Bizarre Tragedy and Spectacle on the Erie Canal

The New York Times declared the Brockport murder trial “equal to any murder trial in the country.” One journalist wrote “it had the trappings of a Bruno Hauptmann trial,” referring to the man charged with kidnapping Charles Lindbergh’s baby. Another reporter called it “one of the most unusual death penalty cases ever.” A columnist described it as “one of the oddest trials on record.” A playwright declared that her dramatization “is based on one of America’s most unusual court cases.” Paramount Pictures dispatched its “The Eyes and Ears of the World” news crew. Hundreds of newspapers from coast to coast carried headlines of the trial. The Associated Press (AP) and reporters and photographers from major news organizations from across the country arrived to cover the trial. The story spread far and wide, all over America. Every newspaper printed long accounts of it. There were editorials both pro and con.

This is a story about my Dad, Victor Fortune and his dog Idaho. It’s the story of a tragedy involving the death of a young boy, Maxwell Breeze, a good boy, an only child, who drowned in the Brockport canal on the 4th of July, 1936. The book is a story about a divided community, Brockport, NY. Some believed Idaho was the dog who drowned Max and therefore through justice should be killed. Some thought the dog should live because the drowning was an accident, and the dog involved possibly was never Idaho at all. Life was hard in 1936. Families were living through the Great Depression. The story is heart wrenching from every angle and deserves to be told.