I just binge watched my first series. No, really.
My desire to do this started with a lawn sign I saw at the intersection of State Routes 43 and 150 in West Sand Lake, Rensselaer County. It was the typical size of a political lawn sign, so I’m shocked I even noticed it at all, but the question written on it struck that innermost Sherlock Holmes core in me, (and my love of murder mysteries, and true crime documentaries):
Who Killed Hazel Drew?
Hazel Drew was a young beautiful woman in her 20s who was brutally murdered and thrown into a pond one late summer night in 1908 in Taborton, (Sand Lake), NY. This murder case and the investigation that followed is one of the things that puts little ol’ Sand Lake on the national map.
In fact, her story is what inspired the 1990s ABC series, Twin Peaks. (This was the show I binged.) It was only two seasons long, but developed a sort of cult following. What made Drew’s story so interesting and worthy of TV fame was the gossip surrounding her and her alleged secret engagement with less than (ahem) lady-like behavior.
Fast forward to 2017, Sand Lake native and filmmaker John Holser saw a Facebook post by Phil Bayly, former WNYT-News Channel 13 reporter and anchor, teasing an interview with author Ron Hughes, who penned a book about the murder, Who Killed Hazel Drew. This interview seemed to correspond with a new sequel series of Twin Peaks, released the previous May on Showtime, that picked up where the initial show left off.
“After I saw the post, it just got me thinking,” said Holser. Being a long Sand Lake native, he did the math and figured his great grandfather would have been in his 20s at the time of Drew’s death. And with his family farm being only a quarter of a mile from the murder scene, he was convinced there was more to this story. He wanted to tell it by making a film.
His first conversations were with Bob Moore, the Sand Lake Town historian. Moore and Holser reached out to a few other local folks who knew more about the area, and this all led to conversations with Mark Frost, who co-created the original Twin Peaks series. Frost worked with the late John Walsh to dig through old newspapers and previous investigation records prior to the original series’ production.
It has been reported that Frost set his story in the northwestern US near the Canadian border. But he used to spend his summers at his grandparents’ home in Sand Lake as a child, and remembers the ghost story of the Teal Pond Murder that his grandmother would tell him to make sure he didn’t go out into the woods at night.
After meeting up with historian Moore and some “citizen detectives,” David Bushman and Mark Givens, Holser decided, “to give my hand a try” at finding out more clues and truths – and make a movie.
The idea to create a documentary came after bringing along some cameras to a walkthrough visiting all of the sites in town associated with Drew. However, he quickly learned that doing historical re-enactments forces budgets to be tight. Holser said: “You can learn a lot from asking people to work for free.”
He filmed his documentary at many of the sites in the Historic Eastfield Village in Nassau, NY. He also shot a lot of scenes in his large, old farmhouse kitchen. He was even lucky enough to find a drone operator who volunteered his services to help bring some of the character of Rensselaer County into the film.
Since that first Facebook post in 2017, Holser spent the next three years focusing on the holes in the story. He found that many locals had valuable information to add. As Holser started to provide updates on the film’s Facebook page, he said, “we found an audience that was positive and engaged…they were fascinated by Hazel.”
This gave him the confidence to keep going, as did his associate producer, Amy J. Freinberg-Trufas.
There are a lot of unanswered questions in the Hazel Drew book, but there are some connections that make you second guess how the investigation played out. What happened here? Why wasn’t a certain person found? Why was that clue given up on? And why did this crazy thing that happened in the mountains get buried?
One night in the middle of production, Holser got a call from a professor in California whose family is from the Capital Region – a prominent family in Troy. And the called dropped the following bombshell: “I think my grandfather may have killed Hazel Drew.”
Holser listened as the called laid out a lot of circumstantial evidence that connected many more dots. But you have to watch the premier of Who Killed Hazel Drew, via Facebook, on Saturday, December 12th at 8:00 p.m. to find out the caller’s identity.
You can find out more information about the viewing here: https://www.facebook.com/WhoKilledHazelDrew.
Because the case was labeled “unsolved,” the murder of Hazel Drew is still an open case in the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office. Drew is buried in Brookside Cemetery in Poestenkill a few yards from the main gate. Many fans and fellow investigators still come to visit her there.
Holser says he plans to develop a spin off to his movie that investigates Rensselaer County’s role in the American Industrial Revolution.
And you know where I’ll be Saturday night.
