Lost Media: Maggie Young - Part 1
n 1965, a tragic series of murders took place in Aiea, Hawaii. Maggie Young, a mother of five, took the lives of her children one by one, laid them out on the bed, and quickly confessed to police. One year after her crimes, Maggie took her own life while being treated in a medical facility. Almost 60 years have passed since this often forgotten case of familicide, with a very limited amount of coverage by the media.
Outside of a handful of local news articles in 1965, and a minor resurgence of interest in 2001 due to a connection to a more modern series of crimes - there is not much information on Maggie Young, her family, her life, and death. Images of Maggie and her family are sparse, documents on her case have not been made public, and few efforts have been made to archive information on this unique case in American true crime history.
At the tail end of 2024, a collection came through Cult Collectibles which provided a new, in depth look at Maggie Young and her family. This collection contains documents, photographs, and video reels brings to light more details on Young’s crimes, giving us a brighter understanding of the woman herself and the failures in mental health care of the time that may have been a significant factor in her crimes and subsequent suicide.
While the organization and presentation of these materials will take some time, we will be sharing some of the media via blog posts on this site.
As a last note, these materials are better understood as a complete picture. The cast of characters, so to say, becomes easier to understand when all the images, video, and information is viewed on a macro level. In the future, we will provide a more complete look at the whole story.
Never before seen photograph of Maggie Young.
Reel 2 from the collection, as shown above, is dated 1955. The box containing this film reel states Savannah to Bainbridge, which we can assume designates it as some kind of vacation footage. Maggie Young can first be seen walking with two young girls, one on crutches, into a beauty salon.
We then cut to these girls and a toddler buying ice cream from a vendor. Maggie is also here with the children. Assuming the date of 1955 is correct, Maggie's first son Frank Jr. would not be born for another two years. So we can assume these are not her children from her second marriage to James Young - however, Maggie did have other children from a previous marrige so this could theroetically be her other children who did not fall victim to her crimes.
We cut to footage of a small aircraft. We can assume all aircraft footage is of, or comes from, James Young - as he was in the air force. A man is being held by the arms and legs and swung around, tossed into a body of water. This looks to be James Young.
