Cold case murder that inspired ‘Twin Peaks’ solved 100 years later

Hadn't heard about this - a couple of TP fans have published a book which they say solves the murder of Helen Drew - the real-life inspiration for the murder of Laura Palmer

New York Post - January 2022:

"More than 100 years later, people are still asking: Whodunnit? Who murdered 20-year old Hazel Drew?

Blonde, buxom and blue-eyed, her body was found face down — her skull crushed — in Teal’s Pond on July 7, 1908, in a heavily wooded remote section of Sand Lake near upstate Troy, NY.

The investigating DA interviewed all the locals who knew her, her family, many of her secret lovers, and anyone who encountered her by chance the night she was murdered, but gave a pass to two influential suspects, both Republicans in the notoriously corrupt town.

And yet, the story of Hazel Drew never died. Decades later, screenwriters David Lynch and Mark Frost were brainstorming story ideas in a Los Angeles coffee shop when Frost remembered stories from his youth, fabulist tales spun by his grandmother while he spent his summers in Taborton, NY, close to the scene of Drew’s murder.

“Don’t go into the woods at night,” his grandmother warned him. Hazel Drew’s ghost was said to haunt the area, waiting for her killer to be identified."


The article goes into quite a bit of detail, actually naming those thought responsible.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/01/murder-that-inspired-twin-peaks-solved-100-years-later-book/