The Way I Went Last Friday

We are dealing with a woman maniac, the mayor declared, urging parents to keep a tight watch over their young ones, at least until police could get a better handle on the situation. It was the summer of 1961, and the city of Buffalo, New York, was cast into a panic when the body of a missing boy is found deceased and floating in the lake at Delaware Park, a huge, rustic oasis in the midst of a thriving urban metropolis. Three-year-old Andrew Ashley had gone missing two days earlier, snatched right out of his own front yard, and right in the wake of two previous - and ultimately unsuccessful - kidnappings in the area. From one of those victims police had obtained a working description of the culprit - a middle-aged woman, roughly "as old as mommy, but not as old as grandma." The story took on another shocking dimension, though, when their "woman maniac" turned out to be an even less-likely and far more chilling manner of villain - a damaged and maladjusted fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.This is the story of Chyrel Jolls, a young girl from a broken home and a completely dysfunctional background, whose yielding to her darkest impulses would shatter a young family and reign terror over a typically-calm and family-oriented part of the city. This is also the story of the frenzied police investigation that ensued, and of due process in a local court system left struggling to find some precedent to administer it correctly. This is also a snapshot of Post-World War II America, from its looser notions of what constitutes child supervision to its vastly different approach to mental health and institutionalization.

• | Author: Patrick Sawers
• | Publisher: NFB Publishing
• | Publication Date: Oct 17, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 136 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1953610188
• | ISBN-13: 9781953610188