‘Murder & Mayhem’ recounts local historic crimes
A. Parker Burroughs, retired executive editor of the Observer-Reporter, will hold book signings for his newly published book, “Washington County Murder & Mayhem: Historic Crimes of Southwestern Pennsyvlania,” at 3 p.m. Saturday at Barnes & Noble at South Hills Village and July 12 at the Whiskey Rebellion in Washington.
The book contains six stories, two of which appeared first in serialized form in the Observer-Reporter: “A Death in the Lyric” was published in 2012, and “The West Enders: A Story of Murder in Desperate Times” in 2013.
Burroughs won a Golden Quill and a first-place Keystone Press Award for “A Death in the Lyric,” which tells the tragic tale of Frances Martin’s troubled life and the profound effects her death would have on so many for years to come.
As Burroughs points out in the preface of “Murder & Mayhem,” Washington County’s most famous crime occurred on New Year’s Eve 1969, when Joseph “Jock” Yablonski, his wife, Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter, Charlotte, were shot to death in their Washington County home by three assassins.
The shocking Yablonski murders were the subject of several books, but Burroughs’ “Washington County Murder & Mayhem” is about crimes that have “passed from memory.”
The six stories were ressurrected from old newspaper clippings and the volumes of bound newspapers in the archives of the Observer-Reporter.
“These news reports recorded the events as they happened, in all their confusion and contradiction,” Burroughs writes. “I have used the news articles as a guide to sift through trial transcripts, government documents, letters and other remembrances and, through forensic journalism, to assemble the facts in narrative fashion.”
Burroughs discovered most of the tales through serendipity, “stumbling across them while researching more mundane subjects.”
Stories also include “An Unholy Passion: The Tragic Tale of Martin Reed,” which occurred in the early 1890s; “Shreds of Quivering Flesh: The Explosion That Rocked Washington,” the story of a nitroglycerin explosion in Washington on July 17, 1891; “The Wreck of the Cannonball Express” from Oct. 19, 1888; and “The Murder of Thelma Young,” the story of a 17-year-old who was brutally murdered on Dec. 29, 1927.
In some instances, Burroughs imagined details to enhance the flow of the narrative, but “no dialogue has been invented.”
Burroughs has been a newspaper writer and editor for more than four decades. He has worked as a consultant to newspapers in Russia and Ukraine, and most recently taught writing at Bethany College.
He is the editor of “200 Years: Our History Through the Pages of the Observer-Reporter” and author of “Enter, With Torches: Recollections of a Grumpy Old Editor.”
“Murder & Mayhem” retails for $19.99 and can be purchased at Barnes & Noble and online at www.barnesandnoble.com, Amazon.com and historypress.net.