NY NY - Hazel Drew, 20, Sand Lake, 7 July 1908 - 'Twin Peaks' inspiration

Daily Mail, long and well-illustrated:

From Sand Lake to Twin Peaks - How one woman's grisly unsolved murder
in 1908 inspired the 90s cult TV drama making a comeback on Showtime

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Hazel Drew - a blond bombshell with a 'well-formed figure' - was last seen picking raspberries by the side of Taborton Road at 7pm on July 7, 1908. Her badly decomposed body was found in Teal Pond four days later.

Police honed in on a dozen suspects, including a 'dim-witted' farm boy, a drunken charcoal peddler, a dentist who had proposed to Drew despite being married and a professor who employed her.

Then there was Drew's 'suicidal and melancholy' uncle William Taylor - who sounds like a character straight out of Twin Peaks - who lived near the pond and helped pull her body from the water.

Locals who had no obvious connection to Drew also came under suspicion, notably the 'half-witted' son of a Sand Lake widow who was believed to torture farm animals.

A 'florid-faced' stranger spotted near the pond and a man with a 'dark-complexion' seen with a girl who looked like Drew on a trolley bus were also suspected.

Drew's skull had been smashed in and a piece of ribbon was wrapped around her neck. But that didn't stop people speculating that she'd been mowed down by a reckless 'automobilist' in a newly-invented 'touring car.'

It was briefly suggested that the driver had panicked and tried to make the accident look like murder.

Drew's death was the newspaper sensation of the day. Journalists arrived from all over the US to report on the twists and turns of the 'Teal Pond mystery.'
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more at the links

Saratogian:

Our history: Looking into old murder

From the Troy Record anniversary account via Saratogian link above:

Was the killer:

*Frank Smith, the farm hand, and/or Rudolph Gunderman, a peddler of charcoal, who said they saw Hazel on July 7?

*The "dark complexioned" man who was spotted on a trolley with a girl who looked like Hazel?

*An unnamed dentist from Troy who allegedly had proposed to her, even though he was married?

*Prof. Edward Cary of RPI, for whom Hazel worked as a governess but whose employ she had abruptly left?

*Her melancholy and suicidal uncle, who lived near the pond and in fact was so near it when her body was discovered that he was enlisted to help pull her from the water?

*"The stout man with the florid face," in the words of a newspaper article, who was spotted near Teal Pond around the time of the murder?

*The Troy man with hypnotic powers whom Hazel's mother suspected of exercising a mysterious influence over her?

*The "half-witted son" of a Sand Lake widow who was rumored to be a torturer of farm animals?

Or was it any one of a dozen other suspects?

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Washington Post:

Hazel’s brutal murder was all but forgotten. Until she inspired ‘Twin Peaks.’

Thank you so much for this information! I was under the impression that Twin Peaks was inspired by Elizabeth Short's case. As a huge fan of the show, I am psyched to learn the real story behind it!

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zoryalilith said:

Thank you so much for this information! I was under the impression that Twin Peaks was inspired by Elizabeth Short's case. As a huge fan of the show, I am psyched to learn the real story behind it!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

Sure! I didn't know about this either and I was a big Twin Peaks fan; then years went by and I found the story and the location -- less than an hour from me on the Taconic Pkwy!

Hazel Drew, 20, Murdered 7 July 1908

Hazel Drew was last seen picking raspberries by the side of Taborton Road at 7pm on July 7, 1908. Her badly decomposed body was found in Teal Pond four days later.

Police honed in on a dozen suspects, including a 'dim-witted' farm boy, a drunken charcoal peddler, a dentist who had proposed to Drew despite being married and a professor who employed her...

... Drew's skull had been smashed in and a piece of ribbon was wrapped around her neck. But that didn't stop people speculating that she'd been mowed down by a reckless 'automobilist' in a newly-invented 'touring car.'

It was briefly suggested that the driver had panicked and tried to make the accident look like murder.

Drew's death was the newspaper sensation of the day. Journalists arrived from all over the US to report on the twists and turns of the 'Teal Pond mystery...

... Drew had been employed by Professor Edward Cary as a servant-turned-governess to his children. But she abruptly left the job on the morning before she disappeared without giving a reason.

She checked a suitcase packed with clothes into storage at Troy railroad station – though no one ever found out why – and was seen catching a train to Albany. Her final 24 hours remain a mystery...

LINK:

Twin Peaks inspired town's unsolved murder | Daily Mail Online

Murder that inspired ‘Twin Peaks’ solved 100 years later: Book
Jan 1 2022
''More than 100 years later, people are still asking: Whodunnit? Who murdered 20-year old Hazel Drew?

Blonde, buxom and blue-eyed, her body was found face down — her skull crushed — in Teal’s Pond on July 7, 1908, in a heavily wooded remote section of Sand Lake near upstate Troy, NY.

The investigating DA interviewed all the locals who knew her, her family, many of her secret lovers, and anyone who encountered her by chance the night she was murdered, but gave a pass to two influential suspects, both Republicans in the notoriously corrupt town.''

Blonde, buxom and mysterious Hazel Drew, 20, directly inspired the saga of Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee, right) on “Twin Peaks.”

''William and Elizabeth Hoffay told detectives they were driving their carriage past Teal’s Pond on the evening of July 7, when they encountered another carriage out that night — a fancy, custom-built coach with a handsome colt, which implied luxury uncommon to that area — “city folks.” The driver turned to avoid making eye contact and there was something in the back of the rig, the Hoffays said, but they couldn’t make out what it was. As the couple looked back at the pond, they saw another figure lurking on the far shore — precisely where Hazel’s hat and glasses were later found.

‘Hazel lived a life filled with secrets, mysteries and contradictions.’

Authors and “Twin Peaks” fans David Bushman and Mark Givens
Police heard the couple’s story but did not investigate for a week. Eventually, Detective Powers learned the name of the suspected coach driver: Fred W. Schatzle, an embalmer for the local undertaker and also a Republican politician. Schatzle, it turned out, had telephoned the livery on July 6, requesting a horse and carriage for a friend, William Cushing, the Republican committeeman for the Eleventh Ward. Cushing admitted to police that Schatzle helped him secure a carriage to take him to Sand Lake on the night of the murder. And both men knew Hazel Drew.''

A book on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Teals-Pond-Mystery-Inspired-ebook/dp/B08Z7HLLYM

That book arrived on my doorstep yesterday!

I read the Murder at Teal's Pond book. It was engrossing