One of the State's Lesser Sons

Today's Charleston Daily Mail, prompted apparently by our recent pair of federal death verdicts in Charleston, has a lengthy story about Harry Powers, a West Virginia serial killer who was executed at Moundsville in 1932. Powers, dubbed the "Bluebeard of Quiet Dell," was tried and convicted of killing five people at his home outside of Clarksburg and was suspected of involvement in as many as 50 murders (he apparently confessed to several more on his death bed).

Powers didn't exactly pick up stray victims off the street. He sought victims in 1930s-era personal ads in national magazines. The victims of whom he was convicted of killing came from Illinois and Massachusetts. At his home, Powers had a room in a cellar that served as a cell/torture chamber for his victims - there he allegedly gassed them and taunted them with food hung above their heads. Predictably, a media circus surrounded his trial:

His trial in December of 1931 generated so much interest from reporters and from the general public that it had to be moved from the Clarksburg courthouse to Moore's Opera House, the only place in the city with an auditorium large enough to hold the crowd.

Powers, lawyers, the judge and jury sat on the stage.

And his hanging:

It might have been one of the first media circuses the state had ever seen. According to an article in the Clarksburg newspaper, a throng of 40 people stood outside the penitentiary, pushing and shoving their way to the front, even though the gallows weren't visible from outside the prison walls.

'Moundsville had taken on a holiday festive appearance in preparation for the execution of the man whose crimes had startled the world,' the story said. 'Outside the prison, a crowd gathered along the curbs. Automobiles were lined up for blocks. Inside, state officials, prison officials, doctors, policemen, even one of the jurors who convicted the man, gathered to await the summons that would take them to the dingy death house in a remote corner of the prison grounds.'

Powers's legacy, if not his name, lives on:

Two decades later, in 1953, his fate was sealed as a permanent part of serial killer lore.

That year, author Davis Grubb released his best-selling book, 'The Night of the Hunter,' which later became a blockbuster movie. The story was about the fictional Harry Powell, who lured women and then murdered him.

It was based on Harry Powers.

That's one bit of our history of which I was not aware.