William Drennan
Wisconsin's true-crime historian

Featured Speaker, Sat., Oct. 4, Edgerton Public Library community room
"When Wright Was Wronged: the Taliesin Murders"

A professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County, Drennan writes about a murky time in the life of a famed Wisconsin architect in his book, “Death In A Prairie Home: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders.” The 94-year-old tale of how a seemingly mad servant murdered Wright’s lover, her children, and several of the great architect’s apprentices – then deliberately set fire to one of the world’s best-known homes – has been thrillingly retold in Drennan’s true-crime saga. The Richland Center-born Wright had scandalized polite society in 1909 by abandoning his Chicago society wife and their six children, leaving them all behind in Oak Park, to run away to Spring Green, Wisconsin, with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a neighbor and client. Wright’s masterpiece, Taliesin, was built for Cheney and her children, who were among the seven people brutally hacked to death by the axe wielded by handyman Julian Carlton on August 14, 1914. Carlton then set the residential section of Taliesin on fire, forcing Wright to rebuild as he languished in the sorrow and shame of the massacre. Reviewer Larry Cox calls Drennan’s book a crisply written “gripping mystery story.”

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