By the summer of 1913, Binghamton, NY was booming.

It was the fastest-growing city in New York State. Fifteen thousand people had arrived in just three years. New neighborhoods appeared almost overnight. Factories lined the rivers. The local economy was boosted. Downtown hummed with streetcars, storefronts, the sound of industry and the sidewalks were packed with people.

On Tuesday morning, July 22nd, the city awoke, already overheated.

At 8 a.m., the temperature had already climbed into the high eighties. Windows were thrown open along Court Street. Chocolates melted in shop windows. Gas lamps baked the insides of photography studios. And at the Binghamton Clothing Company on Wall St. every window and door stood open in a losing battle against the heat.

Inside, 111 people were already at work. And the hum of the sewing machines up on the 4th floor could be heard on the streets below. Looking back, the record breaking heat feels like an eerie premonition of what was to come that fateful July afternoon at the Binghamton Clothing Company.

SOURCES:

“Devil’s Fire” WSKG Public Media Documentary: https://www.pbs.org/video/the-devils-fire-3lpvou/

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=198174

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=256771

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Binghamton_Factory_fire

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/binghamton-clothing-factory-fire-monument

https://www.nytimes.com/1913/07/24/archives/the-fire-at-binghamton.html

On September 29th, 2015, a 40-year-old woman named Kelley Clayton was found brutally murdered in her own home in Elmira, New York. She was stabbed more than a dozen times while her children slept upstairs.

At first glance, it looked like a nightmare scenario: an unknown intruder, a violent home invasion, a family torn apart.

But as investigators would soon discover, the truth wasn’t hiding in the shadows.

It was sitting right at the kitchen table.

This is the story of Kelley Clayton, who she was, how she died, and how the person responsible tried, and failed, to get away with murder.

It’s been difficult for me to write about this case because it seems like each time I've sat down to write, I pull up my sources and I’m hoping to find something that simply isn’t there. I want to know more about Keisha but there is so little information out there about her or about her death that it’s been frustrating trying to figure out how to tell her story–because there isn’t a story here. There’s just small fragments of a larger, much more sinister story.

All we know is that on March 22, 2009 Keisha Roman went missing from her home on Oak St in Binghamton, NY. Months later on September 21 of that same year her skeletal remains were found in Susquehanna County, Pa near the Susquehanna river–her body was found in a boat launch near a marina.

Since the discovery of her remains in 2009, there have been no details released about the case or the investigation. There have been no answers for Keisha’s family & there have been no suspects ever named in the murder of Keisha Roman.

https://www.truecasefiles.com/2024/10/the-disappearance-and-murder-of-keisha.html

Submit a Tip: https://www.binghamton-ny.gov/government/departments/police-department/submit-a-tip