Author Description

Seven Jersey Murders covers seven highly publicized homicide cases in New Jersey between the years 1900 and 1921. It begins with the tragic death of a seventeen-year-old Paterson mill girl, Jennie Bosschieter, who was drugged and raped by four young men-about-town. It then describes the shooting of Mary Bevans, a farmer's wife, in Peters Valley in 1903, and next the bathtub drowning of beautiful Ocey Snead in East Orange in 1909. The last two cases, the slayings of John V. Piper in 1917 in New Brunswick and Janette Lawrence in 1921 in Madison, are officially unsolved. Taken together, the seven cases comprise a vivid part of the social history of New Jersey in the early 20th century.