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Leroy Fry

Leroy Fry (1809 - 1830) was a US Army cadet from Kentucky who was murdered in 1830 while attending the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Biography[]

Leroy Fry was born in Kentucky, the son of Scots-Irish immigrant Orla Fry. He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he befriended fellow cadets Randolph Ballinger and Joseph Stoddard, and quarreled with Charles Loughborough and Edgar Allan Poe. In 1830, during his second year at West Point, Fry and his friends Ballinger and Stoddard raped Mattie Landor, a young woman who had been invited to the academy's ball; Landor committed suicide due to the trauma of the rape, motivating her father, retired detective Augustus Landor, to seek vengeance. Landor left a note for Fry to meet him at a remote cove's landing, where he subdued and hanged him to make his death appear to be a suicide. A patrol later walked by, forcing Landor to leave the body, and Cadet Cook Huntoon found Fry to be improperly hanged, with Fry's feet still touching the ground. Artemus and Lea Marquis later found Leroy's body and cut out its heart for a black magic ritual meant to cure Lea's falling sickness, and Landor - who was later hired by the academy to find Fry's murderer, used this coincidence to pin the murder on the Marquis siblings.

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