2007 • 94 pages • Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-59629-227-7
When Edwin Ray Snow, a 17-year-old petty thief from Yarmouth Port, fired a .32 caliber bullet into Jimmy Whittemore’s brain on a crisp September evening in 1899, he would later insist, “If there is a definite why to this act, I can’t explain it.”
Drawing upon town records, historical documents, correspondence and newspapers of the day, The Cape Cod Murder of 1899 recreates the towns of Dennis and Yarmouth, circa 1900. It’s a fascinating story. Dr. Ira Silverman, a forensic psychologist, composed the foreword. Whittemore, a 21-year-old bakery delivery man who was the sole financial support of his widowed mother and younger siblings, was dead before his body hit the dirt road in the woods separating South Yarmouth from Yarmouth Port. Snow lingered in the Massachusetts prison system for decades. This is the author’s first book, and her favorite.
A quintessential Cape Cod homestead, circa 1899. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth.
Edwin Ray Snow’s high school in Yarmouth as it appeared in the 1880’s. Image courtesy of the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth.
Description and credits:
Book cover: Main Street in Barnstable Village, and often traveled thoroughfare for Jimmy Whittemore before Edwin Ray Snow gunned him down in 1899. Image courtesy of the Barnstable Historical Society.
Banner: A mansion along the bakery delivery route of Jimmy Whittemore. Image courtesy of the Dennis Historical Society.
