Butler native looks at Hoss spree
The story written by Butler native Jim Hollock in “Born to Lose: Stanley B. Hoss and the Crime Spree That Gripped a Nation” has garnered national accolades.
Hollock’s book, published in May 2011, was awarded a 2012 gold medal in the true crime category at the Independent Publisher Book Awards ceremony June 4 in Manhattan.
Entries included 4,814 print books and 390 electronic books; of these, there were 372 gold, silver and bronze medal winners in 72 categories, such as literary fiction, historical fiction, romance, suspense/thriller and autobiography/memoir.
Winners came from 44 states, seven Canadian provinces and nearly a dozen countries.
“Born to Lose” also earned finalist status for a ForeWord Book Award and is under consideration for the Philip S. Klein Book Prize sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical Association.
Hollock, a Butler High School graduate who now lives in Pittsburgh, became interested in the story of Stanley Hoss after a more than 30-year career with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, primarily at Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, where Hoss was incarcerated.
Though Hollock started working at the prison 15 months after Hoss was transferred out, the last murder in Hoss’ spree took place within the walls of the penitentiary.
Hoss was born in Saxonburg and later resided in various areas north of Pittsburgh.
“One of the first crimes on Hoss’ rap sheet is a burglary in the city of Butler,” Hollock said.
The Pittsburgh area thug became one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted after a spree in 1969 that left a Verona police officer dead and a mother and her young daughter from western Maryland missing.
Hoss led the police on a nationwide manhunt before he was captured outside a restaurant in Iowa.
Even in prison, Hollock writes, Hoss conspired with fellow inmates to kill a corrections officer. As a result of this final homicide, Hoss was transferred to an isolation facility in Philadelphia where he hanged himself in 1978.
For the book, Hollock formally interviewed 60 people, including Hoss’ victims of assault and rape, police and prison personnel, judges, the wife and the mistress among others, resulting in “a couple hundred hours of taped interviews.”
His research delved into previously sealed state and federal archives, as well as Hoss’ personal letters.
In the end, Hollock worked on the book for a dozen years. “I researched for 5 years before I wrote a word,” he said. “The bibliography is enough to gag a horse.”
The author hasn’t put pen to paper for any new project yet, but he said he intends to write a work of fiction about an old English gentleman set in Great Britain and Japan.
“I’ll just never write a true crime story again because there is no hope that I could ever have something like this (the Hoss story) fall into my lap again, just something right here locally and all the principals were here,” Hollock said.
The author will be signing copies of his book from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Books-A-Million store at the Clearview Mall in Center Township, where the book is available.
The 406-page paperback published by Kent State University Press also is available for $34.95 from www.amazon.com. It will be available soon as an e-book, and the libraries of Butler, Saxonburg and Zelienople have it in their collections.
