Download or read book Dear Miss Bryant written by Leslie Ware and published by . This book was released on 2021-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: in 1967 the author's 73-year-old great aunt Julia Cox Bryant was raped and strangled to death in her cottage in Connecticut. Julia's foster son was charged with the murder, tried, and acquitted. For the next 50 years, police forgot about the case. They reopened it in 2019, after the author began asking questions. Dear Miss Bryant is a family memoir and murder mystery. It's the story of a woman born into a life of privilege who nevertheless cared nothing for money and dedicated her life to teaching others, a woman so memorable and peculiar that townspeople were still celebrating her life five decades after her death. She was a woman ahead of her time, who rode horseback to teach school in rural Kentucky, took foster sons on a 900-mile bike trip when in her 60s, fell in love and was jilted by an Arctic explorer, advocated for peace, and was learning new things until her dying day. The author weaves in quirky family traits that made Julia who she was, re-creates the quick, problem-plagued trial of her foster so, and details her quest for remaining evidence that might convict Julia's killer and unravel the mystery of her death. That search led the author through an array of government officials until she reached three state police officers who apologized for dropping the ball for decades and began to look for answers.