How to go
Who: Dayton History
What: Old Case Files: Ohio vs. Albert J. Frantz
Where: Montgomery County’s Old Courthouse in downtown Dayton
When: July 22-24, 29-31 and August 5-7. Show times are 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; Sundays at 3 p.m.
Cost: Admission is $10 for Dayton History members and $12 for non-members.
For more information, call (937) 293-2841 or visit www.dayton history.org
The trial was sensational, scandalous and sent shock waves throughout the city.
Alex Heckman, Dayton History’s director of education, said area residents flocked to the Montgomery Old Court House for the 1896 murder case of Bessie Little.
His organization is hoping a modern crowd rushes to the court house in downtown Dayton to see the recreated trial of her accused killer .
Old Case Files: Ohio vs. Albert J. Frantz will mark the first time Dayton History, Montgomery County’s historical organization, has used the historical courthouse for a public program. The renovated Greek Revival-style court house reopened in 2005.
Heckman said production will be shoulders above a mock trial.
“The language used in the production is pulled right from the written history,” Heckman said.
Thought to be pregnant, Little was found floating face up in the Stillwater River by a Cincinnati man visiting relatives in the area on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1896.
“She had dark brown hair put up with celluloid pins. She had a high forehead, pug nose and a wide mouth. Her teeth were regular; one incisor had been filled with gold,” according to an article about the historic case by now deceased columnist Roz Young.
Writer Margaret Piatts used a two-inch pile of newspaper accounts of the trial and murder collected by a Dayton History staffer as her guide. She also referred to work by local author Curt Dalton.
The Frantz trail was one the most notorious murder cases in Dayton history, she said.
“It was a little bit like the Casey Anthony trial in the sense that the public was captivated and wanted to come to the trial,” said Piatt, president of Piatt Castles in West Liberty and theater teacher at Urbana University. “It was pretty intense.”
Actors will play witnesses, attorneys and other figures.
Scott Stoney, an instructor at the Human Race Theatre, will play the defense attorney.
Selected audience members will be called to play jurors and decided Frantz’s fate.
“We don’t know whether he is guilty or innocent. We are playing the evidence,” Piatt said. “Did he do this or not.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2384 or arobinson@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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