Why I like mysteries. Sit back, relax, and let’s chat awhile . . . Sharon A. Lavy
When we moved to the old Funderburg farmhouse in January of 1966 it seemed just a normal two-story house. If only houses could talk, oh what a tale this one could tell. The barn burnt down years ago and a large brick barn had been built in its place. The elderly neighbors told us there was a murder in our springhouse in 1896, seventy years before we moved here. "But if Albert Frantz were tried today," some say, "he never would have been found guilty. " After Albert’s execution the laws of Ohio were tightened so that no one in the state would ever again receive the death sentence based entirely on circumstantial evidence. "There's no doubt he shot Bessie Little," Albert’s cousin, Alvin, said, "but I think that Albert blocked the murder out of his mind. You know, the human spirit desires to confess wrongdoing. Albert was brought up in a German Baptist Brethren home, and he would have admitted his guilt if extreme fright had not caused him to obliterate the happening on the bridge from his mind. He came actually to believe he was not guilty." Emma Frantz Lynch, a relative of Albert, came to visit us after we moved to farm. She old us that Albert Frantz’s parents had lived on this farm and that he had burned down the barn to burn the carriage after he had carried Bessie’s body to the river. Roz Young wrote the story in the Dayton Daily News. The story she wrote was a little different. (Probably more accurate, who knows?) Living in this house for thirty-two years I have always been interested in the falsely accused. I am also a member of the Old German Baptist Brethren faith. Is it any wonder that my mystery writing tends to follow this trend?