So Far from Home

A vivid true crime story that dives into the social and political climate
behind a gruesome murder

True crime is a genre that fascinates a great deal of the population. The recent success of documentaries, podcasts, books, and vlogs on the subject can attest to that. In the late 1800s, the general public was just as enthralled by murder. The more sensational, the better.

In Northern Kentucky, 1896, the headless body of a young woman was found. Soon identified as Pearl Bryan, the 22-year-old daughter of a wealthy farmer from Indiana. The horror of such a fate befalling this young woman caught public attention from the start. When it is discovered that Pearl is five months pregnant, it causes even more sensation. The pressure is on police to find her killer or killers and bring them to justice. More...

SYNOPSIS

The headless corpse of a young woman, discovered in the woods of Northern Kentucky in February 1896, disrupted communities in three states. The woman was Pearl Bryan, daughter of a wealthy farmer in Greencastle, Indiana, and her suspected killers, Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, were dental students in Cincinnati, Ohio. How her decapitated body ended up in the Highlands of Kentucky is the subject of So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder.

It was the age of yellow journalism when sensational murder cases drove newspaper circulation, and daily papers competed to print the most gruesome details and explicit illustrations. Local crimes became national news, and readers followed the daily progress of police investigations and murder trials as if they were serialized mysteries. The murder of Pearl Bryan in 1896, featuring a headless corpse, remorseless villains, and threats of civil unrest, fit the bill perfectly. So Far from Home; The Pearl Bryan Murder revisits the story as it unfolded in the daily press. More...