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On the morning of August 20, 1926, Denny\u00a0Large and his wife Ida were having a discussion in their upstairs bedroom at their house on Bartram Avenue when they heard a car pull up outside. It was Charles Edwards, a boarder who, until very recently, had been living with them. He had come to collect some of his belongings\u00a0and let himself into the Large house.<\/p>\n
Coming down the stairs, Denny\u00a0and Ida\u00a0saw Edwards\u00a0sitting on the living room sofa. Ida went to sit with Edwards\u00a0while Denny slipped out the back door and crossed a field to his brother\u2019s house where he retrieved\u00a0a revolver.<\/p>\n
Returning to the house where Ida was still sitting with Edwards, Denny\u00a0shot Edwards\u00a0twice, killing him almost instantly. Neighbors who heard the gunshots called police, and when they arrived\u00a0a few minutes later, they found Denny waiting outside and arrested him without incident. That same day, Marion County Prosecutor Frank Wiedeman announced that Denny would be charged with first degree murder.<\/p>\n
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Denny\u00a0Large was\u00a0an unlikely killer. He was the father to six children, including a 15-month-old baby, had been married to the same woman for sixteen\u00a0years and had been employed\u00a0at the\u00a0Marion Steam Shovel Company for six years.<\/p>\n
So the obvious question was why did\u00a0Denny\u00a0Large kill Charles Edwards? It was, of course, the oldest motivation: Ida had been having an affair with Edwards\u00a0while he was boarding\u00a0at the Large residence. What\u2019s more, Ida revealed to Denny\u00a0that Edwards, not Denny, was actually the father of June, their 15-month-old daughter.<\/p>\n
On the day of\u00a0his arrest, Denny\u00a0made a full confession to police. The\u00a0next day, he\u00a0entered a plea of guilty to first degree murder before Mayor Earl Hazen and was ordered held without bond at the Marion County Jail until a grand jury could be convened.<\/p>\n
In his confession, Denny\u00a0explained what had happened: For a long time, he had suspected that his wife had been having an affair with Edwards. In the days leading up to the shooting, Denny\u00a0and Ida had, in fact, had several arguments about Edwards. Ida eventually admitted \u201c<\/strong>she and Edwards had been intimate, [and]\u00a0that she loved [Edwards] and that he had professed his love for her.\u201d After this revelation, Ida asked Denny\u00a0to grant her\u00a0a divorce so that she could marry Charles. \u201cI refused,\u201d Denny\u00a0said in his confession. \u201cI told her that I loved her and wanted her to come back to me.\u201d<\/p>\n The obvious question is\u00a0why, if Denny\u00a0suspected an affair, he had allowed Edwards to continue boarding at his house? During his confession, Denny\u00a0hinted at being intimidated by\u00a0Edwards. \u201cHe was much larger and stronger than I am,\u201d he told police. Still, shortly before the shooting, Denny\u00a0recounted a confrontation with Edwards: \u201cI told Edwards he would have to leave, that he had caused too much trouble in my home. He agreed to leave and never return. I warned him not to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n For her part, Ida Large, after having just professed her love for Edwards a few days before, seems to have had a change of heart. In an interview with the Star<\/em>, she sobbed and said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry for Denny. I\u2019ll do anything to make amends. I did tell him, and I\u2019ll repeat it at his trial, that I was not true to him and that my 15-month-old child belonged to Edwards. I\u2019m going to make an effort to see Denny at the jail and tell him how sorry I am.\u201d<\/p>\n On September 16th, 1926, less than a month after he shot Charles Edwards, Denny\u00a0Large walked out of jail a free man. An article about the case appearing in the Cincinnati Enquirer<\/em> stated,\u00a0\u201cThe Marion County grand jury has failed to return an indictment against Large. The ‘unwritten law’ saved him. Prosecutor Frank Wiedeman said today no further charges would be brought against him.\u201d<\/p>\n And that was that. Denny\u00a0Large\u00a0never spent another day in jail for killing\u00a0Charles Edwards. I wasn\u2019t sure what\u00a0the “unwritten law” mentioned in the Enquirer<\/em> article was, so I had to look it up. Lawrence Friedman\u2019s 2005 book Private Lives: Families, Individuals, and the Law<\/em> sheds some light on the topic:<\/p>\n Under the so-called unwritten law, a man who found out that his wife was unfaithful was free to kill his wife\u2019s lover; the deceived husband was almost never punished for this crime. No statue book actually contained this \u201claw\u201d; but it was reflected in the behavior or prosecutors and certainly in the behavior of juries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Put simply, at the time it was widely accepted that a man was within his rights to shoot his wife\u2019s lover, and no Marion County jury was ever going to find Denny\u00a0Large guilty of murder. Prosecutor Wiedeman\u2019s unwillingness to pursue charges against Denny\u00a0Large seems to support this.<\/p>\n After his release from the Marion County Jail, Denny\u00a0Large, perhaps uncomfortable with his newfound notoriety, left Marion for Kentucky and worked there for a time. According to Amy Jo, he was conscientious about sending sending Ida and the kids (who remained in Marion) money while he was gone, and he eventually returned to Marion and a job at the Osgood Company.<\/p>\n Ida and Denny apparently resolved any differences they may have still had and stayed together for the rest of their lives. They even had another child together in 1931. Denny\u00a0passed away in 1963 and Ida, who became very religious in her later years, died in 1989. She never remarried. Although Baby June was, at least officially, a Large, Amy Jo said that she grew up knowing that Charles Edwards was her biological father and that she eventually left\u00a0Ohio and settled in\u00a0California.<\/p>\n Sources:<\/p>\n The Cincinnati Enquirer<\/em>, September 17, 1926 Over the years in Marion, crimes of passion\u00a0have occurred that catch the attention of the town for a few days only to quickly fade into obscurity. Often the circumstances of these events are only kept alive in the lore of the families involved, passed down from generation to generation. This is one of those stories. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2653,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/2653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n![\"dennislargelateryears\"](\"http:\/\/www.spookymarion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/dennislargelateryears.jpg\")
\nThe Marion Star<\/em>, August 20, 1926
\nThe Marion Star<\/em>, August 21, 1926
\nThe Marion Star<\/em>, September 16, 1926<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"