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Death Ride at Euclid Beach: And More True Tales of Crime & Disaster from Cleveland's Past
Cleveland's crime and disaster expert is back yet again, with more true tales of woe from local history. This fifth book in John Stark Bellamy's popular series (which includes They Died Crawling and The Killer in the Attic) delivers 26 new accounts of Cleveland-area crimes and disasters from 1900 through 1950.
The title story is about a death on the Thriller roller coaster at Euclid Beach Park. Also recounted are such tales as the odd international hoax in which a Lakewood lad became The Boy with Hitler's Face and one of Cleveland's most baffling murder mysteries ever: the brutal killing of sweet 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz in her Garfield Heights bedroom.
Sometimes gruesome, often surprising, Bellamy's tales are meticulously researched and delivered in a literate and entertaining style.
The title story is about a death on the Thriller roller coaster at Euclid Beach Park. Also recounted are such tales as the odd international hoax in which a Lakewood lad became The Boy with Hitler's Face and one of Cleveland's most baffling murder mysteries ever: the brutal killing of sweet 16-year-old Beverly Jarosz in her Garfield Heights bedroom.
Sometimes gruesome, often surprising, Bellamy's tales are meticulously researched and delivered in a literate and entertaining style.
264 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2004
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About the author
John Stark Bellamy II
19 books19 followersJohn Stark Bellamy II is the author of six books and two anthologies about Cleveland crime and disaster. The former history specialist for the Cuyahoga County Public Library, he comes by his taste for the sensational honestly, having grown up reading stories about Cleveland crime and disaster written by his grandfather, Paul, who was editor of the Plain Dealer, and his father, Peter, who wrote for the Cleveland News and the Plain Dealer."
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 23, 2022
I was excited to come across this true crime compilation centered around my hometown, Cleveland, since I'm back for a visit. Well-researched and a decent amount of the stories were pretty interesting, but I'm not a fan of the author's outlook on life, which subtly permeates the entire book and does it an injustice: criminals should all be locked up for life because they're all irredeemable and inhuman; men are the wily coyote predators and women are mostly naive victims as a rule.
February 6, 2014
Well researched true crime and other assorted stories about Cleveland, Ohio.
November 30, 2018
This author has written several volumes on the same subject, a fact he trumpets through the book every time he mentions he references another crime, it gets tiresome and it doesn't make you want to read the others.
I grabbed the book because of the title. Euclid Beach is one of my favorite places in the world and I still miss it. So I wanted to read that story, you weave through a lot of blather. The stories aren't arranged in any coherent manner. I lost interest because of the hodge podge arrangement.
Besides, the Euclid Beach ride there was a chapter on a murder case that still haunts me. A teenage girl one suburb was murdered and it's still unsolved.
I grabbed the book because of the title. Euclid Beach is one of my favorite places in the world and I still miss it. So I wanted to read that story, you weave through a lot of blather. The stories aren't arranged in any coherent manner. I lost interest because of the hodge podge arrangement.
Besides, the Euclid Beach ride there was a chapter on a murder case that still haunts me. A teenage girl one suburb was murdered and it's still unsolved.
February 13, 2021
The book was dark, gloomy, weird, whacky and oddly fascinating — which makes it a perfect representation of Cleveland!
Some of the stories were laugh-out-loud ridiculous, others really sad. But almost all of them were interesting
Some of the stories were laugh-out-loud ridiculous, others really sad. But almost all of them were interesting
April 3, 2024
Why are the stories not in chronological order?
The author constantly references his previous works and it gets kind of annoying.
The author constantly references his previous works and it gets kind of annoying.
April 25, 2011
I'd have to say the second half of this book is more interesting than the first half. Why this is I can't exactly say. Maybe the stories in the second half had more appeal to me for whatever reason. For me, each story including and past Eula Dortch's was excellent. Although I do have to admit to the opinion that the author had a thesaurus sitting next to him while writing. I suppose it's possible he writes and talks like this normally but.... I doubt it. I can't imagine that the Queen of England talks like Bellamy in this book. I had to look up some of the words he used and what struck me wasn't that. What struck me was that it wasn't necessary. A more common word could have been introduced instead 99% of the time. Oh well. I learned a few new words.
I thought this maybe would only interest people who have an invested interest in Cleveland but because I'll read just about anything that catches my eye I thought I'd try it. Most true crime lovers would probably get a kick out of Bellamy and his works. If only because everything is pared down. The reader gets a good grasp of the case and the people involved, including the trials when possible but the "extra" isn't there. The bland filler info that usually comes along is all omitted.
I plan on reading another sometime. I doubt I'll go out of my way to find any but a number of cases included here are intertwined in other cases in his other books so I think I'd like to check at least one or two of them out.
Eula Dortch's case was interesting as hell. So many people rallied around her for her "second chance" which she threw out the window with force. I was astounded by the way reporters described a black man in A Swing for a Swing. Horrified is a better word honestly. I didn't live in the 1870's (don't act surprised) and even as well read as I am I was horrified. The Celia Barger story and the Beverly Jarosz stories were fascinating as well, if very hard to read.
I thought this maybe would only interest people who have an invested interest in Cleveland but because I'll read just about anything that catches my eye I thought I'd try it. Most true crime lovers would probably get a kick out of Bellamy and his works. If only because everything is pared down. The reader gets a good grasp of the case and the people involved, including the trials when possible but the "extra" isn't there. The bland filler info that usually comes along is all omitted.
I plan on reading another sometime. I doubt I'll go out of my way to find any but a number of cases included here are intertwined in other cases in his other books so I think I'd like to check at least one or two of them out.
Eula Dortch's case was interesting as hell. So many people rallied around her for her "second chance" which she threw out the window with force. I was astounded by the way reporters described a black man in A Swing for a Swing. Horrified is a better word honestly. I didn't live in the 1870's (don't act surprised) and even as well read as I am I was horrified. The Celia Barger story and the Beverly Jarosz stories were fascinating as well, if very hard to read.
February 15, 2008
John Stark Bellamy II, Death Ride at Euclid Beach and More True Tales of Cleveland Woe (Gray and Company, 2004)
Bellamy puts forth his fifth (and, if his preface is to be believed, final) book of the darker side of Cleveland history, Death Ride at Euclid Beach. If you've read any of the others, you know how this works-- stories ranging from two to roughly twenty pages about some sort of nasty, mysterious, sordid, or otherwise interesting bit of Northeast Ohio's past.
While I'm pretty much the target audience for this sort of thing, I have to say I'm glad Bellamy's hanging it up; I'm not sure whether it's his writing style or the innately boring nature of North Coast life, but Bellamy's reflections in the preface ring quite true; any more and he'd simply be treading water. Face it, Clevelanders; we're just not all that interesting. But what Bellamy's managed to dredge up over the years has been illuminating. ***
Bellamy puts forth his fifth (and, if his preface is to be believed, final) book of the darker side of Cleveland history, Death Ride at Euclid Beach. If you've read any of the others, you know how this works-- stories ranging from two to roughly twenty pages about some sort of nasty, mysterious, sordid, or otherwise interesting bit of Northeast Ohio's past.
While I'm pretty much the target audience for this sort of thing, I have to say I'm glad Bellamy's hanging it up; I'm not sure whether it's his writing style or the innately boring nature of North Coast life, but Bellamy's reflections in the preface ring quite true; any more and he'd simply be treading water. Face it, Clevelanders; we're just not all that interesting. But what Bellamy's managed to dredge up over the years has been illuminating. ***
April 23, 2020
This is another installment in the Cleveland death and disaster series by John Stark Bellamy II. I love all these books. They don't cover any cases in depth but give a concise and quick read with plenty of pictures and headlines (which is where the titles came from) from the papers. It's like digging into an old newspaper archive.
February 9, 2012
IMHO, the weakest of Bellamy's Cleveland books. Not a bad read, but the stories in the other books were much more interesting to me.
January 23, 2016
As with the other book in the 'Cleveland Woe' series, this was a quick and enjoyable read with all kinds of terrible stories from Cleveland's past.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews