Killing in the Kuyahoora Valley is the true story of a murderous attack in 1914 by a teenager (Jean Gianini) in the village of Poland, New York. Kuyahoora, the native-American name for West Canada Creek, is located in Herkimer County. Poland, in the southern Adirondack foothills, is about 15 miles northeast of Utica. The death of petite schoolteacher Lydia "Lida Lou" Beecher at the hands of a former student proved to be a landmark case—the first to cite intelligence on the same level as insanity in determining a defendant's guilt or innocence. America's courts would never be the same.