NH Humanities Program: Case Closed on the 1873 Smuttynose Ax Murders

April is True Crime Month at the Library. Here's another True Crime event free and open to the public.

For almost 150 years the moonlight ax murder of two Norwegian women on the rocky Isles of Shoals has haunted New England. Popular historian and lecturer J. Dennis Robinson cuts through the hoaxes, lies, rumors, and fiction surrounding the arrest, trial and execution of 28-year old Louis Wagner, who claimed his innocence to the end.  If you read the bestselling novel Weight of Water or saw the Hollywood film -- that's not what happened. A longtime summer steward of Smuttynose Island, Robinson lays out the facts based on his book-length study, Mystery on the Isles of Shoals. This program is sponsored in part by New Hampshire Humanities.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

J. Dennis Robinson is an independent and often "irreverent" historian, columnist, and lecturer. He is the author of a dozen narrative history books that feature Wentworth by the Sea hotel, Strawbery Banke Museum, Privateer Lynx, outlaw Jesse James, the Isles of Shoals and more.  His critically acclaimed book, Mystery on the Isles of Shoals, unpacks the infamous 1873 ax murders on nearby Smuttynose Island. His most recent fully-illustrated hardcover history of Portsmouth's landmark 1878 theater is entitled MUSIC HALL: How a City Built a Theater and a Theater Shaped a City. Dennis is currently working on a history of New Castle, New Hampshire oldest, smallest, and only island town, due in 2022. His history column appears weekly in the Portsmouth Herald. Dennis lives in the former shipbuilder's village of Atlantic Heights, just across the swirling Piscataqua River from Maine--which he can see from his kitchen window , but only after the leaves fall. For more information visit jdennisrobinson.com online.