The North Country Murder of Irene Izak

Book excerpt: A road trip becomes a dead end for a schoolteacher in this haunting cold case of murder that became a fifty-year fight for justice. In June of 1968, Irene Izak, a young French teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania, was pulling an all-nighter on the road toward the promise of a new life in Quebec. The last time she was seen alive was at 2:09 a.m. by a toll collector at Thousand Island Bridge who claimed Irene was visibly afraid. Less than a half-hour later, Irene was found bludgeoned to death in a ravine bordering DeWolf Point State Park. There were no signs of robbery or sexual assault. For reasons unknown, Irene had been compelled to pull off the interstate and abandon her car, only to be brutally murdered. Irene’s body was discovered by State Trooper Dave Hennigan, who’d stopped her for speeding shortly before—and issued the young woman a warning. Blending novelistic suspense with true-crime reporting, author Dave Shampine investigates a crime that shook the communities of northeast Pennsylvania and New York's North Country—a vicious and confounding killing that has remained unsolved but not forgotten.