ELPR

In January 1912, police we're called to the home of Rev. William Christy. Upon arrival they found him deceased. His cause of death was determined to be poisoning. Little did police know, they just stumbled upon the latest victim of a serial killer. This left many questions. Who would murder such a respected member of the community and why? Soon the investigation led them to his Christy's newly wed wife of 3 weeks, Laura. Upon her arrest, Laura admitted that she murdered William because he was mean to her. She claimed that she gave him the poison inside of a capsule. He took it thinking it was medicine for his indigestion. She then withdrew $200 from William's bank account. Laura then admitted to also murdering her 7th husband, John Ebert of Newell, WV by the same manner the year before. Further investigation revealed that Laura had been married 8 times, 3 of which were within 2 years. Investigators also uncovered a disturbing pattern, 6 of her 8 husband's died of my

What started out as a normal September day in East Liverpool, Ohio in 1988 turned into several weeks of horror for area residents as body parts began to surface in the Ohio river. People began to fear for their safety, and with good reason, as for the next 7 years, the killer lived among them walking free. It all started in July 1984 when John and Lynn Hanna were granted a divorce. As part of the settlement, Lynn received the house that the couple shared on Stagecoach Road. Around that same time, Lynn began dating a man named Gordon Reynolds. Shortly after the divorce, John fell behind on his mortgage payments and the bank was threatening to foreclose on the property. Reynolds and Lynn came up with a plan to burn the house down and collect the insurance money and informed Lynn's children. Reynolds told the children to take whatever they wanted out of the house. Reynolds and Lynn removed all of the good furniture from inside the house and replaced it with old furniture. On Septemb

When I started this blog, I said that it wouldn’t be centered around murders. With all due intentions it’s still not. Even though the title of this post suggests otherwise, when I started out I was actually doing research for future post I’m working on looking at the East Liverpool area’s past ties to bootlegging and organized crime. While looking through murder files I came to the realization that something else may be to blame. Since 1797, there have been 116 known or suspected murders committed in East Liverpool, 26 of which remain unsolved today.  While 26 out of 116 doesn’t sound to bad, you have to take into account that most of those unsolved crimes happened in bursts during very short periods of time. There were 4 unsolved murders in 1918, 5 between 1936-1945 and 8 between 1968-1973. *On February 12 th 1912 an unidentified male infant was found dead on the riverbank. *On July 2 nd 1915, an unidentified infant was found dead. Investigations concluded that the baby was pl

On the night of September 8th 1968, East Liverpool resident SSGT Dallas Pridemore was enjoying some R&R while serving in South Vietnam. While wearing civilian clothes he traveled from the capitol Saigon, 4 miles northeast to the Thu Duc District in the Gia Dinh Province to visit a local girl who was presumed to be his girlfriend. At around 10:00pm several Viet Cong showed up at the residence of the girl's family wanting to search for another Viet Cong who had defected to South Vietnam. Upon seeing the plain clothed American, the Viet Cong fighters kidnapped Pridemore at gunpoint. They told the family that he would be returned in a day or two, but never was. He was held captive in the Binh Duong Province before being taken to Phong Phu and transferred to the custody of the Liberation Army Headquarters. On September 10th, 1968, Pridemore was reported to have been held prisoner in the area of the Ong Tang Swamp. Pridemore wasn’t heard of again until January 6th, 1969, w

A few days ago I read a news story about two girl's from East Liverpool who admitted to murdering another girl in Beaver County and burying her in a shallow grave. Just days before that East Liverpool Police determined that a recent house fire that took the lives of a father and his 3 sons was a triple murder/suicide. This led me to do some research into some of the most of the disturbing and shocking murders in this area. I went in thinking that I would find a few but I soon discovered that this area has a long history in murders. No I'm not talking about gang related murders like you see all over the news today. I'm talking about cold blooded murders. The sheer volume of cases that I uncovered was very disturbing. I decided to highlight a few just to give you an example of what I mean. Keep in mind that this is just the tip of the iceberg. I know of several more but I haven't been able to find out enough details about them so they were not included. I must warn y