It was the most brutal murder in the history of Coffey County, Kansas.

On May 30, 1925, Florence Knoblock, a farmer’s wife and the mother of a young boy, was found slaughtered on her kitchen floor.

We hadn’t heard of this story and had to Google it in preparation for this interview. Tell us more, tell us about your book.

Shadow on the Hill: The True Story of a 1925 Kansas Murder examines the murder of a Kansas farmwife, Florence Knoblock, and the community’s response to the tragedy. On Decoration Day (what we now think of as Memorial Day) in 1925, John Knoblock came home from town with his four-year-old son, Roger, only to find his wife brutally murdered. Inexperienced law enforcement would arrest several innocent men before arresting John, who would endure two sensational trials before being acquitted. Unfortunately for John, he would become the man known for getting away with murder instead of an innocent man. The story vanished from the headlines and was little more than an urban legend by the time I discovered it, along with rumors of a neighbor who saw someone go to that house the morning of the murder but never came forward. The book details what happens when a community becomes so fearful that they’re more interested in an arrest than justice.

What genre is it?
True Crime, Narrative Nonfiction

How did you come across this story?
One hot August morning in 2007, I was chasing after a group of hyper children playing hide-and-seek in the stacks at Emporia Public Library, in Emporia, Kansas, where I worked as a library assistant. As I was passing through the stacks between the non-fiction collection and the genealogy area, a folder slipped off of the shelf and fell at my feet. It was thin, made with heavy green paper embossed in a faux leather pattern . Someone had scrawled “Knoblock Murder” in a shaky hand within the boundaries of the little rectangle on the cover.

I spent the next several hours reading the newspaper clippings inside, and to my dismay, the folder did not include the article that indicated how the second murder trial ended. The next thing I know, my life centered itself on researching this story.

Tell us about the family.
John, Florence, and Roger Knoblock were an everyday farm family trying to make a go of it in Coffey County, Kansas in 1925. There was nothing extraordinary about them at all until Florence was murdered. Much of the story is also told from the perspective of two amazing Kansas journalists: John Redmond of the Daily Republican and William L. White, son of the famous William Allen White, at the Emporia Gazette.

How would you like the reader to feel as they read the last word of your book?
Blown away by the extraordinary things that can happen to ordinary people. A little sad at the injustice of it all. And a little more cautious about the gossip and rumors that surround tragedy.

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. When you grow up in KCK, you’re pretty much unaware of the rest of Kansas, which is a shame, because Kansas history is pretty amazing. You had to have guts to go out on the prairie and make a life for yourself. I didn’t discover this until much later. I did my undergraduate work at USC in Los Angeles, then moved to central Kansas, and that’s when we started exploring the state. I’m really fascinated by local history, cemeteries and cemetery art, old newspapers, and currently, I’m spending time learning about the Santa Fe Trail and Kansas’ involvement in the Civil War. My husband and I are also parents to two adopted guinea pigs.

Do you have a website where we can keep up with your work?
http://dianastaresinicdeane.com

Readers of Shadow on the Hill will also find scans of newspaper headlines, photographs, documents, and a list of all of the names that appear in the papers covering the story.

How can we follow you on Twitter and/or Facebook?
@kansaswriter
http://facebook.com/florenceknoblockbook

What’s next?
In addition to a novel set in Kansas, I’m chipping away at another historic Kansas true crime…actually, a series of homicides that happened in the early 20th Century. When I was trying to decide what to focus on next, I went to NewspaperArchive.com, and did a search for the words “kill” and “murder” in only Kansas newspapers from 1910 to 1915. It brought up something like 14,470 hits. Holy moly.