Secrets

This is a fascinating, well-researched two short-story collection of sensational murders that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Catawba County, North Carolina, but made headlines around the world. The stories revolve around love, lust, jealousy and cold-blooded murder. White Beauty, Black Beast is the story of "Aunt Sarah" Eller Wycoff who served most of her life - more than 40 years - in North Carolina's state penitentiary as an accessory to murder. She refused pardons from five governors that would have set her free and allowed her to go home. Three years before she died at age 78, the death-bed confession of someone she knew was her final ticket to freedom, but again she refused the pardon and decided to stay behind bars. A model prisoner from the moment the steel doors closed behind her in 1879, she spent the last twenty years of her life confined to her cot and a wheelchair. Keeping a lifelong promise, she went to her death with her lips sealed about the illicit affair she had with her lover, a black man who was hanged for the murder of her husband. The second story, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Two Lives of Kohler Holdsclaw, captures the life of a young World War 1 veteran-turned fugitive who was convicted of killing a well-respected married man who made unwanted advances on the young woman he dearly loved and intended to marry. He disappeared twice but was always hiding in plain sight.