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A Lynching in Boonville:1900, Boonville, Indiana

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Mr. Rowley, the Boonville Lynching Victim   Boonville, Indiana was the bigger small town in our area when I was growing up. We went to Boonville for groceries on payday. We went to Boonville to go to the dentist. (My Dad worked at Peabody Coal Mine and so we were some of the lucky ones in our community and had dental insurance. Since we had well water with no fluoride in it we were always getting cavities as kids. We used toothpaste with fluoride but we weren’t the best about brushing and flossing as kids.)    Boonville was the county seat. The courthouse is still a lovely architectural landmark in the town square. (But in 1900 the courthouse was not yet built.  There was a square and the courthouse was planned though. A wrought iron fence surrounded the spot where the courthouse would be built and mature trees were thriving in the corners. The streets were just dirt still in 1900.)    When we were older and started going to sporting events we oft...
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Janet Rose Shirar:1980, Kokomo, Indiana

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       Janet Shirar was born on March 10th, 1951 to Elma Rose Marquis Shirar (later Fitch) and Richard Shirar. She had a brother named Steve and a sister named Kathy. The family lived near Converse, Indiana which is just a short drive east of Kokomo.     Janet was a graduate of Oak Hill High School in 1969.     She went on to college at Indiana University-Kokomo and did her senior year in Bloomington, Indiana. She worked first as a teacher in Aurora, Illinois. That’s a rural suburb of Chicago. She was a teacher of special needs students.    Her parents had divorced and each had remarried by 1980.    Janet Shirar was teaching in 1980 at Bon Air Elementary in Kokomo, Indiana. She had only recently moved back to Indiana. Aurora and the surrounding area had seen a lot of unsolved murders of young women. Now we know that serial killer, Bruce Lindahl, was responsible for many murders of young wome...
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