Murder of a Herkimer County Teacher: The Shocking 1914 Case of a Vengeful Student

In 1914, Poland, New York, was a picturesque slice of small-town America. But that innocence was shattered with the shocking murder of beloved schoolteacher Lida Beecher at the hands of her former student Jean Gianini. At twenty-one years old, Lida wasn t much older than her students. The son of a successful furniture dealer, Jean had all the advantages in life, but he had been labeled as different by all who encountered him. The shocking murder brought the world s best alienists to the packed Herkimer County Courthouse to try to prove that the teenager s mental development precluded his guilt. Author Dennis Webster utilizes unprecedented access to court documents to reveal details of the sensational crime never before made known to the public."