I'm happy to announce that my newest book, "Murder & Mayhem in the Hudson Valley," will be out in early 2017 from Arcadia Publishing and The History Press. I'm hard at work researching and writing the stories for the book and boy there was some pretty outrageous crimes in the area back in the day. Here's a taste.


In 1851, Ann Hoag, to all appearances a good wife and mother, murdered her husband of many years with arsenic in order to be with her lover, but she paid for her passion at the end of a rope in Dutchess County, just after giving birth to a sixth child.

In November 1855, the schooner Eudora Imogene was found scuttled in Long Island Sound off the coast of Westchester County. The captain and a mate were missing but there was evidence that a brutal double murder had been committed with everything pointing to the ship’s cook, George Wilson. The man would eventually be executed for the crimes. 

After authorities discovered a man’s remains in the kitchen of Oscar Beckwith in Austerlitz, N.Y. in 1882, he was dubbed the “Austerlitz Cannibal” by the New York press. The 78-year-old hermit almost got away with the crime after escaping to Canada, but an intrepid investigator hauled Beckwith back to Columbia County, New York, where he was found guilty after two trials and executed for his crime three years after the killing. He was the last man to be hanged in New York state.