Murder at Teal's Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks

by David Bushman, Mark T. Givens, Mark Frost (Foreword by)

Overview

A brilliantly researched reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten century-old murder that inspired one of the most seductive mysteries in the history of television and film.

In 1908, Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in Sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and, almost a century later, the phenomenon of Twin Peaks. Who killed Hazel Drew? Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities—a young, beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is, Who was Hazel Drew?

Seeking escape from her poor country roots, Hazel found work as a domestic servant in the notoriously corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans for reinvention. But the investigation that followed her brutal murder was fraught with red herrings, wild-goose chases, and unreliable witnesses. Did officials really follow the leads? Or did they bury them to protect the guilty?

The likely answer is revealed in an absorbing true mystery that’s ingeniously reconstructed and every bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542026420
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/2022
Pages:	364
Sales rank:	1,059,272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

David Bushman, a longtime TV curator at the Paley Center for Media, is the author of Conversations with Mark Frost: “Twin Peaks,” “Hill Street Blues,” and the Education of a Writer and coauthor of Twin Peaks FAQ and Buffy the Vampire Slayer FAQ. He is an adjunct professor of communication arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey, as well as a former TV editor at Variety and program director at TV Land. David lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Mark T. Givens works as a consultant for the federal government and is the creator and host of the Twin Peaks–centric podcast Deer Meadow Radio (www.deermeadowradio.libsyn.com). He lives a sometimes strange and wonderful life with his wife and three children in Washington, DC, where he is currently brainstorming concepts for his next book.

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

Dramatis Personae 5

Introduction 13

Chapter 1 Murder at the Pond 22

Chapter 2 The Right Man for the Job? 39

Chapter 3 Hazel 56

Chapter 4 Aunt Minnie 71

Chapter 5 Mountain or Molehill? 85

Chapter 6 Final Days 105

Chapter 7 Cherchez L'homme 124

Chapter 8 Sex, Lies, and Real Estate 148

Chapter 9 The Mamie Killion Affair 157

Chapter 10 The Circus Comes to Town 171

Chapter 11 Wheat from the Chaff 198

Chapter 12 Inquest 219

Chapter 13 South Troy Against the World 247

Epilogue 281

Authors' Note 293

Acknowledgments 297

Selected Bibliography 301

Index 307

About the Authors 327

Editorial Reviews

An Amazon Best Book of the Month: History

“In this taut true crime page-turner…The authors effectively summarize five years of research, utilizing a range of sources, and paint a convincing picture of events that make readers feel like they’re experiencing developments in real time…this account will hold appeal beyond David Lynch fans.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The story is fascinating and the added historical details add depth. Those interested in true crime, especially of an archival nature, will relish this.” —Booklist

“In David Bushman and Mark Givens’s exhaustively researched book, Laura Palmer’s doppelganger is Hazel Drew, a young beauty with deep secrets found dead in a pond outside of Albany in 1908. One-hundred-fifteen years later, Bushman and Givens unspool the mystery of Hazel’s unsolved murder, suspect by suspect.” —Vanity Fair

“Murder At Teal’s Pond is a fascinating, haunting true crime mystery.” —Oxygen

“In the literary equivalent of an archaeological dig, authors Bushman and Givens unearth the details of a sensational murder mystery that gripped the nation in 1908 and inspired the sinister cult favorite, Twin Peaks. Now, with Murder at Teal’s Pond, the real characters emerge in a drama that proves to be every bit as darkly compelling as the TV classic—if not more so.” —John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

From the Publisher

★ 10/25/2021

Who killed 20-year-old Hazel Drew and left her bludgeoned corpse in an Upstate New York pond in 1908? In this taut true crime page-turner, Bushman (Conversations with Mark Frost: Twin Peaks, Hill Street Blues, and the Education of a Writer) and Givens vividly revisit the murder, which inspired the cult TV series Twin Peaks. The eccentric individuals linked to the crime include Drew’s reclusive uncle, William Taylor, who owned a farm near Teal’s Pond and seemed oddly indifferent to his niece’s fate, and her aunt, Minnie Taylor, the victim’s closest confidant, who was reluctant to share information with investigators. Jarvis O’Brien, the DA who supervised the investigation, uncovered secrets about Drew, a servant who suddenly left her job without an obvious reason days before her body was found. O’Brien’s inquiries revealed possible links between the killing and rumored “wild sex parties and young women held captive against their will at a camp” near the pond, as well as evidence implicating some influential local politicians. The authors effectively summarize five years of research, utilizing a range of sources, and paint a convincing picture of events that make readers feel like they’re experiencing developments in real time. While their solution to the crime may not persuade everyone, this account will hold appeal beyond David Lynch fans. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-10-26
A pop-culture writer and podcaster attempt to solve a 120-year-old cold-case murder in upstate New York.

Bushman and Givens are in thrall to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, about which Bushman has written and Givens has devoted a podcast. On the TV show, a woman named Laura Palmer turns up dead, and it’s up to investigators and curious townies to examine a barrel of red herrings before hazarding a provisional truth. So it is with the case of Hazel Drew, “beautiful, blonde, and connected to a number of powerful men,” whose dreadfully swollen body was recovered from a pond not far from Troy, New York, in 1908. The real-life gruesomeness is classic Lynch territory, though more reminiscent of his film Blue Velvetthan of the relatively civilized series. Investigators in the Drew case hazarded any number of guesses, many of which concerned the young woman’s character. Though from a hardscrabble background, with an alcoholic, chronically unemployed father, she had some money and nice things, and the conclusion was that she must have come by them by illicit means. The authors paint a detailed portrait of a police force—indeed, a whole city—riven by petty politics and undermined by corruption. They are also hopelessly bound to Twin Peaks. “Sand Lake, we found out, has twin peaks of its own: Perigo Hill, in the northeast corner of the town, and Oak Hill, near the center, each rising to an elevation of nine hundred feet,” they write, a point that contributes nothing to the tale. The looping narrative is dogged by other annoyances, including the authors’ habit of peppering the narrative with far too many rhetorical questions: “Where was Hazel going when she left Union Station on Monday, July 6? Where did she spend Monday night and Tuesday morning?” Their proposed solution stands up to reason, but by the time they arrive at it, readers could be forgiven for abandoning the chase.

A so-so murder mystery best left for fans of Twin Peaks.

Kirkus Reviews