The Night Away: A Conversation with Sharon Hatfield, Journalist and Author of "Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell"

Murder Sheet

MurderSheet

True Crime, Murder, Unsolved Case, Killing, Murderer, Cold Case

3.8 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1935, a young schoolteacher named Edith Maxwell went out dancing. When she came back to her family's home in Pound, Virginia, the trouble started. By the next day, her father Trigg was dead. But was Edith a murderer, or a victim? And how did relentless media coverage poison the public's understanding of the case. In this episode, we'll speak to author and journalist Sharon Hatfield about her book on the case.

Buy Sharon's book Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Content warning. This episode contains discussion of murder and domestic abuse. The moon was waning on the night of July 20th, 1935. In the darkness,
0:13.0	darkness, 21-year-old Edith Maxwell slipped into her family's home.
0:18.0	The Maxwell's lived in rural Appalachia,
0:21.0	specifically the town of Pound, in Virginia's Wise County.
0:25.0	Name for the Appalachian Mountains, Appalachia stretches from the western Catskill Mountains in New York,
0:31.0	down into the northern parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, incorporating
0:36.6	swaths of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee in between.
0:48.2	It's considered a socioeconomic and cultural region of the United States.
0:53.0	Now there's been much myth-making about Appalachia
0:55.5	over the years, much of it quite degrading and stereotypical.
1:00.5	Well, it is true that the region has struggled with poverty, it is also true the mass media has
1:06.3	long sought to smear Appalachia with assertions that its people are violent, unsophisticated hillbillies.
1:14.0	Keep that in mind later.
1:16.0	It's an important aspect of how we understand the saga of Edith Maxwell.
1:22.0	Anyways, let's get back to that warm night in July.
1:26.0	Edith had been out dancing at the Little Ritz Club in the nearby town of Wies.
1:31.0	The young school teacher liked to go out and have a good time. After all, she was a fully
1:36.0	grown adult and a professional woman to boot. But her feelings on the matter brought her into frequent
1:42.2	conflict with her father Trigg.
1:44.8	He felt that young ladies ought to not go out.
1:48.0	So when Edith stepped back into the home she shared with Trigg, her mother Anne, and her 11-year-old sister Mary Catherine, she was walking
1:56.0	into a very tense environment.
	...

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