Death Ride at Euclid Beach : And Other True Tales of Crime and Disaster from Cleveland's Past

“Has more than its fair share of violence, sex, debauchery and reversals of fortune . . . But what emerges between the lines are stories of human suffering, stories of class struggle, stories that speak as much to the criminal mind as to the crime itself.” — Sun Newspapers

More true tales of woe from Cleveland’s crime and disaster expert. The fifth book in John Stark Bellamy’s popular series delivers 26 accounts of Cleveland-area crimes and disasters from 1900 through 1950, including:

• The depression-era “Blue Book Murder,” in which a swank Shaker Heights society party was interrupted by low-class thugs with deadly intentions;
• Truculent barkeep Thomas Martin, whose idea of a good time was shooting the lunch buckets out of unsuspecting laborers’ hands as they came off their Whiskey Island shifts;
• A strange international photo hoax in which Lakewood lad John May Warren became “The boy with Hitler’s face”;
• Sleepwalking Harry Krause, who dreamt one night of battling a gigantic snake but awoke to the real nightmare: he had strangled his own beloved mother in her bed;
• The shocking murder of sweet 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz in her Garfield Heights bedroom—one of Cleveland’s most baffling murder mysteries ever;
• And 20 more local true stories of courage, fear, deception, treachery, tragedy, violence, and guilt.

Sometimes gruesome, often surprising, Bellamy’s tales are meticulously researched and delivered in a literate and entertaining style.

John Stark Bellamy II is the author of six books and two anthologies about Cleveland crime and disaster. The former history specialist for the Cuyahoga County Public Library, he comes by his taste for the sensational honestly, having grown up reading stories about Cleveland crime and disaster written by his grandfather, Paul, who was editor of the Plain Dealer, and his father, Peter, who wrote for the Cleveland News and the Plain Dealer.