The Murders of Polly Frisch
by Cindy Amrhein & Ellen Lea Bachorski.
New re-edited, revised 2nd edition with new cover & information.
Released in April of 2014.
In 1856, in the rural town of Alabama, NY one woman's family suffered from multiple unexplained deaths. The town folk grew suspicious of the now remarried Polly Frisch. An investigation commenced, bodies were exhumed, an affair—exposed. Polly would be arrested for the murders of her first husband and daughters. Her fourteen-year-old son would testify against her. If found guilty, the punishment for such a crime was the gallows. Would Polly be the first woman in Genesee County history to be hanged for murder? Bread & Butter is the true story of Polly Frisch who poisoned her family with arsenic and the five trials it took to convict her.
HistorySleuth Publications
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9895533-1-5
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-9895533-0-8
MOBI (for Kindle) ISBN: 978-0-9895533-2-2
EPUB (All other e-readers) ISBN: 978-0-9895533-3-9
NOW AVAILABLE ON:
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Cindy
Amrhein is the Assistant Historian for Wyoming
County in western New York. Prior to 2007, Cindy was the historian for Polly’s
hometown of Alabama.
“First we had to wade
through the folklore, since much of that was wrong. She killed more of her
family than first thought, and there were five trials, not three,” says Amrhein
when speaking about her research for Bread
and Butter the Murders of Polly Frisch. “There were some local tales as to
where they were buried that turned out to be confused with another murder case.
It was important to get down to primary records and the facts. The more we
found, the bigger the story got.”
These
days, Cindy spends her time crafting more stories for eager readers and
blogging at http://historysleuth.blogspot.com/
. She is currently editing her next book, Right
of the Soil: an Abstractor’s View of Indian Land Title in New York, and
writing The Milk Carton Murders, a
tale of mystery and murder.
Ellen
Lea Bachorski was the owner of The Trading Post,
located in the hamlet of Basom in Polly’s hometown of Alabama, when she first
met Cindy and the two women decided to tell the story of Polly Frisch.
If you ask Ellen what
intrigued her the most about Polly’s tale, she’ll tell you, “Whether or not she
was guilty—if it was her who killed her family or if it was someone else. It's
unfathomable to think a woman would kill her husband and children.”
When she’s not digging
into tales of the past, she volunteers in her local community and spends time
with her children and grandchildren. She is a board member of the Historic
Batavia Cemetery. Ellen has coordinated two cookbook projects through Morris
Publishing: the first for the town of Alabama's 175th anniversary, the other
for the 200th anniversary of Genesee County, New York. She is currently
coordinating another cookbook as a fundraiser for the Batavia Peace Garden.
“I enjoyed writing with
Cindy,” says Bachorski. “My children enjoyed it. I shared every moment with
them, every news flash with each piece of information.”
