Edith Maxwell (1914–1979) was a Virginian schoolteacher who, at the age of 21, was convicted of murdering her father in rural Appalachia, triggering a nationwide media sensation.
When she returned home late at night in Pound, Virginia, she had an argument with Trigg Maxwell, her coal miner father.
According to Edith Maxwell, during the fight, she hit her father with a high heeled shoe, accidentally killing him.
Other accounts asserted various alternate scenarios, including that she hit her father with an iron skillet, that he fell and banged his head on a butcher's block, or even that he had had a stroke and died.
After her release from prison, she left Virginia and changed her name to Ann Grayson, settling in Indiana, where she died in 1979.