On the morning of July 16, 1936, the crumpled body of nineteen-year-old college student Helen Clevenger was found by her uncle in her room at Asheville, North Carolina’s Battery Park Hotel. She’d been shot in the chest and her face had been cut. A black bell hop named Martin Moore would ultimately confess after the murder weapon was found under his porch, but eyewitnesses reported seeing a white man flee the scene of the crime, and questions of police coercion linger to this day.

My guest is Anne Chesky Smith, author of “Murder at Asheville’s Battery Park Hotel: The Search for Helen Clevenger’s Killer”. She walks us through the details of the case, clouded by politics in the era of Jim Crow.

Photos and more about the story can be found at the Western North Carolina Historical Association’s website: https://www.wnchistory.org/wnc-history-story-behind-the-accused-murderer-in-1936-battery-park-hotel-homicide/

The book is available to purchase here: https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467145602

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