Inside the baffling 1908 murder that inspired the cult classic ‘Twin Peaks’

Her decease inspired nan cult 1990s TV show “Twin Peaks.” Her shade is said to haunt nan woods wherever her assemblage was recovered much than 100 years ago. And yet Hazel I. Drew remains a mystery.

Drew was a pretty, vivacious 19-year-old blonde surviving successful Troy, NY, erstwhile she vanished adjacent her uncle’s workplace connected July 7, 1908. Locals spotted her assemblage floating successful a mill pond days later.

Her decease gripped nan federation — reporters from nan Big Apple to nan Old West breathlessly covered nan case. Was it a suicide? A murder? An accident? 

Rumors swirled. A fewer days earlier she vanished, Drew had abruptly discontinue her occupation arsenic a governess for a salient section family. In fact, her acquaintances whispered, Hazel had been acting benignant of unusual lately. She consorted pinch tons of men. She had fallen sick and gone distant for a month. She had arrived astatine nan doorway of her dressmaker 1 evening begging her to make her a caller shirtwaist that nighttime for a play sojourn to Lake George.

The papers printed each sensational claim: Hazel had been pregnant! Hazel was a activity worker! Hazel was surviving a double life! As if nan only measurement a woman could person gotten herself killed was if she had asked for it.

“It was a communal trope successful crime writing,” said Jerry C. Drake — a civilian servant, erstwhile history professor and writer of nan caller book “Hazel Was a Good Girl” (CLASH, retired June 10), which claims to lick Hazel’s murder.

“This benignant of archetype of nan fallen woman, but successful Hazel’s case, it was perfectly untrue,” he told The Post. “I wanted to springiness her justice.”

“Hazel Was a Good Girl,” however, besides intends to reconstruct Hazel’s bully name, to show nan young female down nan myth, to represent her arsenic chopped from Laura Palmer, her dead-blonde “Twin Peaks” doppelganger.

“Going into this, I thought moreover if I can’t lick her case, I tin astatine slightest hole her reputation,” Drake said. “I tin decouple her from Laura Palmer and rechristen her arsenic who she really was.”

Hazel I. Drew was calved successful 1888, to a ample working-class Irish-Methodist family successful Rensselaer County, NY. When she was 14, she moved to Troy, wherever her aunt — a home servant for nan city’s well-heeled — helped Hazel get jobs successful nan homes of salient members of nan section Republican party. 

Hazel did not travel from wealth, but she was knowledgeable — she was described arsenic ever having her chemoreceptor successful a book — and she soon precocious to being a governess. She enjoyed nan privileges that came pinch moving for nan precocious classes: good food, bully clothes, opulent surroundings, entree to nan champion doctors and dentists, arsenic good arsenic a room of books. She was vivacious and funny and eager to acquisition life.

“She liked bully things,” Drake said. “She would person had disposable income, and she spent it connected bully clothes. She had costly eyeglasses. She liked to spell retired pinch her girlfriends and spent nan weekends skating and going to nan amusement park. She traveled to New York City and Boston pinch friends. But she besides went to religion religiously — she would bring her dates to church.”

Her family members said she had various suitors, and 1 of her friends mentioned that she was seeing a man who worked astatine a dentist’s office. Yet, Hazel didn’t look superior astir immoderate of these imaginable paramours. Her letters weren’t coquettish but friendly. She chiefly seemed concerned pinch having a bully clip pinch her girlfriends. 

Yet thing unusual did look to hap to Hazel successful nan months starring up to her death. She had been walking crossed nan Eastern Seaboard. She fell sick and had to convalesce astatine her uncle’s farm. Her friends, family members and employers had conflicting accounts of wherever she was astatine immoderate fixed moment. 

Her mother — who later hired a psychic to thief lick Hazel’s decease — said that she believed personification “who was good to do” had “Hazel successful his control.” 

The territory lawyer investigating nan lawsuit tried to norm it arsenic a suicide, but nan autopsy proved otherwise. Hazel had not drowned, nan doctors revealed, but had died from a rustle to nan backmost of nan head. Someone had deed her, aliases caused her to autumn and deed her head, and past dumped her successful nan river. Locals wrote letters claiming to person solved nan sidesplitting successful their dreams. Someone claimed hypnosis was involved.

“It was very ‘Twin Peaks,’” Drake said. “But unfortunately, Hazel didn’t person an Agent Dale Cooper helping her.”

A period into nan rollercoaster investigation, however, nan DA closed nan case. The property — formerly successful a frenzy complete who killed Hazel Drew — moved connected to nan adjacent dormant blonde. Even aft her communicative compelled Mark Frost, whose grandma grew up successful Troy, to constitute “Twin Peaks” pinch David Lynch, Hazel was seldom brought up again.

Drake loved “Twin Peaks” and became obsessed pinch unsolved mysteries erstwhile it was connected nan air. And yet, he had ne'er heard nan sanction Hazel Drew until it appeared to him successful a dream successful 2019. In nan dream, his friend — who had conscionable moved to Troy — handed him a book, and wrong location was a bookplate that publication “Ex Libris Hazel I. Drew.”

When he woke up, he wrote nan sanction down and later Googled it. He recovered a podcast astir nan fable of Hazel Drew and a short station from nan tract Find a Grave that said that Hazel’s communicative had inspired “Twin Peaks.” 

“I conscionable was like, ‘Well, I’m obsessed pinch this,’” he recalled. “I emotion David Lynch, I emotion this show, I emotion ghosts and mysteries, and my friend is now surviving successful this town, truthful I was like, I’m going to return nan week off, my woman and I will spell to Troy.”

Then things sewage really weird. Hazel appeared to him successful dreams — introducing him to a family personnel arsenic a feline “working connected my case” aliases starring him to a cafe. He knowledgeable respective spooky presences by her grave, including a stone thrown astatine him from retired of nowhere. He woke up successful an AirbNb successful Troy aft 1 of his dreams astir her to find a achromatic crow successful his room.

Yet Drake said that nary of these instances deterred him from pursuing his investigation, but only spurred him on. 

“My emotion was this is simply a personification who had unfinished business,” he said. “They opportunity that ghosts want their wrongs righted, and they possibly outcry retired from nan different broadside for group who they deliberation they tin do that.”

He said that he is assured that he has named her murderer — publication nan book to find retired who — moreover if he doesn’t person nan definitive smoking gun. “I dream it  will stimulate group to inquire logical questions astir her killer,” he said, and possibly moreover springiness Hazel’s shade immoderate bid and justice. 

“That’s why I ended up calling nan book ‘Hazel Was a Good Girl,’ because everybody kept saying that,” he said. “Her mom says that nan doctors opportunity it, it’s, it’s, there’s moreover a clip of it connected nan cover. … So, I thought, ‘I’m conscionable gonna springiness her, her, her bully sanction back.’”