In the fall of 1920, two couples pulled into a campsite just off the famous Yellowstone Trail. A few weeks later, one couple drove away, while the other simply vanished. The identities and fate of the couple left behind didn’t hit newsstands until three years later. In one of the most sensational murder cases ever played out in a Montana court, Seth Orrin Danner put up a fight for his life and lost. The state executed Seth on July 18, 1924, at the Gallatin County Jail, but did he commit the crimes? Historian Kelly Hartman follows the trail of the Danner family from Kansas to Montana and details the trial of the century, trying to decipher what truly happened in Central Park on that grisly day.
Kelly Hartman was raised in Silver Gate, Montana, attending K–8 grade at the one-room schoolhouse in Cooke City. She was director of the Cooke City Montana Museum from 2014 to 2016, which included its grand opening. In the summer of 2016, she began work as the curator of the Gallatin History Museum in Bozeman, Montana. Her first book, A Brief History of Cooke City, was published by The History Press in 2019.