Just outside of Columbus, Ohio, in the early summer of 1929, two teenage boys set out to settle a friendly argument over who was the better shot. The sky was clear after a night of rain—and the world was only months away from the Great Depression. But that morning, in a field known to locals as “Shirt‑Tail Alley,” the boys discovered something that would ignite one of the most scandalous murder investigations in history.

Join us for Shirt-Tail Alley: The Murder of Theora Hix. The body of Theora was there in the tall grass, brutally beaten and unrecognizable. Within hours she would be identified as a twenty-four‑year‑old medical student at Ohio State University. As police scrambled for answers, a shocking truth emerged, exposing a web of secret relationships, illicit rendezvous, and a killer no one would ever have suspected.

Sources

The Murder of Theora Hix, The Ohio Project, https://theohioproject.net/history/the-murder-of-theora-hix/

The Mystery of the Thirteenth Key, https://archive.org/details/TrueDetectiveJan1930/page/n11/mode/2up

The Professor & the Coed: Scandal & Murder at the Ohio State University, Mark Gribben, 2010.

The Trial of Dr. James Howard Snook, Short North Gazette, Nancy Patzer, 9/1999.

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