Leaving Little Queen City

Hometown Murders & Mysteries | March 2022

Image: ©Unknown | Adobe Stock • Post Image Design: jrgrigsby

He was just a small-town boy from Buncombe, Kentucky, with red hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could charm a courtroom—or a county fair. Noble “Red” Holt was known in Pulaski County for his charisma, work ethic, and tight family ties. So how did this well-liked farm kid end up at the center of one of Ohio’s most high-profile capital cases, sentenced to death by electric chair?

In Leaving Little Queen City, we follow Red’s journey from rural Kentucky to the streets of Cincinnati, where a life once filled with promise took a tragic turn. This isn’t just a crime story—it’s a chronicle of missteps, missed chances, and the magnetic pull of wrong turns. It’s also the story of a community that never quite let go of one of its own.

What began as honest work on the rails turned into a web of suspicion, gang ties, and a deadly encounter inside a notary’s office that left one detective dead and another critically wounded. As Red faced the courts, the electric chair, and ultimately the grave, more than 3,000 mourners returned to Science Hill to pay their respects—asking the same questions we ask now: Who was Noble Holt? And how did it come to this?

🎧 Join us for one of the most poignant and perplexing episodes in our series. Leaving Little Queen City is a story of loyalty, loss, and the long shadow of hometown roots.

🔗 Available from Amazon or Audible.

Note: To see pictures of the abandoned “Rathole” tunnels, visit the Abandoned webpage: https://abandonedonline.net/location/cincinnati-southern-railway/