Late one fall night in 1929, the barber Charlie King opened the gas lines of his home and left his four sons and wife sleeping in the deadly fumes, then jumped on a freight train heading north. In spite of a heroic effort by police and neighbors alike, Ethel King and three of her sons died in the tragedy, and it was a year before the Charlie King would show up in the world. Although he initially denied he was “The Gas Fume Fugitive,” this novella length true crime history shows how a wily police chief wrangled the truth from him and sent the barber on the way to his date with Old Sparky, the electric chair at the Ohio Penitentiary.
