The Ballad of Marion Wheeler

Summary: I decided to find a random article from the 30's or 40s... one that seems relatively forgotten and lost in the persistent noise of news publishing, and write a poem about it. I managed to find an article from 1938 about a "double tragedy," where a man killed a woman twenty years younger than him. His name was John McNeill, and he was relentless in his pursuit of marrying the young stenographer Marion Wheeler.

When she refused him yet again, John pulled out a gun and shot her three times in the back. Realizing what he had done, he turned around and shot himself.

You'll see when you read the article itself; the reporter writes the story to make the scene as scandalous, and as entertaining as possible (hence the word jackal being used in the final graf).

The purpose of my project is to highlight an incident from nearly 100 years ago that, although is forgotten, still is relevant today. Further, given that incidents like this are still common in 2021, a sensational article like this has extreme relevance.