The Wyoming Valley American Tragedy
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 6 September 2024
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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If the tropes in Episode 275 sound a bit like Episode 96, “The Body In Big Moose Lake,” the familiarity was not lost on the people of the day, either. The 1906 murder of Grace Brown in Big Moose Lake inspired novelist Theodore Dreiser to write “An American Tragedy,” which became an instant classic when it was published in 1925. The story you are about to hear struck such a familiar chord that the press made many comparisons and headlines described the murder of Freda McKechnie and the trial of Bobby Edwards in the same terms. Theodore Dreiser was called upon by the New York Post to cover the trial, and he makes a brief appearance in our story when he receives an admonition from the bench.
Culled from the historic pages of the Wilkes-Barre Record, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, the Wilkes-Barre Evening News and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | On Tuesday morning, July 31, 1934, while the body of Frieda McKekney was still in Harvey's Lake, |
| 0:19.0 | Robert Edwards told Rosetta Culver that he did not know where she was. |
| 0:26.6 | The night before, the girl who was soon to be murdered, the man who was soon to confess he killed her, |
| 0:34.6 | and the friend of the victim rode together from Edwardsville to Wilkesbury. |
| 0:40.3 | Referring always to Robert Edwards as he, Miss Culver told of a telephone conversation, |
| 0:47.3 | which she had with him on Tuesday morning only a few hours before the body of Frida McKekney |
| 0:53.3 | was found in the four-foot shallows of Harvey's |
| 0:56.7 | lake. Quote, her sister Elizabeth called me on Tuesday morning to learn whether Frida had spent the |
| 1:04.0 | night with me, and when I told her that I hadn't seen Frida since the night before, she asked me to call |
| 1:10.7 | him. So I called him at work |
| 1:13.9 | and asked if he knew where Frida was. He said he didn't, that he hadn't seen her since Monday night |
| 1:21.1 | after driving straight to Edwardsville, where he left her off at Plymouth Street. Did you give her any money? I asked. He said that he hadn't. |
| 1:30.3 | I told him that I knew she had only eight cents and that she wouldn't get very far with that. |
| 1:36.3 | He agreed that she couldn't. |
| 1:38.3 | I gave Frida credit for having better sense than to do anything like this, I said to him. |
| 1:43.3 | And he replied, yes, you'd think she would have better sense than to do anything like this, I said to him, and he replied, |
| 1:44.8 | yes, you'd think she would have better sense than to do anything like that. |
| 1:48.7 | He told me again that he didn't know where she was and asked me to call him if I learned |
| 1:53.1 | where he was." |
| 1:54.1 | Unquote. |
| 1:56.3 | Home only a few hours from the McKekney residence where she had spent the night, the slain girl's |
... |
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