The Night Away: A Conversation with Sharon Hatfield, Journalist and Author of "Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell"

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[00:01:21] Content Warning. This episode contains discussion of murder and domestic

[00:01:51] abuse. The moon was waning on the night of July 20th, 1935. In the darkness, 21-year-old

[00:02:00] Edith Maxwell slipped into her family's home. The Maxwells lived in rural

[00:02:05] Appalachia, specifically the town of Pound in Virginia's Wise County. Name for

[00:02:11] the Appalachian Mountains, Appalachia stretches from the Western Catskill

[00:02:15] Mountains in New York down into the northern parts of Alabama, Mississippi,

[00:02:20] and Georgia, incorporating swaths of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia,

[00:02:27] Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee in between. It's

[00:02:33] considered a socioeconomic and cultural region of the United States. Now there's

[00:02:38] been much myth-making about Appalachia over the years, much of it quite

[00:02:42] degrading and stereotypical. While it is true that the region has struggled

[00:02:48] with poverty, it is also true the mass media has long sought to smear Appalachia

[00:02:53] with assertions that its people are violent, unsophisticated ill-billies.

[00:02:58] Keep that in mind later. It's an important aspect of how we understand the saga

[00:03:05] of Edith Maxwell. Anyways let's get back to that warm night in July. Edith

[00:03:12] had been out dancing at the Little Ritz Club in the nearby town of Wise. The

[00:03:16] young school teacher liked to go out and have a good time. After all, she was a

[00:03:21] fully grown adult and a professional woman to boot. But her feelings on the

[00:03:25] matter brought her into frequent conflict with her father Trig. He felt that

[00:03:30] young ladies ought to not go out. So when Edith stepped back into the home

[00:03:35] she shared with Trig, her mother Anne, and her 11-year-old sister Mary

[00:03:39] Catherine, she was walking into a very tense environment.

[00:03:43] Trig had a temper. But for that matter, so did Edith. Trig was also known to drink

[00:03:51] too much. Later on, allegations of his physically abusive behavior would come

[00:03:56] out. Either way, a violent confrontation broke up between father and daughter. By

[00:04:03] the next day, Trig would be dead. Numerous versions of events came out

[00:04:09] about this incident. Some had Trig dying from a heart attack or falling

[00:04:12] accidentally. Others had Edith acting purely in self-defense, whacking her

[00:04:17] father in the head with her high-heeled shoe when he tried to attack her.

[00:04:21] Still other renditions had Edith as the aggressor, a murderer who beat her

[00:04:25] father with a skillet so that he cracked his head against a butcher's block.

[00:04:30] The image of a young, modern woman fending off her backwards father with

[00:04:34] a high-heeled shoe was too compelling for the press to pass up.

[00:04:39] Edith soon became widely known as the Slippers Slayer.

[00:04:44] Luminaries and the tabloid press alike took up her cause. Her case became a media circus.

[00:04:51] But what really happened here was Edith, a cold-blooded murderer? Was she even

[00:04:56] responsible for her father's death? Was she just a young woman who was trying

[00:05:00] to defend herself from domestic abuse? Did she really kill him with a shoe?

[00:05:04] How did the relentless media coverage affect her case and her life?

[00:05:09] What ended up happening to Edith? We're getting into all of that in this episode.

[00:05:13] My name is Anya Kane, I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee, I'm an attorney.

[00:05:19] And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original

[00:05:23] reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:05:29] And this is The Night Away, a conversation with Sharon Hatfield,

[00:05:34] journalist and author of Never Seen the Moon, The Trials of Edith Maxwell.

[00:06:04] So, as a bit of backstory, this past winter, Anya and I visited Ernie Pyle's

[00:06:30] boyhood home and the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana. We both love Pyle's work.

[00:06:38] The Pulitzer Prize-winning Hoosier journalist captured the experiences of U.S. soldiers serving

[00:06:44] in World War II through his writing. He's definitely an inspiration.

[00:06:48] As we strolled around the exhibitions, we got to thinking about murder,

[00:06:52] as we're often inclined to do given our beat. We wondered, did Pyle ever cover a murder case?

[00:06:58] Kevin half remembered that he'd delved into a big case in the pre-war years, that it involved

[00:07:03] a female defendant and that it was one of those infamous cases that since largely fallen out of

[00:07:08] our collective memory. Then, when we arrived back home, we glanced through our true crime library

[00:07:15] and the memory hit me. I'd read a book many years ago, Never Seen the Moon, The Trials

[00:07:21] of Edith Maxwell. We pulled it off the shelf and I regret it. It's an excellent piece of journalism

[00:07:27] to boast deep research and a compelling narrative about a sensationalized crime.

[00:07:33] I read it too. We knew we really wanted to talk with author and journalist Sharon Hatfield

[00:07:38] about Edith Maxwell's case. We were very excited when she was willing to share her

[00:07:43] expertise with us. So, to start off with Sharon, can you tell us about yourself

[00:07:48] and your background? Well, I grew up in Appalachian part of Virginia and I've lived

[00:07:53] in Ohio for many years. But my first job out of college was one of my most formative ones.

[00:08:00] I became a reporter for a weekly newspaper in Wise County, Virginia. And I had many different beats,

[00:08:08] but one of them at one point was covering court cases and I became really fascinated with that

[00:08:15] beat. And so, later on when I went to journalism school, I started researching the Edith Maxwell

[00:08:22] case and it turns out that Edith Maxwell was tried for murder in Wise County, Virginia,

[00:08:29] where I used to be a reporter. But I didn't know about her case at that particular time.

[00:08:36] Absolutely. And what newspaper was that? The Coalfield Progress. Very cool. So,

[00:08:44] that's how you first heard about Edith Maxwell. Do you have any more details about how that

[00:08:49] case came up? Were local people talking about it a lot? Well, no. I think it mostly

[00:08:56] been forgotten, but I had the luck of running into Evelyn Swimp on one of my visits

[00:09:03] to Wise County, Virginia and she was a retired court stenographer and a local historian. And

[00:09:10] she had been a teenager at the time of Edith Maxwell trial and she collected newspaper,

[00:09:17] clippings and detective magazines. And so, she really had an impressive collection and she's

[00:09:24] the one that actually mentioned Edith Maxwell to me and she was really hoping that I would write

[00:09:30] about it. And she mentioned that Edith had killed her daddy with IELC. And of course,

[00:09:38] that caught my attention just as it did the public back in the 1930s when she, this crime

[00:09:45] supposedly occurred. And I thought it was an interesting idea, but I was a little skeptical at

[00:09:52] first. I just figured there hadn't been enough written about the case to really

[00:09:58] make it a longer work than just a story. But once I got back home and looked at the

[00:10:05] files of the newspapers, I could see how truly famous Edith had been. She was known from coast to

[00:10:13] coast back in 1935. Wow. So at that point is that what made you decide that there may be a book in

[00:10:20] this? I actually first started as a thesis to get my master's in journalism at Ohio University.

[00:10:31] And then I just kept going from there because there were so many interesting angles. The first

[00:10:38] thing I said, he was how the newspapers covered the case. I looked at five papers, but then later on,

[00:10:45] I got into some other amazing avenues. Yes, this case is very twisty and your coverage of it

[00:10:55] reflects that. There's all these kind of surprises in the book about not only the media

[00:10:59] environment, but actually what happened with the case. I guess to scene set a little bit,

[00:11:03] can you tell us about the environment that Edith Maxwell was raised in? Tell us about that region

[00:11:09] of the country. Okay, Wise County, Virginia is in the Appalachian part of the state.

[00:11:16] It's right up the border, right up against the border of Letcher County, Kentucky. And it was

[00:11:24] a very rugged area with lots of coal mining and timbering, which is dominant industry.

[00:11:32] And she was considered one of the modern people around there. There was a lot of press coverage

[00:11:42] about who was modern and who was old fashioned and who was for progress and who wasn't. Well,

[00:11:49] it turns out that Edith Maxwell had gone to college for two years, which is what it took then to become

[00:11:57] a teacher. So she was 21 years old in the summer of 35 and she was living in a small town called

[00:12:05] Pound, P-O-U-N-D, which they called that pound. And she's living in a small four room house

[00:12:14] with her father, triad, her mother, Anne and two younger sisters. And Edith was on vacation from

[00:12:24] teaching in a one room school. She liked to get out and have fun, but her father

[00:12:30] really did not like for her to be out of particularly unchaperoned because he thought

[00:12:36] that was inappropriate for a young lady, especially schoolteachers.

[00:12:41] So some family discord here. What happened then on July 20th, 1935?

[00:12:52] Well, that day, Trig, her father, I should explain that he had a drinking problem most of his adult

[00:13:02] life. That's what his wife testified to you on the stand, but he had supposedly either quit or

[00:13:10] tapered off, which depends on who you talk to. But the evidence in the trial showed that he had been

[00:13:18] drinking steadily that day. We don't know for sure if it was just beer, which was legal,

[00:13:24] or if they were drinking white lightning along with it. But anyway, he was doing that with his

[00:13:32] friends and Edith went out to visit people. So she caught a ride with her cousin and they went

[00:13:41] over to the town of Wise, which was the county seat about 10 miles away. Somehow she got

[00:13:49] separated from her cousin and she had to hitch a ride back to Pound, and it was getting kind of late.

[00:13:57] And the guy that she ended up riding with, he talked her into going to a nightclub or a nightcap

[00:14:07] before he took her back to her house. So when she got back home, she and her father got into

[00:14:14] a loud argument and we don't know what exactly happened, but they were arguing and there were

[00:14:22] loud female voices that the neighbor heard. And eventually the neighbor who was named Kelly,

[00:14:31] he got so concerned about this that he went over to the Maxwell house, which was next door

[00:14:38] to his house and asked him if he could help, that he could hear

[00:14:42] trig hollering and moaning in the background. And Edith told him to go back home that they

[00:14:50] didn't need his help and that he should basically find his own business. So he went back home,

[00:14:58] but then about an hour and a half later, the little sister comes over below his window

[00:15:04] and starts screaming that her father is dying and for him to come quick.

[00:15:09] And so trig died about 1.30 that morning, the 21st.

[00:15:17] Wow. How quickly did this go into being a homicide investigation?

[00:15:25] Well, first of all Edith and her mother Ann claimed that it was an accident.

[00:15:30] They said that trig was drunk and that he had gotten up in the middle of the night

[00:15:38] and gone out on the porch and that he had fallen and hit his head on a meat block, which was

[00:15:46] like a section of a tree around section that they used to chop meat on. And they claimed

[00:15:53] that he had fallen and hit his head on that and that had caused him to die of a head injury,

[00:16:00] shortly thereafter. But trig had relatives there in town and they were very suspicious of this story.

[00:16:09] So when things got to daylight on Sunday morning, they started coming over and looking around the

[00:16:16] house and they felt like that the story of the meat block did not hold up well. So they

[00:16:24] wore out a warrant against Edith and Ann for murder. And by noon that day, the

[00:16:33] Commonwealth Attorney Fred Greer was on the scene at the Maxwell House and Edith and Ann were

[00:16:40] taken to jail. Ann bonded out immediately and Edith was in quite a bit longer before she

[00:16:49] was able to get out on bail. What's more fun than living out your own cozy mystery?

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[00:18:39] Now he's coming for your actual brain. We've also got one about that time I stormed the runway

[00:18:44] at New York Fashion Week to protest coaches leather handbags. Yeah, I heard they weren't happy about

[00:18:48] that. I couldn't tell you. They're not talking to me at the moment. And we're just getting

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[00:19:13] Subscribe to Just So You Know wherever you get your podcasts and look for our new episodes

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[00:19:23] This case I understand it quickly garnered quite a bit of media attention. Is that right?

[00:19:28] Yes, it was really amazing how this very remote place, this very isolated incident

[00:19:37] do so much attention in the media. And the way it started was a Hearst reporter

[00:19:44] in the Washington, D.C. area heard about the case and he went to Weiss County that summer of

[00:19:51] 35 and sort of previewed the case. And he really sensationalized it and pointed it out as

[00:19:59] portrayed it as she's this young modern person and she's in this backward area

[00:20:06] and she's being punished for having an education and she's being railroaded and

[00:20:14] sort of portraying it as a modern era of modern need versus the old guard

[00:20:21] and incorporating into this a lot of hillbilly stereotypes. But from this one start with the

[00:20:29] Hearst reporter, he eventually signed on to an exclusive contract with the Hearst newspaper.

[00:20:38] And so once that happened in the fall, the case just went wild. It went nationwide through the

[00:20:47] different wire services and the different major papers, even magazines carried it.

[00:20:55] And so she became very well known. Where do we get the myth that she killed her dad with

[00:21:02] her high heel shoe from? That's a great question. I should explain there were two trials. One was in

[00:21:09] the fall of 1935 in November and the second trial, sorry, spoiler alert, the second trial was

[00:21:18] in December of 1936. And so at the first trial he testified that her father attacked her,

[00:21:29] that he was angry with her for staying out late and that he attacked her with a chair and a butcher

[00:21:38] knife. And that they eventually started tussling around on the floor in a bedroom and that she

[00:21:49] was underneath trig and that she picked up a high heel shoe off the floor and hit him over the head

[00:21:58] and inflicted the head injury that eventually believed to have killed him.

[00:22:05] So that's how they got that idea. But you can see what symbolic importance that really had to people

[00:22:12] that, you know, a woman's right to descend herself and so she had killed him with the high heel

[00:22:18] shoe. But on the other hand, the prosecution never believed that he had been killed with a

[00:22:25] high heel shoe. They felt like that it was probably an iron, like you would iron clothing with,

[00:22:33] or it was a skillet perhaps or some sharp object like a hammer. Of course, that was the

[00:22:41] weakness in the prosecution's case because they were never able to definitively point to one

[00:22:49] weapon as the murder weapon. Absolutely. And they were up against the force of this whole narrative.

[00:22:57] I want to drill down on something really interesting that you said about the popular

[00:23:04] press's depiction of this area as filled with backward hillbillies. Can you talk more

[00:23:11] about that and how that influenced the coverage? Yes. When I started researching these articles,

[00:23:19] I was just amazed at the things that they put in the newspaper about the Appalachian people

[00:23:27] that were so off base and frankly very condescending. They said that people called it

[00:23:35] government port as if the government was unknown to the area and they used the wrong dialect even.

[00:23:46] They would write the so-called hillbilly part of their story in dialogue and they would use

[00:23:53] the dialogue of the deep south which is really not the same as the mountain south where this

[00:24:00] place is. And so they were really pitting Edith against her own people. You've heard of negative

[00:24:07] stereotyping which is what they were doing to the people there in the area but they were also

[00:24:15] positively stereotyping her, you see? Because they said that she was apart and different from her

[00:24:24] people that lived around there with her, that she was so different and so far above them

[00:24:32] that she had to be supported and sympathized with. And as you can imagine this did not

[00:24:39] set very well with the local people but a lot of people across the country really did believe

[00:24:46] in that narrative. Yeah it's astounding the stuff that when you read some of those old

[00:24:51] newspaper coverages of crime just in general it is always shocking some of the things that get

[00:24:56] published but that level of stereotyping is so offensive. I guess as somebody who was a journalist

[00:25:03] and but also from that region how did that strike you? Were you surprised by the level

[00:25:07] of it? Did it not surprise you? What are your thoughts on that? I was very surprised, I was

[00:25:14] shocked because I had lived in the area you know much later of course but I just knew that it was so

[00:25:23] untrue on such a basic level that did make me very angry but also it would make me very appreciative

[00:25:31] when I would come across a reporter from the outside who came in and really was able to

[00:25:40] do a fair examination of the case and one of these folks was Ernie Powell who was a reporter for

[00:25:47] the script powered organization and he traveled all around the country reporting and sending in

[00:25:54] columns back to the Washington terms. And so by my good luck he happened to visit

[00:26:01] Wise County Virginia and do several columns about the Maxwell case. And his point was that

[00:26:11] rural people are pretty much the same all over the United States that there was nothing

[00:26:19] exotic you know that made this case any different because it happened in Appalachia that was

[00:26:27] he really believed that Edith was caught up in the cycle of domestic violence

[00:26:34] and that she never could escape it and then this horrible tragedy occurred.

[00:26:41] Absolutely and fun fact for the listeners I know you know this Sharon but that's how we

[00:26:46] came to interview you because we recently visited Ernie Piles hometown and his house he grew up

[00:26:53] in Dana, Indiana and we were looking at different cases that he wrote about over the years and this

[00:26:59] was the really big one so that's how we kind of came together on this. I mean one thing that's

[00:27:04] especially galling and I know we spoke about this before but to me reading your book and reading

[00:27:09] some of the coverage of this place is almost this kind of high-handed assumption that things

[00:27:15] are you know some sort of like feminist Eden within more urban areas or other portions of

[00:27:22] the country in the United States at this time which is obviously laughable to anybody who knows their

[00:27:27] history but to somehow single out Appalachia as especially bad for women just seems completely

[00:27:33] hypocritical by some of these reporters from different regions in the country because you know

[00:27:38] there was there were bad things happening to women and women being oppressed and having you know

[00:27:45] in various locales it's not it's not a problem that's just centered around one group of people.

[00:27:54] Yeah that's one thing that I was shocked to learn was that women weren't allowed to serve on

[00:28:00] juries in over half of the state back in the 1930s it was all male juries and these were state

[00:28:08] laws that prohibited them because men thought that women couldn't handle it and that they had to be

[00:28:17] spared any kind of upsetting information or women shouldn't be allowed to mingle with men

[00:28:25] and all these states it was not a rural

[00:28:28] urban divide it was more like the older states on the east coast had these laws

[00:28:38] but then as you went farther west women were given a little bit more freedom out there.

[00:28:46] So it's even more ridiculous for New York reporters to be coming in and being like

[00:28:49] you don't treat your women well it's like they can't even be juries there.

[00:28:53] Yeah yeah there is some ironing all this because we do know that domestic violence

[00:29:00] is cut through every layer of society unfortunately.

[00:29:05] Yes it's interesting to me that instead of simply expressing concern about the domestic

[00:29:10] violence element of this case it had to become some sort of regional drama for them to feel like

[00:29:16] they could you know sell it as far as newspapers went there had to be a villain.

[00:29:21] Yes and the villain was the culture as much as you know it was alleged to be Trig Maxwell.

[00:29:29] Right.

[00:29:30] I probably should mention a little bit about the National Women's Party a group that I

[00:29:37] knew nothing about for researching the book and the way the book ultimately turned out

[00:29:43] called Never Sing the Moon and the way it ultimately turned out was in three braids

[00:29:49] and of course the main story what's going to happen to Edith through all these twists and turns

[00:29:54] in her legal case is she going to be free is she going to go to prison or what's going to happen

[00:30:01] but then intertwined with that I had the story about the Appalachian stereotype

[00:30:07] which we've been talking about but also she had lawyers from the National Women's Party

[00:30:16] step in and help find her appeal you see she was down guilty of first degree murder in December

[00:30:23] of 1935 excuse me November 1935 and so the National Women's Party sent lawyers to try to help her

[00:30:34] win an appeal which she did and her case was overturned and so they did and then she

[00:30:40] was given a second trial so they were trying to help her and they were very interested in group of

[00:30:46] women mostly very well to do they could have just been socialized and sat around and you know had

[00:30:55] teas and balls and things like that but they decided to go out and try to change the world

[00:31:02] and they they were very instrumental in getting women to vote through their protests during the

[00:31:09] Wilson administration and then they tried to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed they started

[00:31:16] introducing it or having some or an introduction into Congress beginning in 1923 so they didn't

[00:31:23] have a lot of admirable goals and aims but unfortunately Edith was not an activist you

[00:31:31] know if you think about the scope trial in Dayton Tennessee the school teacher there scope

[00:31:39] he agreed to be a test case on teaching evolution in school he was willing to go to jail or do whatever

[00:31:47] it took because that's what he believed in in Edith's case however she wasn't political she just

[00:31:56] wanted to like most people who get in trouble with the law they just want to put it behind them

[00:32:03] and move on as best they can and so she was really not the ideal person to be pushing

[00:32:11] this federal appeal based on the lack of women on juries she just wanted to you know get through

[00:32:19] the ordeal and get back to regular life and get married and have a family so there was a little

[00:32:25] bit of a mismatch there did that manifest itself in any ways that caused um backlash or problems for

[00:32:34] the activists well she ended up firing them um it was exciting has to do with her brother Earl

[00:32:43] Maxwell who basically took charge of her case we don't really know how many of these visions

[00:32:51] that were made in Edith's name actually came from Edith because she had a lot of people advising her

[00:32:59] mainly male attorneys some of them from the newspapers and some from the locally there

[00:33:06] and wise so we don't really know exactly if this was her sentiment but Earl Maxwell began to argue

[00:33:15] with the national women's party over the funds that were raised for Edith and so they had some

[00:33:22] kind of a disagreement and he he or Edith fired the uh national women's party attorney and stuck

[00:33:31] with the newspaper attorney one thing we talked about last time I remember is could you talk

[00:33:38] about the fact that the newspapers were so involved in this this was such a media frenzy

[00:33:44] and why that may have kind of created some problems for Edith because it almost

[00:33:51] starts sounding like different incentives are kind of competing with one another in her case

[00:33:58] well I put this somewhere in the that the journalists crossed the line into activism

[00:34:07] they went from journalism to activism and this is something that we're not too used to seeing these

[00:34:14] days I mean back then they took a side and they they actually got involved in the cases but

[00:34:22] you know it's not a great idea for your credibility as a journalist but anyway um

[00:34:29] so what happened was the newspapers they hired these attorneys so they they had an interest in

[00:34:37] the outcome of the case whether it was to sell papers to show a point of view whatever reason

[00:34:46] they weren't just observing and interpreting they were advocating for her um and so that put her

[00:34:55] sort of beholden to them she wasn't truly independent I mean what if she had wanted to

[00:35:01] take a plea bargain or what if she had wanted to say okay guys here's what really happened

[00:35:09] but she's not really allowed to do that because she's locked in to being this smarter and that's

[00:35:16] the role that she has to play in the news site yeah it just sounds like a huge mess um

[00:35:22] backing up a little bit when we were talking about the league um the the the sub-r jets and the the

[00:35:28] activists for women's rights um that included some pretty high profile names that was I believe

[00:35:34] Eleanor Roosevelt and publisher sissy Patterson were also involved with that is that right

[00:35:39] yes they were definitely involved um I'm not sure that they were members of the national

[00:35:44] women's party but they were very much involved in advocating for Edith uh rights in a particular matter

[00:35:54] what it was sissy Patterson worked for a first newspaper in washington so they were

[00:36:01] funding the lawyers behind the scenes along with the washington post and so sissy after Edith

[00:36:10] ultimately lost her appeal and went to prison in 1937 she was looking at a 20-year sentence for

[00:36:20] second degree murder but she had already served a few years you know waiting for the final

[00:36:28] outcome of her case but anyway during this time sissy Patterson wanted governor Price

[00:36:35] to pardon Edith after she went to prison and she she Patterson started to get nervous that well is

[00:36:44] he going to do this or isn't he going to do this before his term is over so sissy Patterson

[00:36:50] contacted Eleanor Roosevelt and she sent a very influential letter to the governor

[00:36:58] and said I don't really know the facts of this case but I really urge you to look into it and if

[00:37:06] an injustice has been committed I trust that she will set things right and so that letter

[00:37:14] really got his attention and he looked into the case and decided to pardon Edith so indirectly

[00:37:23] she had a very crucial role in it the first lady and interestingly enough she had actually been to

[00:37:30] wise county because she'd like to get out and tour around and see different areas during the

[00:37:36] depression and so during one of her road trips she went there and stopped and had lunch in

[00:37:42] wise county so maybe that also had some impact on her interest in the case absolutely well I mean

[00:37:51] that is such a high impact one thing that you were able to find in in your research and that

[00:37:56] you documented in your book which is just fascinating to me is uh well I guess can you tell us about the

[00:38:02] movies made about this situation and what you found about those earlier I mentioned that everyone's

[00:38:09] flimped had collected all these newspaper clippings from the 30s and she had one tiny little

[00:38:16] clipping that mentioned a movie called mountain justice the clipping didn't explain what it was

[00:38:23] about or what was what inspired it or anything it was just a little piece of paper and that sent me

[00:38:30] off to looking for the film and I possibly thought it could be related to the case so if you go to

[00:38:37] a film encyclopedia you'll see there's several movies that have been made that are called

[00:38:43] mountain justice but one of these was the 1937 Warner Brothers melodrama it was the black up like

[00:38:52] movie about a domestic violence case that map like so I felt like that was probably the one that was

[00:39:01] based on the Maxwell case if there was one so eventually the many twists and turns

[00:39:07] I turned out that the Library of Congress in Washington DC

[00:39:12] did have a copy of this particular mountain justice possibly the only copy still in existence

[00:39:20] so that was a very exciting day when I learned that that had been preserved and I was able to

[00:39:27] study it so the Library of Congress made me a video and sold it to me for $169

[00:39:35] and I was absolutely thrilled and then later on I got a grant from the Ohio Arts Council

[00:39:44] and I was able to go to the Warner Brothers archive at the University of Southern California in

[00:39:50] Los Angeles and it was amazing the amount of information they had about how the movie was

[00:39:57] scripted produced and promoted afterwards so just to make a long story even longer

[00:40:08] what I found out was that the movie was based on the Maxwell case loosely and they had

[00:40:16] folders upon folders of articles about the Maxwell case but they claimed that it wasn't

[00:40:23] because they were afraid of being sued so they claimed that it wasn't about the Maxwell case

[00:40:30] and then once the movie was finished they decided not to show it in Virginia

[00:40:37] Jesus that's so that's so over the top of them that they're like we can't let Virginia know that

[00:40:44] this happened right geez what did you think of the movie

[00:40:53] well it's sort of like the guy at the archives that I don't know why you would even be interested

[00:40:58] in studying this because it's not a good movie it's a lesser known work by Michael Cratee

[00:41:06] who was very well respected as a director and did the movie cost the Blanca but this was just

[00:41:13] a quick little movie torrent from the headlines is what they called from there at the Water Brothers

[00:41:18] studio and it just really plays into most of the stereotype and it doesn't really get at the

[00:41:26] complexities of the case in fact it doesn't even it doesn't mention the women's party at all

[00:41:35] right that's that's just so wild but also so cool that as a journalist and a researcher

[00:41:41] you were able to get your hands on that yeah I mean it was just beyond my wildest imagination that

[00:41:48] all this information you know telegrams back and forth from the different people making the movie

[00:41:55] it's really interesting so in the end what happened to you did do she end up serving a

[00:42:04] long in prison uh can you just kind of kind of tell us what the outcome of this whole

[00:42:09] situation was for her well she did have to go to prison and she went to the Goochland women's

[00:42:16] farm near Charlottesville area and she was given preferential treatment because of her status as a

[00:42:26] white middle class professional woman and so she was uh couldn't allowed to work in the

[00:42:34] office there at the prison and they taught her uh sonography and bookkeeping so she was really

[00:42:42] getting training that would help her later on and when it came time for um Governor Price

[00:42:52] was getting near the end of his term he did give her a pardon so she had an unconditional pardon

[00:43:00] except for one provision and that was that she should never return to Virginia and as far as I know

[00:43:08] well there were very few it's only maybe only one sighting of her in Virginia so I don't know if

[00:43:15] she ever came back but what happened was she she changed her name when she got out of prison

[00:43:22] and the the people that ran the prison were pretty sympathetic because they realized she

[00:43:29] had been so famous during her as a time of this case that that she really needed a break from publicity

[00:43:37] that it had sort of even for affected her at one point into thinking that she might become a movie

[00:43:44] star herself oh geez over this incident um so they were they were very helpful in putting her

[00:43:53] on a train to Indianapolis and so she went straight from prison to Indianapolis

[00:44:01] and she picked her name out of a phone book and she eventually got married and had kids and lived

[00:44:09] out most of her days in Florida were you ever able to get to talk to her no by the time I started

[00:44:15] researching the case she had been dead for several years she passed away in 1979 of cancer she did not

[00:44:25] discuss her past I did talk with a family member or two and she did not discuss her past with them

[00:44:35] so she's kind of a mysterious figure to the very end do you having dug into her case to

[00:44:42] extent that you did do you feel she was a victim a killer both what's your assessment of this case

[00:44:51] and and her role in it well she was certainly a victim of her family dynamic where you know the

[00:44:59] father was abusive and she and the mother and the other children banded together to protect

[00:45:06] themselves so in that way she was a victim but she also was the kind of person that

[00:45:13] dragged back I mean she she had a mouth on her she didn't take a lot of abuse silently and like some

[00:45:22] people would in that situation she would argue with her father and say if you don't like this

[00:45:29] what are you gonna do about it and so I think what really happened was that she did not intend

[00:45:37] to kill her father that night I think she probably did get in a fight with him

[00:45:45] and that he was fatally injured inadvertently but the big problem comes in with the family

[00:45:52] deciding to deal with this in secret and they thought that they could nurse them back to hell

[00:45:59] that they could clean up the blood off the floor and that this incident would pass just like others

[00:46:06] that that unfortunately it didn't turn out that way and I think her lack of candor caused her no

[00:46:13] trouble a lot of trouble in the long run that makes a lot of sense yeah do you think

[00:46:20] a case like this would have been handled differently today given that there's more of

[00:46:25] a cultural understanding of domestic violence yes I think it probably would have been

[00:46:34] handled differently also in in regard to pre-trial publicity back then this had not

[00:46:40] really been studied very well and so the judges really didn't have a sense of how

[00:46:49] how to deal with pre-trial publicity so much so that would have been different also of course

[00:46:55] she wouldn't have been restricted to just a male jury she would have probably had both

[00:47:02] genders on the case and so there's also a possibility that the trial would have been

[00:47:10] moved to a different venue so yes I think it would be handled differently today

[00:47:19] right that makes a lot of sense and if there's more awareness of domestic abuse

[00:47:22] than perhaps the situation gets resolved sooner without anybody dying so definitely

[00:47:29] a big what-if but interesting to think about I love the title of this book it's called Never

[00:47:35] Seen the Moon can you describe the meaning behind that very poetic and lovely title

[00:47:41] well we were talking earlier about some of the shocking things that were written about the

[00:47:48] lives-counting areas some of the stereotypes one of these stories was about the fact that Edith

[00:47:56] and the other young ladies of town had never seen the moon because they weren't allowed

[00:48:05] outside of the house at night so she had never seen the moon until she went away to college

[00:48:13] and of course that's that just sounds totally ridiculous that people actually did believe it

[00:48:19] if they weren't from the area that is so wild um this is a really really awesome book where can

[00:48:25] people pick it up if they'd like to read more about Edith Maxwell's case well um you could

[00:48:32] go to your neighborhood bookstore you could go to the publisher university of Illinois press website

[00:48:39] or you can go to any of the online retailers you should be able to find it and we'd start always

[00:48:45] love feedback yeah absolutely well it i'll give you some feedback right now it's a great book

[00:48:53] um it's really in depth and a really great look into this case but also the cultural

[00:48:59] underpinnings of everything that happened around it well i feel fortunate because a story like this

[00:49:05] this doesn't come along every day it's really had so many unique elements i was really happy

[00:49:12] that Evelyn Flint told me about it and i was able to be at the point in my life where i can

[00:49:19] do something with the story well Sharon thank you so much for speaking with us we so appreciate

[00:49:24] you and uh just thanks for coming on the show is there anything we didn't ask you about that

[00:49:28] you wanted to mention no i think we've done a pretty good job of covering the main points and

[00:49:34] appreciate your interest in the book and think you're having a journalism background has led

[00:49:40] to really interesting discussions thank you so much i really appreciate that i think so too i think

[00:49:45] this was a great convo and we just thank you again thanks again to Sharon for her time and thoughtful

[00:49:52] insights thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases

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