New Book Murder In A Rear View Mirror

Murder In A Rear View Mirror

I took 2017 off and did not publish any books of my own, but 2018 is going to see multiple titles from my Laurel Hill Publishing company. Already, Avis Turner’s fourth book Alzheimer’s Up Close is out about her experiences as a care giver for her late husband Elbert. This is a subject that strikes close to home for me as my mother suffers with dementia. I brought out Bonnie Turner’s The Eyes of Freya, the first of three in a Science Fiction/Fantasy genre. I worked with Doug Stegall and the Rangeley Ruritan Club to do a history/photo book about the Henry County community of Rangeley, Virginia, which has raised thousands of dollars already for the club.

In 2018, I will be bringing out books ranging from the Civil War, the Papers of J. E. B. Stuart, which covers 1833 until 1854 to World War Two with the letters from Philmore Minter, who served in Company H, 116th Regiment, 29th Division, who fought on D-Day and lived to tell about it. It is the third book I have worked on with Philmore’s son, David Minter.

This bring us to my new book Murder In A Rear View Mirror: Stories of True Crime, which will be available Memorial Day weekend at the Hillsville Flea Market. There are two flea markets, the big one everyone knows about during Labor Day weekend and the smaller one on Memorial Day weekend. I will be donating some of the proceeds from this book to the efforts to restore the Sidna Allen house, which is owned by the Carroll County Historical Society.

This is my first true crime book and it covers stories of true crime that have interested me over the years. The title has two meanings. First, an actual murder seen by one of Laurel Hill Publishing’s authors, Jennifer Gregory, who saw a murder in the rear view mirror in Collinsville, Virginia. The second meaning is to look back, in a rear view mirror, at multiple cases of murder that are well known and some that are not.

The book begins with Virginia Tech massacre of 2007 and ends with the reaction to it over the last decade. Each chapter in the book tells the story of a specific crime from the 1912 Hillsville Shootout to the summer went I around with Judge Woody Lookabill selling his book on the Gina Hall murder by Steve Epperly.

Other prominent crimes with a chapter dedicated to them include the 1929 Charlie Lawson murder of his family in Stokes County, North Carolina, and the killing by Dennis Stockton of Kenneth Arnder in Kibler Valley, Patrick County, Virginia. Two stories from Martinsville include the Shootout on Fayette Street from the late nineteenth century and the Martinsville Seven from 1949.

Mount Airy is the subject of multiple chapters including two bombings involving lover’s triangle, one of Franklin Street and another through the mail by a dentist. Another story involves the mistaken murder at what today is the Spencer’s building, but was Mount Airy Knitting when it occurred.

Two murders from my hometown of Ararat, Virginia, include the murder of J. E. B. Stuart’s great-grandfather, William Letcher, during the American Revolution in 1780 and the murder of a girl named Sadie, which became famous for the lynching of her supposed killer by a vigilante mob in the late 1800s. Two cases from Patrick County include the “Tragedy at Fayerdale, ” which happened at present day Fairy Stone State Park and “Ex Parte Virginia,” which involved the children of Kittie of the Reynolds Homestead.

At 400 pages, the book will sell for twenty dollars and will be available online soon and is available for pre-order now. I will be at the VFW Lot during the Hillsville Virginia Memorial Day Flea Market Friday through Sunday along the gate the front beside my Scentsy gals in their big purple tent.

All these books are available at my website www.freestateofpatrick.com, which has a link to pre-order the autographed books and all the other books I have written.