Roland Burnham Molineux

Roland Burnham Molineux was an American writer born in 1866 who is remembered as much for his life story as for his books. Before writing, he was widely known because of the famous New York murder trial that followed the poisoning death of Katherine J. Adams. After years of legal turmoil and imprisonment, he was acquitted, and his later writing drew directly on what he had seen and endured.

His best-known book is The Room with the Little Door, a work presented by Project Gutenberg as a semi-autobiographical novel about life around the death chamber at Sing Sing. Open Library also lists The Forbidden Song, The Vice Admiral of the Blue, and The Molineux Case, showing the range of his published work from fiction to writing tied to his own case.

That unusual background gives his books a special tone: part personal witness, part popular storytelling from the early 1900s. He died in 1917, leaving behind a small but striking body of work that still attracts readers interested in true-crime history, prison literature, and overlooked voices from the period.