Did the phrase "That's what I was wondering..." solve a murder? In the morning hours of July 16, 1936, Helen Clevenger's uncle discovered her bloodied body crumpled on the floor of her small room in Asheville's grand Battery Park Hotel. She had been shot through the chest. Buncombe County Sheriff Laurence Brown, up for reelection, desperately searched for the teenager's killer as the public clamored for answers. Though witnesses reported seeing a white man leave the scene, Brown's focus turned instead to the hotel's Black employees and on August 9 he arrested bell hop Martin Moore. After a frenzied four-day trial that captured the nation's attention, Moore was convicted of Helen's murder on August 22. Though Moore confessed to Sherriff Brown, doubt of his guilt lingers and many Southerners feared that justice had not, in fact, been served. Author Anne Chesky Smith weaves together varying accounts of the murder and investigation to expose a complex and disturbing chapter in Asheville's history.

One Act play about the murder of Helen Clevenger at the Battery Park hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. Helen was visiting her Uncle in Asheville, when things took a turn for the worse. The play unfolds as the hotel manager helps the crooked cop frame an innocent hotel worker.

Discover the wicked and sordid history of Asheville, North Carolina in this volume by author and Asheville native Marla Hardee Milling. Asheville is a wonderfully strange city, but it has a few shadows in its past. Teenager Helen Clevenger was brutally murdered at the luxurious Battery Park Hotel in 1936. William Dudley Pelley called himself "America's Hitler" and founded his Silver Legion in Asheville. He stirred up enough anti war propaganda to go to prison. A desperado named Will Harris came into town on a cold night in November 1906 and left a trail of dead bodies and panic among Asheville citizens. Mayor Gallatin Roberts killed himself in the wake of collapsing banks. Asheville native Marla Hardee Milling delves into wicked stories of murder, sedition, corruption, arson and disease.

Explore the international headlines and the little-known crimes, the solved and the wrongly solved, in these tales of the North Carolina mountains. Western North Carolina is known for mountain vistas and wild, rocky rivers, but remote wilderness and quaint small towns can have a dark side. Learn the truth behind the famous murder ballad Tom Dooley. Delve into the criminal history of moonshine, and the tales of two unexpected bombers in idyllic Mayberry. Crime writer Cathy Pickens brings a novelist's eye to Western North Carolina's crime stories that define the sinister--and quirky--side of the mountains.

Mystery writer, Tom Collins, departs from his usual genre to explore Asheville–the city they call the Weirdest, Happiest, Quirkiest, and Most Haunted Place in America. It’s a book that tells visitors everything they need to be Asheville Smart–things to do and see, but also the city’s secrets and mysteries along with its ghosts, if you believe in such things. If you don’t, you still might want to take care. Strange things happen in these quartz laden mountains. Oh, I also threw in a hardy dose of Appalachian Mountain tall tales, folklore, and legends, some alleged, some exaggerated and some hard to believe at all! Award Winning Book for Getting The Most Out of Visits to Asheville and the Western North Carolina: Asheville History—important monuments and people in the city’s history Attractions—things to do and to see in Asheville and neighboring areas Mysteries and Ghosts—stories at the heart of vortexes and hauntings Tall Tales—in the Appalachian Mountain tradition The book’s cover depicts the view down Patton Avenue toward City Hall painted by Asheville River Arts District’s artist Jeff Pittman. 2022 winner of Independent Press Award for its literary category.

Middle-aged shrink David "Gritz" Goldberg is enjoying lunch one day when he receives a message to hurry to the historic Battery Park Hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, where an unidentified man is preparing to leap to his death. The predicament, as it turns out, is both more and less dire than it first appears. The man has no intention of jumping. He is T Royal, Gritz's childhood caretaker, back in Asheville after a long absence to live out his retirement. That's the good news. The bad news is that, since his return, T has been plagued by the ghost of Mordecai Moore, a young black man put to death sixty-five years earlier for a murder he didn't commit. In 1939, a girl was killed at the hotel just prior to President Franklin Roosevelt's visit to Asheville during a Southern campaign swing. T was with Moore that night and knew he didn't do it but couldn't testify because of the racial climate of the time. Working from the same office where Zelda Fitzgerald once shared secrets with her own psychiatrist, Gritz and T form an unlikely duo. They stumble across dirty history involving members of Gritz's own synagogue, as well as locals connected to Willard Dudley Paully, the head of a group of Nazi sympathizers known as the Silver Shirts. Eventually, Gritz finds himself set up to take a murder rap. That is, until the mystery leads him to a corrupt senator, a red hot shiksa nurse, a seánce led by a massage therapist, a mute old lady with computer skills, and a local salvage company that may have changed the course of world history. The Past is Never Dead introduces a reluctant, quirky sleuth unlike any other. Readers will enjoy searching out the real-life parallels in Asheville, a town equal parts historic and New Age.

"A beautiful young woman dies from a fall in Asheville's greatest hotel ... and the Pink Lady is said to still wander the massive halls of the Grove Park Inn. A building is constructed on the grounds of a miserable, ancient cemetery ... now they say you can still hear strange noises at night in the halls of Clyde A. Erwin High School. In 1908, a group of prisoners finally comes to Christ ... after being terrorized at night by a spook in the Buncombe County Jail. A distraught mother hangs herself from the rafters of a looming Beaucatcher Mountain bridge ... and the legend of Helen is born. These stories and more can be found within the pages of this remarkable book. A surreal mixture of history and myth, it searches for the fading morsels of truth while examining the feasts of folklore. These are the tales that linger in the minds of Asheville, as old and flavored as the mountains themselves. From secret chambers in aged castles to cryptic etchings on forgotten tombstones, this mountain town is filled with the lore and intrigue of the mysterious side of life."--Publisher description