A history of violence

The Cayuga Museum of History and Art will feature a lecture on the recently discovered diary of Chester Gillette, a man executed in Auburn 100 years ago for murdering his girlfriend Grace Brown during a vacation in the Adirondacks.

Historians knew Gillette kept a diary while in prison but believed it was destroyed after his execution on March 30, 1908. Then in 2003, Gillette's grandniece Marylynn Murray found the diary and donated it to Hamilton College.

That was how Jack Sherman, a Tompkins County judge and Gillette history buff, and his friend Craig Brandon got the chance to read, edit and transcribe Gillette's diary before it was released as a book to the public.