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New York Post

Inside the baffling murder that inspired 'Twin Peaks'

Her death inspired the cult 1990s TV show 'Twin Peaks.' Her ghost is said to haunt the woods where her body was found more than 100 years ago. And yet Hazel I. Drew remains a mystery. Drew was a pretty, vivacious 19-year-old blonde living in Troy, NY, when she disappeared near her uncle's farm on July 7, 1908. Locals spotted her body floating in a mill pond days later. 7 A scene from 'Twin Peaks,' with actor Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer, whose death anchored the show — and was inspired by the real life Hazel I. Drew, murdered in upstate New York in 1908. Everett Collection / Everett Collection Advertisement Her death gripped the nation — reporters from the Big Apple to the Old West breathlessly covered the case. Was it a suicide? A murder? An accident? Rumors swirled. A few days before she vanished, Drew had abruptly quit her job as a governess for a prominent local family. In fact, her acquaintances whispered, Hazel had been acting sort of strange lately. She consorted with lots of men. She had fallen ill and gone away for a month. She had arrived at the door of her dressmaker one evening begging her to make her a new shirtwaist that night for a weekend sojourn to Lake George. The papers printed every sensational claim: Hazel had been pregnant! Hazel was a sex worker! Hazel was living a double life! As if the only way a girl could have gotten herself killed was if she had asked for it. 7 Another shot of Lee in 'Twin Peaks.' Although Drake inspired the show's development, she was seldom discussed during its production or years-long television run. ©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection Advertisement 'It was a common trope in crime writing,' said Jerry C. Drake — a civil servant, former history professor and author of the new book 'Hazel Was a Good Girl' (CLASH, out June 10), which claims to solve Hazel's murder. 'This sort of archetype of the fallen woman, but in Hazel's case, it was absolutely untrue,' he told The Post. 'I wanted to give her justice.' 'Hazel Was a Good Girl,' however, also aims to restore Hazel's good name, to show the young woman behind the myth, to portray her as distinct from Laura Palmer, her dead-blonde 'Twin Peaks' doppelganger. 'Going into this, I thought even if I can't solve her case, I can at least fix her reputation,' Drake said. 'I can decouple her from Laura Palmer and rechristen her as who she really was.' Advertisement Hazel I. Drew was born in 1888, to a large working-class Irish-Methodist family in Rensselaer County, NY. When she was 14, she moved to Troy, where her aunt — a domestic servant for the city's well-heeled — helped Hazel get jobs in the homes of prominent members of the local Republican party. 7 'Going into this, I thought even if I can't solve her case, I can at least fix her reputation,' said author Drake. 'I can decouple her from Laura Palmer and rechristen her as who she really was.' Albany Times Union Hazel did not come from wealth, but she was educated — she was described as always having her nose in a book — and she soon advanced to being a governess. She enjoyed the privileges that came with working for the upper classes: fine food, nice clothes, opulent surroundings, access to the best doctors and dentists, as well as a library of books. She was vivacious and curious and eager to experience life. 'She liked nice things,' Drake said. 'She would have had disposable income, and she spent it on good clothes. She had expensive eyeglasses. She liked to go out with her girlfriends and spent the weekends skating and going to the amusement park. She traveled to New York City and Boston with friends. But she also went to church religiously — she would bring her dates to church.' Advertisement Her family members said she had various suitors, and one of her friends mentioned that she was seeing a man who worked at a dentist's office. Yet, Hazel didn't seem serious about any of these potential paramours. Her letters weren't flirtatious but friendly. She mainly seemed concerned with having a good time with her girlfriends. Yet something strange did seem to happen to Hazel in the months leading up to her death. She had been traveling across the Eastern Seaboard. She fell ill and had to convalesce at her uncle's farm. Her friends, family members and employers had conflicting accounts of where she was at any given moment. 7 Author Drake says he was 'obsessed' with David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks,' which was based on Hazel's murder. Getty Images for ABA Her mother — who later hired a psychic to help solve Hazel's death — said that she believed someone 'who was well to do' had 'Hazel in his control.' The district attorney investigating the case tried to rule it as a suicide, but the autopsy proved otherwise. Hazel had not drowned, the doctors revealed, but had died from a blow to the back of the head. Someone had hit her, or caused her to fall and hit her head, and then dumped her in the river. Locals wrote letters claiming to have solved the killing in their dreams. Someone claimed hypnosis was involved. 'It was very 'Twin Peaks,'' Drake said. 'But unfortunately, Hazel didn't have an Agent Dale Cooper helping her.' A month into the rollercoaster investigation, however, the DA closed the case. The press — formerly in a frenzy over who killed Hazel Drew — moved on to the next dead blonde. Even after her story compelled Mark Frost, whose grandmother grew up in Troy, to write 'Twin Peaks' with David Lynch, Hazel was rarely brought up again. 7 A snow-covered gravestone is a modest testament to Hazel's brief life. Courtesy of Jerry C. Drake, PhD Advertisement Drake loved 'Twin Peaks' and became obsessed with unsolved mysteries when it was on the air. And yet, he had never heard the name Hazel Drew until it appeared to him in a dream in 2019. In the dream, his friend — who had just moved to Troy — handed him a book, and inside there was a bookplate that read 'Ex Libris Hazel I. Drew.' When he woke up, he wrote the name down and later Googled it. He found a podcast about the legend of Hazel Drew and a short post from the site Find a Grave that said that Hazel's story had inspired 'Twin Peaks.' 'I just was like, 'Well, I'm obsessed with this,'' he recalled. 'I love David Lynch, I love this show, I love ghosts and mysteries, and my friend is now living in this town, so I was like, I'm going to take the week off, my wife and I will go to Troy.' Then things got really weird. Hazel appeared to him in dreams — introducing him to a family member as a guy 'working on my case' or leading him to a cafe. He experienced several spooky presences by her grave, including a rock thrown at him from out of nowhere. He woke up in mi an AirbNb in Troy after one of his dreams about her to find a black crow in his room. Advertisement Yet Drake said that none of these instances deterred him from pursuing his investigation, but only spurred him on. 'My feeling was this is a person who had unfinished business,' he said. 'They say that ghosts want their wrongs righted, and they maybe cry out from the other side for people who they think they can do that.' 7 Author Jerry. C. Drake Advertisement He said that he is confident that he has named her murderer — read the book to find out who — even if he doesn't have the definitive smoking gun. 'I hope it will stimulate people to ask rational questions about her killer,' he said, and maybe even give Hazel's ghost some peace and justice. 'That's why I ended up calling the book 'Hazel Was a Good Girl,' because everybody kept saying that,' he said. 'Her mom says that the doctors say it, it's, it's, there's even a clip of it on the cover. … So, I thought, 'I'm just gonna give her, her, her good name back.''