{"product_id":"person-unknown-daniel-hartsfield-9798184719085","title":"Person Unknown: Elliott Speer, Mount Hermon, and the Murder That Stopped at Suspicion","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA headmaster killed at home. A campus shaken. A murder that stopped at suspicion.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerson Unknown is a historical true crime account of the unsolved 1934 killing of Elliott Speer, headmaster of Mount Hermon School for Boys, who was shot inside Ford Cottage, his campus residence. Written as narrative nonfiction, it follows the public record, witness fragments, legal limits, and institutional aftermath of a case that gathered suspicion without producing a murder charge, trial, or verdict.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the center is a study window: glass, darkness, a household routine, and the unknown person outside close enough to fire. The book examines the world that gave the crime its pressure-Mount Hermon's religious and educational order, the headmaster's role, the family home, the returning school year, and the uneasy overlap between private life and institutional authority.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the investigation widened, attention moved through outsider theories, campus fears, reported reconstruction, disputed letters, alibi questions, closed testimony, and the historical suspicion surrounding Thomas Edwin Elder, the school's dean and second-in-command. The account does not present Elder as a proven offender. It follows the evidence as far as the surviving record allows and stops where the law stopped: at person unknown.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe narrative moves from the world before the window through the night of the shooting, the first response, suspicion inside the school, the legal wall, press coverage, mystery-fiction echoes, and the later Norton proceeding. Appendices add a timeline of events, key people glossary, and source index for readers who want the case organized beyond the main narrative.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book also traces how newspapers, fragments, fiction parallels, and later legal echoes kept the Speer case alive in public memory. A dog that did not bark, a book in a study, a clock, a car, a pond search, and a second shotgun accusation all became part of a story the public wanted to solve. Person Unknown asks what those details can show-and what they cannot prove.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is true crime for readers drawn to cold cases, unsolved murder, historical investigation, and campus mystery, but its approach is restrained rather than sensational. It keeps Elliott Speer's life, family, and community at the center while examining how suspicion can harden when legal truth never arrives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA murder entered Ford Cottage through a window. Nearly a century later, the question remains, not as an invitation to certainty, but as a disciplined return to the record.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Daniel Hartsfield\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798184719085\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/28\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 308\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.91lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.65d","brand":"Daniel Hartsfield","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49174074261759,"sku":"9798184719085","price":14.67,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/person-unknown-daniel-hartsfield-9798184719085","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}