016: True Crime

Pleasing Terrors

Fairy tales often teach an important moral lesson, hidden within the entertaining twists and turns of the story. The tale of Bluebeard, the rich man who keeps the bodies of his murdered wives locked behind the forbidden doors of the dungeon in his castle, doomed to have his wrongdoing exposed by his newest wife, serves as a reminder to young women that curiosity can sometimes be your downfall -- or your savior. In real life there are rarely happy endings to tragedies and moral lessons must be learned the hard way.

For Zona Shue, choked to death in her own home, life was certainly no fairytale. Yet the strange events that led to a murder conviction were as fantastical as any tale written up in a storybook. The moral lesson in her twisted fairy tale?

Mothers are always right.

Episode Highlights:

• The horrifying fairy tale of Bluebeard and his wives
• The trial of the Greenbrier Ghost
• Zona and Trout: A love story gone sour
• A grisly discovery
• Witnesses on the stand
• Mary Jane Hester’s otherworldly visitor
• Confessions from beyond the grave
• Broken vertebrae and bruised skin: Autopsy discoveries
• Trout Shue’s troubled life
• A mother’s vengeance -- fact or fairytale?

Resources:

The Man Who Wanted Seven Wives by Katie Letcher Lyle, Quarrier Press 1999

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