Headsman

Plot

For more than two hundred years a small town in upstate New York has been gripped by a grim legend: in colonial times, the town employed an executioner who plied his bloody trade with a huge double-bladed ax. According to legend, he returns every so often to punish adulterers and other perceived sinners. A giant of a man, clad all in black and wielding that awful weapon, he appears at night to do his gruesome work, then once more disppears into the shadows. Only a ghost sotry? An old wives' tale? some people think so, but others remember unsolved murders that took place in decades past, and they believe. The legend sleeps - until a pretty high-school girl, the daughter of a prominent citizen - suffers a hideous decapitation. Townspeople are stunned, outraged, chilled. The mayor and other civil leader pressure Chief of Police Jud MacElroy to solve the crime at once, but before he can expose the town's darker secrets, a beautiful young stranger reveals to him her own secret: she has the power to see what she desperately wants not to witness, including a vision of a tall man. dressed in black, his head shrouded by a black hood, his powerful hands gripping a huge ax, its blades glittering as he stalks yet another victim.