Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder

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An Agatha Nominee for Best Non-Fiction

On a bitter November night in 1945, a widow shot her young boarder, a WWII veteran, and left him to die on the floor of his room.

Helen Clark tossed the gun under the neighbors porch and then took a taxi to join her teen daughters at a movie in Bristol. When the body was found, after several conflicting statements, she settled on the claim that he shot himselffour times, twice in the back. The Commonwealth of Virginia called it murder in a jealous rage. The trial enthralled the nation.

Local author Greg Lilly uses newspaper coverage of the murder, the investigation and the trial to reveal the facts of the Abingdon boardinghouse murder.