Category: Uncategorized

  • Speaking Event in McLean

    This Friday the 31st, I will be speaking at Dolley Madison Library in McLean, VA at 4:30. I will be discussing Margaret Fitzwater’s unsolved murder, part of my latest book, and a McLean-related unsolved murder from a work in progress! More details here: https://librarycalendar.fairfaxcounty.gov/event/14648558 →

  • New Book: The Snood Slayer

    My new book is out! I am proud of what I dug up in the National Archives on this one. In 1944, an active duty Marine was tried for the murder of Dorothy Berrum on the Hains Point golf course, then was later indicted but never tried for the murder of Margaret Fitzwater in the →

  • Author talk-October 7th

    If you have been dying to hear one of my author talks in person, and can get to Fredericksburg, VA on October 7th, you are in luck! I will be discussing my second book, Murder at the National Cathedral. A few tickets remain for the Washington Heritage Museums 2 p.m. Tea Talk. Plus, you get →

  • Jack R. Smith-1964

    This is a peculiar case I’ve started to look into a bit more. In 1964, Jack R. Smith, a recently retired 20-year Navy veteran and WWII veteran, was enjoying civilian life with his wife Dorothy and mother Ida in Potomac, Maryland. The 38-year-old Smith parlayed his Navy career as a photographer into a job at →

  • D.C.’s Gunslinging Preacher

    In 1953, Reverend Genora Augustus Taylor, 44 years old, was having a rough time of his mission to convert the desperate characters in his Northwest D.C. neighborhood. His makeshift church in a former pawnshop was shut down for the rather unusual reason of only having one bathroom, so he had to preach wherever he could. →

  • Charles William Ennis-1967

    When looking for topics to research, you inevitably come across crime cases that are intriguing, but probably don’t have enough material available to justify inclusion in a book. Such is the story of Charles William Ennis. On March 2, 1967 a man fishing in Hooes Run near Occoquan in Prince William County snagged a severed →

  • New Book-Murder at the National Cathedral

    On January 28th, my new book, Murder at the National Cathedral and Other Historic D.C. Crimes will be available for purchase! I believe I have found some interesting true crime stories from D.C.’s history that have almost been lost to time. The title takes its name from a 1944 murder that indeed happened in the →

  • Charles Fitzmaurice murder, 1964

    This is another write up I did on another site a while back. It’s an intriguing case, but I’m not sure how much more there is to be discovered about it unless his family has information to share. On the evening of December 12, 1964, United States Marine Corps (hereafter USMC) Lieutenant Colonel Charles Fitzmaurice →

  • Depression-Era Lives of Crime

    While researching a case for my upcoming book on historic D.C. murders, I came across the criminal records of two suspects, William Kappel and Leo Cullen. They present a rather intriguing glimpse of Depression-Era crime (and evidence that it wasn’t hard to avoid jail time). It’s interesting that Kappel was charged with violating child labor →

  • Slaying Over Stove Priority

    As you research historic true crimes, you come across stories that are too brief to be worked into a book chapter, but offer fascinating snapshots in time: From The Washington Evening Star, October 28 and 29, 1944: The kitchen of the Tilden Gardens Apartment Hotel saw “[a]n argument over priority on the use of a →