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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2021
3 1/2 stars. This true story relates the mystery of the murder of 20 year old Hazel Irene Drew, a crime which inspired the off-beat drama series TWIN PEAKS in the 1990s...
I am only going to give you the facts of her murder but be forewarned...
They aren't pretty...
In 1918, in the small upstate NY town of Taborton, population roughly 8,000, 2 drunk Russian immigrants were stumbling home on Taborton Road...
... the main route in and out of town goes through a lonely stretch of woods believed to be haunted...
... under a full moon, with a hint of winter in the air, the 2 drunk friends approached Teal's Pond...
They sobered up fast...
... and ran home believing they'd seen a ghost. 10 years earlier the body of Hazel Drew was found floating in the pond...
The townsfolk believe Hazel's ghost lingers in the woods looking for justice...
A fortune teller had warned Hazel that, before the year was up, she would die a sudden death...
On July 6, 1908, at sunset, Hazel walked through the woods... everyone from town feared the woods at night but...
... Hazel wasn't afraid
At 9:30 the next morning, her lifeless body was seen lazily floating facedown on Teal's Pond...
The sight was gruesome: Her face in a frozen rictus, eyes bulging from the sockets and resting on her cheeks, tongue swollen and hanging 2 inches from her mouth...
... her bloated and blackened body appeared to have been in the water several days...
... a pink ribbon was wrapped tightly around and embedded in her swollen neck...
Thus begins a tale of murder as old as time itself... who killed Hazel Drew and who was Hazel Drew?...
I like a good true crime mystery and this one had many theories and suspects. For the better part, it was interesting until it began circling itself a little too much for my liking and became very repetitive.
Also, the overwhelming amount of facts presented became somewhat tiresome; I sure didn't care about the day-to-day minutiae about everyone in town and elsewhere.
The mystery surrounding her death was never solved... if I had known this was an unsolved crime, I never would have read the book.
That said, it was a good read with great pictures and it prompted me to buy the TWIN PEAKS series which really did have some similarities to the events and people in this book... I like the series much better!
I am only going to give you the facts of her murder but be forewarned...
They aren't pretty...
In 1918, in the small upstate NY town of Taborton, population roughly 8,000, 2 drunk Russian immigrants were stumbling home on Taborton Road...
... the main route in and out of town goes through a lonely stretch of woods believed to be haunted...
... under a full moon, with a hint of winter in the air, the 2 drunk friends approached Teal's Pond...
They sobered up fast...
... and ran home believing they'd seen a ghost. 10 years earlier the body of Hazel Drew was found floating in the pond...
The townsfolk believe Hazel's ghost lingers in the woods looking for justice...
A fortune teller had warned Hazel that, before the year was up, she would die a sudden death...
On July 6, 1908, at sunset, Hazel walked through the woods... everyone from town feared the woods at night but...
... Hazel wasn't afraid
At 9:30 the next morning, her lifeless body was seen lazily floating facedown on Teal's Pond...
The sight was gruesome: Her face in a frozen rictus, eyes bulging from the sockets and resting on her cheeks, tongue swollen and hanging 2 inches from her mouth...
... her bloated and blackened body appeared to have been in the water several days...
... a pink ribbon was wrapped tightly around and embedded in her swollen neck...
Thus begins a tale of murder as old as time itself... who killed Hazel Drew and who was Hazel Drew?...
I like a good true crime mystery and this one had many theories and suspects. For the better part, it was interesting until it began circling itself a little too much for my liking and became very repetitive.
Also, the overwhelming amount of facts presented became somewhat tiresome; I sure didn't care about the day-to-day minutiae about everyone in town and elsewhere.
The mystery surrounding her death was never solved... if I had known this was an unsolved crime, I never would have read the book.
That said, it was a good read with great pictures and it prompted me to buy the TWIN PEAKS series which really did have some similarities to the events and people in this book... I like the series much better!
