Kate March

NEWS! Writer's Digest honors "No Witnesses," in annual competition! visit: www.acmarch.wix.com/alanmarch for details.

One Wednesday morning, when she had been editor of the weekly Price Hill News for just a year and a half, Kate March stood talking to a journalism class at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary (now known as Cincinnati Christian University) intending to teach students how to deal with the press. Kate had prepared material angled at methods to get good works into print. After talking for about 12 minutes, she invited questions, and was bowled over. Those nice youngsters never even got close to the kind of helpful things she intended to tell them.

"How," they asked, "would you have covered the Posteal Laskey story if you had been here then?" Kate was stunned. That was a high-profile murder case in Cincinnati. Laskey was a black man who became known as the Cincinnati Strangler, and was convicted of the murder of a young white woman in Price Hill. The students were unhappy with what they believed was sensationalism by the local press. Kate told them that frankly, she didn't know, that she had never been in such a position, that she believed she would handle such a story with accuracy and professionalism.

The opportunity to find out came quickly. As she walked out through the seminary lobby, she was called to the phone. It was her office. "Kate, you better get back here quick. There's been a holdup in Delhi. Four women have been shot."

She would win an award from the Ohio Newspaper Association for her coverage of the tale of "The Cabinet Supreme Murders," which now includes sordid details of the life of a man who would become an inmate in the same prison as Posteal Laskey.

Kate March worked 18 years as a journalist, mostly editing weekly newspapers in suburban Cincinnati and in Lombard, Illinois. She was a stringer for the Cincinnati Enquirer and was on the staff of the Pulitzer Prize winning Daily Gazette of Xenia, Ohio.

She has covered crime stories and police departments large and small and has been exposed to such strangeness as being called as a juror in a sensational murder case about which she had written the original stories.

The most gripping of all her stories, she says, is the Cabinet Supreme murders, which is told in her book, "No Witnesses," from the dissolute and corrupt youth of the shooter plus his violent and illicit activities as a convict, through the time he became an acquiescent inmate. At the time of his third parole hearing in 1994, the shooter made history, as the first man in Ohio to be refused another parole hearing for twenty years.

Kate March has won numerous awards for her writing from various organizations, including the Northern Illinois Newspaper Association; the Ohio Newspaper Women's Association; the Ohio Newspaper Association. Included in her awards was recognition from the Ohio Newspaper Association for her coverage of the Cabinet Supreme murders. She was also recognized by the Price Hill Civic Club as a Woman of the Year in Business Life, and received certificates of appreciation from the Delhi Wing of the Civil Air Patrol and the Greater Price Hill Improvement Association.

Kate has been a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi) since 1977, and a member of the Miami Valley Literacy Council since 1988.

Kate March passed away February 2007 at the age of 80.

"No Witnesses" was published after her death.