Hey there!

I've mentioned that my husband and I are renovating a house right now. It's been quite the project (one might say we bit off more than we could chew), but we're almost done! Which is great, because I'm ready to spend my summer evenings and weekends doing something besides sanding and painting. Oof.

The house was built in 1912, and hasn't gotten much love over the century it's been around. As we've torn up floorboards and demolished ceilings and pulled out kitchen cabinets, I've been hoping we'd find some treasures.

You know. Old coins or gold doubloons or creepy dolls. Anything.

Eventually I started to get discouraged. All we had found were a few random gum wrappers and a quarter from 2018. Hardly exciting.

And then we hit gold.

Well, a storyteller's version of gold, at least.

A newspaper from July 30, 1946, with a salacious headline: "Husband Confesses Making Booby Trap."

The article in question is about the murder of Fern Bowden by her husband, Jim. She was killed by a bomb in their basement while Jim (and, fortunately, their daughters) were away from home.

When this article was written, three days after Fern's death, Jim claimed he'd been storing the bomb there because he didn't know how to dispose of it—and that he'd instructed Fern and the girls not to touch it.

Later, though, the daughters testified that Jim had been heavily hinting to Fern that he had a secret diary where he'd been chronicling her affairs with a coworker, which he'd hidden in the box. As soon as she got a chance, she couldn't help but be curious enough to go looking for it.

After stumbling across this newspaper, I did a bit of internet sleuthing and learned this was known as the Pandora's Box Murder (of course). It was quite the scandal at the time, though I never would have heard about it unless we found this old newspaper in the walls.

I've resigned myself to not discovering any other treasures in the house—but the newspaper was a pretty sweet find.

What's the weirdest treasure you've found in an unexpected place?

Oh—and do you want to know whether or not Jim Bowden got away with it? JD Chandler wrote up a colorful account of this case in his Slabtown Chronicle blog.

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For Your TBR

This month, I'm exploring some new-to-me indie authors in the thriller genre. I'll be sharing free books with you, and if you end up picking one up, I'm curious to hear what you think.

Pre Kill by Lee Clark When Matthew Paine met Cecelia Patterson, Cici to her friends, was the electric jolt more than just static electricity? As they connect, they witness an attempted murder. Is Matthew's medical training sufficient to save the intended victim? In his second year of an osteopathic medical program in a little town in North Carolina, Matthew encounters Cecelia Patterson, who is in a pre-law program at the same university – and a killer. Can Matthew's medical knowledge help the police determine how the murderer intended to kill and apprehend a killer? ​ ​Pre Kill is a prequel to the Matthew Paine Mystery series. Get My Copy!

Happy reading,

Jessie