The Maniac in the Bushes: More Tales of Cleveland Woe

"Morbidly fascinating and wickedly entertaining." -- The Plain Dealer

The second volume in Bellamy's popular series includes 13 more incredible true stories of Cleveland crime and disaster, including ...

• Martha Wise, Medina's not-so-merry widow, who poisoned a dozen relatives with arsenic--including her own husband, mother, brother, niece, and nephews--because she enjoyed attending funerals;

• The legendary Torso Murders, which baffled Cleveland safety directory Eliot Ness, two Cuyahoga County coroners, and the entire Cleveland police force as they tried in vain to catch the perpetrator--whom newspapers dubbed the "Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run";

• The unspeakably horrible Collinwood School Fire of 1908, in which 172 schoolchildren perished in panic because of obstructed fire exits;

• Hammer-wielding Velma West, a big-city girl of Cleveland's Jazz Age driven to murder her small-town husband by the slow pace of life of Painesville--and her own obsession with another woman;

• The Flats lumber fire of 1914, which leveled Cleveland's industrial Flats, melted bridges, and very nearly set the entire city ablaze;

• The enduring mystery of ten-year-old Beverly Potts, whose puzzling disappearance from west-side Halloran Park in 1951 launched Cleveland's greatest manhunt;

And many other local heroes and villains in these compelling tales of mayhem, melancholy, and mystery.

Author: John Bellamy
Publisher: Gray & Company Publishers
Published: 10/31/1997
Pages: 298
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.76lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.57w x 0.61d
ISBN: 9781886228191

About the Author
Bellamy, John: - John Stark Bellamy II is the author of six books and two anthologies about Cleveland crime and disaster. The former history specialist for the Cuyahoga County Public Library, he comes by his taste for the sensational honestly, having grown up reading stories about Cleveland crime and disaster written by his grandfather, Paul, who was editor of the Plain Dealer, and his father, Peter, who wrote for the Cleveland News and the Plain Dealer.