities shaped a violent era and laid foundations for the Jim Crow century to come."