Death of a Pinehurst Princess

A news media frenzy hurled the quiet resort community of Pinehurst into the national spotlight in 1935 when hotel magnate Ellsworth Statler’s adopted daughter was discovered dead early one February morning weeks after her wedding day. A politically charged coroner’s inquest failed to determine a definitive cause of death, and the following civil action continued to expose sordid details of the couple’s lives. More than half a century later, the story was all but forgotten when local resident Diane McLellan spied an old photograph at a yard sale and became obsessed with solving the mystery. Her enthusiastic sleuthing captured the attention of Southern Pines resident and journalist Steve Bouser, who takes readers back to those blustery winter days so long ago in the search to reveal what really happened to Elva Statler Davidson.

Author Biography

Steve Bouser grew up in Missouri, served as a Russian linguist in the U.S. Army, graduated from Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State) and worked at papers in Wisconsin and Florida before moving to North Carolina in 1973. He is now editor of The Pilot, a prize-winning community newspaper serving Southern Pines/Pinehurst. From 1993 to 1997, he worked with media assistance programs in Russia and other former Soviet countries. He and his wife, Brenda, have a daughter, Kate, and Steve has two sons, Jacob and Benjamin, from a previous marriage. His one-man play, Senator Sam, has been produced numerous times, and his play Ben, about Benjamin Franklin, is now being prepared for production. He is working on a memoir of his Russian experiences. He has aired a number of commentaries on NPR and teaches journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.