Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman

True account of a prominent woman of Logan during the Depression, who is brutally murdered with a broken neck, throat slashed, and point blank gunshots to the head. Mamie was a member of the tight lipped aristocracy who used a special room in downtown Logan for their private club for gambling, illegal drinking, wife-swapping and the like.

A local handyman was apparently framed for the murder and spent the rest of his life in prison. But recently a slew of evidence pointing to several groups from the mob, to the KKK, to rumrunners had a part in this gruesome story.

It has been called the Appalachian Dahlia, mostly because it closely parallels another famous homicide that took place years later in Hollywood. Over seventy-five years ago, in the cradle of southern West Virginia's most rugged mountain range, a bizarre and grisly murder grabbed national headlines due to the peculiar circumstances surrounding the senseless homicide.

Now, a book – a new revision offering greater detail and newly discovered information – takes another look at a puzzling true account, which involved a number of white-collar suspects, an intense community scandal and a shocking gangland-style execution that still baffles the public.

This is a full re-write and revision of a former literary hit, The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman. The book represents the first in-depth work concerning socialite Mamie Thurman and her inexplicable, gruesome murder back in 1932.

It includes a new investigation and several all-new chapters in the murder case. Mamie was savagely destroyed on a rainy night in June: shot in the head; neck fractured; face disfigured; throat cut; and her lifeless corpse dumped over a mountainside, like garbage at an illegal dump site.

Review A good read that clearly presents the brutality of the murder, the tragic sadness of the life cut short, and the complexity that makes it difficult to determine exactly what happened (unless you believe the trial was anything more than a mockery). --C.J. Dye, Austin, TX

Is it true that Southern West Virginia's most popular specter continues to haunt the region and seek justice for an unspeakable act of violence? Due to a mysterious and hideous crime, the Holden #22 region of Logan County, West Virginia, has been described as a hotbed of paranormal activity for well over seven decades. According to Troy Taylor, president of the American Ghost Society, Appalachia has more than its share of demented accounts of the macabre. It also has enough documented stories of ghostly manifestations and unsightly monsters to fill a large library. One such account that refuses to die, so to speak, is that of the homicide of Mamie Thurman -- another entry into the chronicles of the bizarre. Expect more sightings of Mamie's ghost now that the F. Keith Davis book, The Secret Life and Brutal Death of Mamie Thurman, has been revised and reissued. --HuntingtonNews.net, Book Review

This is the true account of a prominent, Depression-era Logan woman who was found brutally murdered. Mamie Thurman was a member of the tight-lipped, local aristocracy that frequented a private club in downtown Logan, where they gambled, drank illegally, swapped wives and the like. A local handyman was apparently framed for her murder and spent the rest of his life in prison. Recently, however, a slew of evidence points to several groups, from the mob, to the KKK, to rumrunners, as having a part in this gruesome story. --Wonderful West Virginia Magazine About the Author Authored by newspaperman and Logan County resident F. Keith Davis. His bone-chilling examination of the slaying, which now includes new photographs from the original state police investigation and actual court testimony from the subsequent trial, reveals even more about the murdered woman's adulterous affairs with prominent local businessmen and her high-risk lifestyle.