Overview

Innocence Lost: The Buried Babes of Eastern Kentucky Between 1915 and 1936, three child murders shattered the quiet hollers of Eastern Kentucky-cases that shocked their communities and then faded from national memory. In 1915, seventeen-year-old Stella Kinney was murdered by her uncle, a crime that exposed the dangers hidden inside trusted kin. In 1927, three-year-old Mary Magdalene Pitts was killed by her father and his housekeeper, a case that tested the limits of local law and conscience. And in 1936, four-year-old Mildred Sparks was murdered by her father and step-mother, a tragedy that still haunts Carter County lore. Drawing on newspaper archives, court records, genealogical research, and oral histories, Joe Clark reconstructs each case with precision and care-following the investigations, the courtrooms, the verdicts, and the public outcry, while honoring the brief lives at their center. Innocence Lost is not sensational true crime; it is a meticulously documented remembrance of three children and a stark portrait of early twentieth-century Appalachian justice, poverty, faith, and silence. For readers of Appalachian history and narrative true crime, this book restores names, dates, and hard truths to the record-and refuses to let these little ones be forgotten.

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