THE DARKEST NIGHT

Ron Franscell book tour coming to Wyoming, Colorado!

2011-08-19T10:20:00.001-06:00

My fall book tour in Colorado and Wyoming promises to be a wild and wolly tumble through the Rockies! In the nine-day, nine-stop tour, I'll be talking about my two newest books -- THE CRIME BUFF'S GUIDE TO THE OUTLAW ROCKIES and THE SOURTOE COCKTAIL CLUB -- at a series of free public events, culminating at the legendary Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver.

Here's the lineup. Stop by and say hello!

WHEATLAND (WY), OCT 6, 2011 @ 5PM: Wheatland Mercantile Book Nook, 875 Gilchrist.

CASPER (WY), OCT 7, 2011 @ 7PM: Natrona County Public Library.

BUFFALO (WY), OCT 8, 2011 @ 7PM: Johnson County Public Library.

CHEYENNE (WY), OCT 9, 2011 @ 3PM: Barnes & Noble on Dell Range Blvd.

LARAMIE (WY), OCT 10, 2011 @ 3PM: American Heritage Center on UW Campus.

ROCK SPRINGS (WY), OCT 11, 2011 @ 7PM: Rock Springs Library, 400 C Street (in the Ferrero Room).

LOVELAND (CO), OCT 12, 2011 @ 7PM: Loveland Public Library.

LAKEWOOD (CO), OCT 13, 2011 @ 7PM: Barnes & Noble at West Village on West Colfax Avenue.

DENVER (CO), OCT 14, 2011 @ 7:30PM: Tattered Cover, 2526 East Colfax Avenue.

NOW ON NOOK! My first books

2011-01-27T10:36:00.000-06:00

Good news for my Nook-reader friends! Starting today, my first three novels -- ANGEL FIRE, THE DEADLINE and THE OBITUARY -- are now all available at BN.com as ebooks for the Nook reader! If you Nook ... please look!

Just click on the book covers and go straight to Barnes&Noble.com!

NOW ON KINDLE! Books by Ron Franscell

2010-06-25T15:39:00.001-06:00

THE DEADLINE

Named One of the Top 25 Best Crime Fictions of 1999 by POISONED PEN

Former Chicago Tribune crime reporter Jefferson Morgan is living his life-long dream of running a weekly newspaper, The Winchester Bullet, in the Wyoming town where he grew up. But when an infamous child-murderer comes home to die and begs Morgan to help clear his name, the dream becomes a nightmare. Under the gravest deadline of his life, amid an extraordinary backlash from his neighbors, readers and advertisers, Morgan struggles with his own conscience to tell a story no matter the consequences, digging deep into the town's past, and revealing a killer who's hidden himself for almost 50 years.

"Ron Franscell has undeniably hit his mark. His masterful storytelling strikes hard at the heart. It leaves his readers stunned one moment, and tenderly moved the next."

—The Denver Post

~~~~~~

THE OBITUARY

When a world-renowned forensic anthropologist journeys to Winchester, Wyoming, to examine the long-dead remains of a woman who claimed to be Etta Place — the Old West’s most mysterious and legendary female outlaw — he’s not expecting to find a man’s headless corpse in her crypt. The grisly discovery plunges him and Jefferson Morgan — the editor of the weekly Winchester Bullet — into a shadowy and deadly world of satellite-savvy highway pirates, rural meth labs, computer hackers and old-fashioned corruption. And they might not survive the fall.

This is the "lost" sequel to Ron's award-wnning 1999 mystery THE DEADLINE and is released as an exclusive to Amazon Kindle readers!

"Ron Franscell's THE OBITUARY is gorgeously written, complex and satisfying — a damn near perfect book." — JOHN LESCROART

~~~~~

ANGEL FIRE
A stunning literary debut listed by the San Francisco Chronicle among the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century West (No. 74)

A modern classic that continues to gather a loyal readership, ANGEL FIRE is a haunting tale of two brothers on separate odysseys of self-discovery. Twenty-four years after war correspondent Daniel McLeod is killed in a Viet Cong ambush, his only brother Cassidy is mysteriously drawn to their Wyoming hometown, where he must confront a lifetime of his own ghosts. Their story is about how we seek equilibrium, a delicate balance between memory and the unknown, dislocation and homecoming, loss and restoration.

Set against the deceptive simplicity of a small town on the high plains, Angel Fire is a story of mythic proportions. It resonates with the rhythms of tales told for millennia, but they are written anew here, fresh as a Wyoming summer breeze. It resonates with the rhythms of a small town, the blessings of memory, and the pain of loss.

"Reminiscent of Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain' ... (Franscell's) themes involve a fresh approach to our rural roots as a font for the elusive American spirit." -- USA Today

AVAILABLE ON KINDLE NOW!

Computers will predict juveniles' future crimes ... what could possibly go wrong?

2010-04-15T08:31:00.002-06:00

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has just bought state-of-the-art IBM software that they hope will help them identify juvenile criminals who are likely to commit future crimes.

This software will crunch the kids' criminal history, home life, drug habits, gang ties and peer associations -- and more -- in a scientific attempt to predict which juveniles are more likely to be future problems. The idea is that the hard cases can be separated from the rest and given more intensive rehabilitation. Florida officials stress the software will be just one way they try to zero-in on the most dangerous young offenders and tailor rehab and punishment more suitably to all the 95,000 young criminals they get every year.

"Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities," said Deepak Advani, a predictive analytics expert at IBM. "It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens."

Similar systems are already in use in the United Kingdom with adult prisoners. No data on the effectiveness is yet available.

Although it sounds a lot like the plot for "Hal 9000 Gets a Job as a Profiler," it will be hard to argue with this high-tech crystal-balling if it can be shown to reduce juvenile crime and recidivism. I mean, all we had before was Father Flanagan's intuitions. Questions remain (in my mind, anyway) about what kind of a computer-concocted, digitized, and possibly errant "permanent record"might follow these young offenders around for the rest of their lives, even if they never offend again. I also wonder about the unproven effectiveness of these robotic analysts to really see into a human heart. Thoughts from you expert crime-watchers?

Bestselling true-crime author Ron Franscell's haunting study of 10 mass-murder survivors, DELIVERED FROM EVIL, will be released in January 2011.

DELIVERED FROM EVIL: The cover design

2010-04-12T10:39:00.000-06:00

Here's the book-jacket design for DELIVERED FROM EVIL, my upcoming book profiling 10 survivors of mass killings. It will be available everywhere January 2011.

The image on the cover is of a young woman cowering in fear moments after Texas Tower sniper Charles Whitman killed a young man just a few yards away.

The publisher's description: "Delivered from Evil retells the stories of mass murders from the harrowing perspective of a sole survivor. Drawing from extensive research and 1st person interviews with the survivors, the most notable cases will be given a fresh and disturbing new perspective. Using survivor’s accounts, some of which have never been told until now, readers will feel like they are actually walking through the event moment by moment Written in a can’t-put-down-style, Delivered from Evil explores what it takes to be a survivor of a horrific crime in the moment and in dealing with the aftermath of the event."

DELIVERED FROM EVIL ($26, Fair Winds Press) is also available now for pre-ordering at Amazon. Just click here and reserve your copy now!

Five Important Contributions by Prison Inmates (not counting eyeball tattoos)

2010-03-12T07:59:00.001-06:00

If you brushed your teeth this morning before settling down to read whatever fascinating new material was posted at In Cold Blog, you were unwittingly celebrating a prison inmate.

That's right. In 1770, British merchant William Addis was doing time for causing a riot. That's when he decided that the customary tooth-cleaning of his day -- rubbing your teeth with a sooty, salty rag -- wasn't the best idea. So he cadged a small bone from a piece of prison meat and bribed a guard for some horse-hair bristles, which he tied in tufts and inserted in small holes in the bones. Voila! The first modern toothbrush was created.

In fact, more contributions to the betterment of the world have come from prison than you might imagine. In a bawdy recent post at Cracked.com, blogger Manhammer (?) listed five of the most notable inventions or ideas to come from behind bars, including William Addis' toothbrush.

You might be surprised to learn the Erie Canal and the modern carbine were prison products. You've heard of the Birdman of Alcatraz (pictured above, looking nothing like Burt Lancaster)? How about Don Quixote?

OK, so these guys were the overachievers of the hoosegow. Face it, most inmates devote their imaginations to tattooing naked women on their scrotums and trying to figure out how to make a shank out of a cockroach. How many times have you said to yourself, "If only these criminal masterminds would put their creative energies to work for the benefit of mankind, the world would be a better place?"

Well, here you have it. Isn't it nice to know that some inmates have put their "time" to good use?

You can now follow author Ron Franscell at Facebook and Twitter.

ONLY ON KINDLE! Ron Franscell's 'lost' mystery

2010-02-03T08:34:00.001-06:00

This juicy mystery somehow got lost as Ron was on his way to bestsellerdom, but now it's being made available exclusively on Kindle for only $5.99!

Praised by bestselling thriller authors like John Lescroart and Michael Palmer, THE OBITUARY revisits the little Winchester, Wyoming, where history and mystery entangle small-town newspaper editor Jefferson Morgan. When the grave of a reputed Old West outlaw queen divulges its unexpectedly grisly secret, Morgan is plunged into a world of satellite-savvy highway pirates, Internet porn and old-fashioned corruption.

And now all of Ron's e-books -- ANGEL FIRE, THE DEADLINE and THE OBITUARY -- are only $5.99 at the Kindle store!

(And if you are a traditionalist, Ron's books are still printed on paper and still available at Amazon and othe booksellers!)

NOW ON KINDLE! Ron Franscell's THE DEADLINE

2010-01-08T13:18:00.001-06:00

If you're a Kindle reader, you're in for a treat! My 1999 mystery, THE DEADLINE has just come out in a Kindle edition!

A dying convict's last request thrusts small-town newspaperman Jefferson Morgan into a deadly maelstrom as he explores a fifty-year-old case of child murder -- a wound his town still isn't ready to scrape open. Under the heaviest deadline of his life, and amid threats from unexpected foes, Morgan must struggle with his own conscience to tell a story no matter the consequences, dig deep into the town's past, and reveal a killer who's managed to remain unmasked for almost 50 years.

And keep an eye out next month for the "lost" sequel, THE OBITUARY, which will be published as a Kindle Exclusive for e-readers!

More praise for THE DARKEST NIGHT

2010-01-07T09:55:00.001-06:00

The Book Experiment has just posted a marvelous review of THE DARKEST NIGHT, one of those that makes me glad I told the story. Among the reflections on the book was this:

"Somehow Franscell manages to extend his compassion to the lowlifes, Ronald Kennedy and Jerry Jenkins, responsible for the crime. He tells their story as completely and honestly as he tells of their victims. The contrast between the bleak lives that created such pathetic monsters as Kennedy and Jenkins with the ordinary and seemingly safe lives of their victims is all the more breathtaking for taking place in the same town."

When somebody calls my book -- or any book, for that matter -- one of the best of the past decade, I can't help but swallow hard and hope it's true.

Are reports of true crime's death premature?

2009-12-09T12:30:00.000-06:00

By Ron Franscell

Author Joe McGinniss, whose "Fatal Vision" is among a handful of acknowledged classics in true crime (and irrevocably skewed true-crime titles for almost three decades), recently pronounced the genre deader than Marley:

"The last three books I've written have been about soccer, which nobody in America cares about; horse racing, which nobody in America cares about; and true crime, a genre that expired sometime last century . . ."

If the genre is dead, it's died fairly young. It hasn't even been 50 years since Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" plucked crime reporting from the pages of pulp magazines and plopped it down in a book.

Even for a true-crime writer, death isn't usually a matter of perspective. Dead is dead. Maybe true crime is dying, or maybe it has ceased to produce the kinds of profits that McGinniss and other big-time writers expect, or maybe it's just evolving. But a gaggle of new true-crime books are being produced every year, along with an unprecedented number of TV shows dealing with the reality of crime. So "dead" might be a little strong.

For sure, the genre has made a deliberate, intentional shift away from the narrative grace of Capote and Norman Mailer in an effort to appeal to a less sophisticated reader who is more likely to be influenced by faux blood on the cover and will almost always check to see if the book includes gruesome photos before buying. I know of some authors out there who genuinely want to write (or have written) beautiful books that, like Capote, explore bigger issues reflected in crime and punishment, but they are discouraged by editors ... while just about any grocery clerk can publish a quickie book about a local murder case (as long as there is a lurid element, great pictures and the word "fatal" in the title).

McGinniss might be right. If we only took then pulse of true crime's literary merits, the genre definitely died ... right about the time of "Fatal Vision" (1983). McGinniss was among the first big names in true crime to veer away from stories with complex moral reflections on society to the lurid, commercial crap that appealed to a different kind of audience. So it's hard to disagree with Joe -- even though he certainly didn't make the comment knowing that he was part of the sea-change, along with Ann Rule and others.

Moreover, as True Crime Book Reviews noted recently at its Facebook site, "as self-publication become easier and less expensive, [the quality of] all genres will suffer."

Thankfully, there have been a few remarkable exceptions in the past 20 years, among them John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and Erik Larson's "Devil in the White City." They are likely to take the rightful places as classics in a genre that, at best, is still defining itself but wants desperately to be just like its earliest forebears.

It's quite possible that the last 20 years have simply been a phase, true crime's adolescence, where it was doing stupid things because of hormones. Maybe the adult years will reflect the genre's early precociousness and return to its sturdier, more robust, more literary roots.

But maybe not. Maybe it will simply decay back into its pulpy DNA and die out completely. Maybe the future of true-crime writing is on life-support in the small houses and POD presses.

You are a true-crime fan. Talk to me. What is the current state of true crime? How does it compare to the past and how would you describe its future?

Become a Facebook Fan of author Ron Franscell. Click here!

Join Ron's new Fan site at Facebook!

2009-11-18T17:48:00.000-06:00

Now you can communicate in real time with Author Ron Franscell at his new Facebook Fan site. Get the FRIDAY FAX every week, chat with other readers, ask questions, even become eligible for giveaways!

Just click here and become a Fan!

BREAKING NEWS: Mass-murderer Howard Unruh is dead

2009-10-19T14:54:00.004-06:00

UPDATE 10/20/09: Sources say Howard Unruh's body has been claimed by an unidentified niece. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

~~~~

Howard Unruh, who has been called (somewhat errantly) "the father of mass murder," has died in the New Jersey mental hospital where he has lived since gunning down 13 people in Camden, N.J., in 1949. He was 88 and spent more than 60 years in the asylum.

He was not, in fact, America's first mass murderer, nor even the first one to snap, pick up a gun and start killing people. He was, however, a rarity, in that he didn't commit suicide after his rampage.

Charles Cohen, a 12-year-old boy whose parents and grandmother were slaughtered in Unruh's angry, 12-minute spree, became the most outspoken survivor of the so-called "walk of death." When Unurh was seeking less restrictive accommodations in the hospital, Cohen campaigned to keep him under the strictest control. He kept artifacts of the killings in an old suitcase and yearned for the day the seriously psychotic Unruh would be dead, so he could bury the suitcase -- and his memory. Alas, Cohen himself died at age 72 less than two months ago and was buried on the 60th anniversary of the shooting.

Ironically, Unruh was a WWII veteran who might now be eligible for a burial with full military rites. No services have yet been announced.

The story of Howard Unruh's rampage and Charles Cohen's extraordinary survival will be part of a 2010 book by Ron Franscell about survivors of mass killers.

Not Lost Forever: New book details little girl's murder survival and search for answers

2009-10-06T06:30:00.004-06:00

Twenty years ago, I was working for the Marin County (Calif.) Independent Journal, the local paper in America's chicest -- and most expensive -- county. So with a new son in the house, we lived a more frugal life a half-hour north, in the quiet chicken-farming town of Petaluma, where my own world had shrunk to raising two children.

Then the news broke that just up the road from my house, just a few miles from my own daughter's kindergarten, the bloody bodies of three little girls were found in the county dump, their throats slashed. But one, little 3-year-old Carmina, was clinging to life ... and the unfolding news was pointing to a disturbing suspect: the little girls' own father.

Steve Jackson's latest true crime book, Not Lost Forever ($25.99, HarperCollins), co-authored with Carmina Salcido officially hits the bookstores today (Oct. 6). The publisher describes it this way: "It is a remarkable story of survival and healing after the 1989 murderous rampage by Carmina's father, Mexican vineyard worker Ramon Salcido in the wine country of Sonoma Valley, California. Left for dead at three years old — her throat brutally slashed — Carmina miraculously survived what is widely considered one of California’s most notorious crimes: the unthinkable attack that savagely destroyed seven innocent lives, including her entire family. At once a harrowing true crime story and the inspirational first-person account of a young girl’s strength, heart, and determination in the nightmare’s aftermath, Not Lost Forever is a shocking and profoundly moving tale of perseverance and hope, and of a precious life regained."

Question: What was different about the style of storytelling in Not Lost Forever?

Answer: Well, Carmina (pictured lower left) was three years old when her family was murdered by her father and she was left for dead with her throat cut. So while her recollections of that morning are extremely vivid, and amazingly accurate when compared to the evidence and what the police believe happened, they are still the 20-year-old memories of a traumatic childhood tragedy.

As such, she had no idea of what was going on around her: the search for her father and his capture and subsequent trial; the massive national and international response to her incredible story of survival, which at the time made her "the most famous three-year-old in the world"; or the impact of the crimes on what to that point had been the sort of laid-back wine country atmosphere of Sonoma County in 1989.

Still, Carmina wanted to tell her part of the story in the first person, which necessitated what I consider a hybrid of first-person memoir with dramatic narrative for passages such as the hunt for her father, Ramon Salcido, and his trial.

There is also some "as told to" sections from my time spent with her traveling to the crime scenes and reflecting on the past in which as the writer, I felt my observations were important to the story, too. Obviously, as she grew older, her memories of the bizarre life she was subjected to AFTER the murders was much fuller and so the first-person aspect is more dominant. We'll see if I was able to achieve a decent blend -- sticking with the wine country metaphor, perhaps something of a cabernet-merlot mix.

Q: How did you fill in the blanks around Carmina's memories?

A. Fortunately, one aspect of Carmina's return to Sonoma (photo courtesy of the Sonoma Index-Tribune) when she was 19 years old was a quest to learn the truth about her family and what had happened in April 1989. So she did quite a bit of digging on her own, looking at library clips and talking to people who had known her mother and father.

She was greatly aided in this by Capt. Mike Brown (Ret.) who had been the detective sergeant in charge of the homicide investigation team that day. He patiently answered her questions, and also helped her with her research, including gaining access to the police, district attorney and court files, which of course contained much more information than what the newspapers had written.

So Carmina actually knew a lot of the story and was able to relate it to me in her own words and in context with her memories. And once again, Mike Brown was invaluable to me as well in regards to filling in those blanks from a dedicated police detective's point of view.

Q: Seven murders, including the brutal slaying of four young girls, two of whom were likely sexually molested, as well as the attempted murder of Carmina ... it seems like a pretty dark story.

A: The depravity of Ramon Salcido is without question. He murdered his entire family and a co-worker in a vicious but calculated manner with plenty of time between murder scenes to consider what he had done and stop himself.

This wasn't one incident, it was four with significant distance between each episode and location. He continues to deny his culpability -- blaming it all on alcohol drugs and untrue allegations about his wife's fidelity -- and has beaten the system and remained alive on Death Row at San Quentin for 20 years.

So yes, if this was the standard fare of a truly heinous crime and then the machinations of justice, it would indeed be a dark tale with very little light with the exception of the work of the detectives working the case and prosecutor who sent Ramon Salcido to Death Row. However, I see it as Carmina's story -- a story about her courage and strength and, for lack of a better term, her indomitable spirit to overcome not just what her father did, but the misery of her life afterward without giving up, and then her quest to learn the truth and finally to confront the man who had done his best to destroy her and everything she cared about.

That she still laughs with such delight and looks forward to life like any young woman who had not been through what she has, is truly inspirational to me. I think anyone who is deal with the aftermath of a crime, or just having a rough ride through life, who reads this book has to come away thinking "I don't have it so bad. If she can overcome that, I can deal with what I have to as well."

Q. I understand that ABC's 20/20 news magazine will be doing a feature on Carmina and the book?

A. Yes, it's due to air on Oct. 16 (check local listings for time). Originally, they planned a half-hour segment to run on Oct. 9, but the producers apparently felt that the story warranted a full hour so it was pushed back a week. I have no idea how they approached the story -- there were several avenues, we chose to write the book as semi-autobiographical (is that even a term or am I making it up?) I do know that viewers will get a good feel for Carmina now, as well as Mike Brown, who once again, though reluctantly (he does it for her), figures prominently in the 20/20 story, too.

Follow bestselling true-crime author Ron Franscell on Facebook or Twitter

Last Meal: Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger ...

2009-09-25T12:08:00.002-06:00

Your last breath is only a few hours away. The governor isn't going to call. People are gathering outside to cheer your death. The Death Row chaplain has run out of prayers. The clock is ticking like a time bomb.

You have one final decision before your life is over: what will you eat for your last meal? Porterhouse steak? Beef Wellington? French nouvelle?

In Texas, where we keep painfully detailed Death House records, the most common answer is surprising: cheeseburgers and fries. Why? After 20 years in stir, where cheeseburgers aren't commonly served in the prison chow line, they are the most evocative comfort food in a Dead Man Walking's memory of the outside world. Or maybe they just taste good.

Double and triple cheeseburgers were on the Last Menu for killers. Most were prepared in the prison kitchens, but insiders reveal that they'll occasionally make a quick run to the Golden Arches to satisfy a last request.

But burgers aren't the only surprising final entree for the condemned. Hatchet-killer David Long had four BLTs. Baby-killing mass-murderer John Wheat had liver and onions -- and whole milk. Family killer Leonard Rojas had a whole fried chicken (extra crispy). Shootist John Baltazar asked for Cool Whip and cherries. James Powell wanted one pot of coffee. Random killer Jonathan Nobles requested communion for his last meal. And robber-killer Clifton Russell wasn't picky -- he asked for "whatever is on the menu."

Just like the outside world, cheeseburgers are declasse for the celebrities of Death Row. Serial killer Ricky Lee Green had five scrambled eggs, four sausage patties, eight slices of toast, six strips of bacon and four pints of milk. Born-again pick-axe killer Karla Faye Tucker chose a banana, a peach and a garden salad with ranch dressing. Serial killer Kenneth McDuff gorged himself on two T-bone steaks, five fried eggs, French fries, coconut pie and Coke. "Candyman" Ronald O'Bryan -- who poisoned his own son and ruined Halloween for many children -- ate a T-bone with corn and peas, saltines, Boston cream pie and sweet tea. Railroad Killer Angel Maturino Resendiz declined any last meal.

Last Meals are purely symbolic of society's mercy. They are generally served so close to execution that they have no nutritional value to the condemned. In most cases, they don't even have time to digest completely. They are simply a gesture to provide one last comfort or pleasure to a man or woman who'll be dead within a few hours.

So ... what would you order for your Last Meal?

(Want to know more? Pick up the latest edition of "Texas Death Row," Edited by Bill Crawford)

Come get a signed book in Milford CT!

2009-08-24T11:54:00.000-06:00

If you're anywhere near Connecticut on Sept. 8, please drop in at Collected Stories Bookstore in Milford CT. I'll be signing my latest book, THE DARKEST NIGHT, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Even if you think I suck as a writer, there'll be free wine!

And there's a rumor that copies of my previous novels ANGEL FIRE and THE DEADLINE will be available, too! So c'mon down and say hello!

Ed Gein ... the musical?

2009-08-12T09:29:00.001-06:00

By Ron Franscell

Ed Gein wasn't your ordinary grave-robbing, corpse-grinding, necrophiliac, cannibalistic, would-be serial killer. He could carry a snappy tune, too!

You might recall Eddie. In the late 1950s, cops investigating a local murder in Plainfield, Wis., stumbled upon a startlingly grotesque scene in Gein's farmhouse. Yes, they found their murder victim dressed out like a dead deer, but that was the easy part. They also found a mask made from the face-skin of another local woman; human skulls made into bedposts and soup bowls; four disembodied noses; socks, lampshades and baskets made of human skin; shrunken heads; a box of female genitals; and a belt made from nipples.

In a surprise verdict, Eddie was judged insane. Go figure. He died in 1984 in a Wisconsin insane asylum.

But like all good freaks, Eddie isn't really dead. He lives -- nay, thrives -- in our cultural consciousness. In both books and film, he was the inspiration for Norman Bates in "Psycho" and for Jamie Gumb in "Silence of the Lambs." His affinity for human-face masks was even aped by Leatherface in "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Now, Eddie will be the main character in "Ed Gein, The Musical," an indie film by Appleton-based DaviesRussell. It's being shot in Omro, Wis., because the citizens of Plainfield simply weren't interested. Go figure.

Co-producer Dan Davies says his movie will be historically accurate ... but will also feature lots of comedy and "plenty of great music." Oh yeah! Broadway-style show tunes with stirring lyrics like "I'm in love ... she's all cooked up!" and "I truly love you ... you smell of formaldehyde."

Ed must have some strange power over musical minds. Former Marilyn Manson bassist Gidget Gein took his name from Eddie. And there's also a grindcore band called "Ed Gein." Consider their 2003 album, "It's a Shame a Family Can Be Torn Apart by Something as Simple as a Pack of Wild Dogs," featuring the hit single, "The Marlboro Man is a Douche Bag."

Somewhere down deep inside where only God and Eddie Gein have explored, I want to be offended by this, but I just can't. If we can celebrate Sweeney Todd and John Dillinger, then Eddie deserves his screen time, too. In fact, I've got this tune stuck in my head:

Her hands are tasty and her knees are sweet
her pituitary gland is a tasty treat.
Who do you turn to when you need to sup?
... I'm in love ...
she's all cooked up

Uh-huh.

You can now follow Ron Franscell, author of THE DARKEST NIGHT, at Facebook and Twitter. He is now working on his next book, an exploration of mass-murder survivors' experiences -- without music.

Now on Twitter!

2009-07-16T09:35:00.003-06:00

Now you can follow Ron on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RonFranscell

Help me find John Wilkes Booth's missing mummy!

2009-07-03T15:26:00.001-06:00

Ready to play Gumshoe?

While researching an upcoming book, I came across the intriguing story of the long-lost mummy of John Wilkes Booth ... or at least a fellow who claimed to be him.

It all begins in 1870, five years after the Lincoln assassination, when a young man named John St. Helen settled in Glen Rose, Texas, where he took a job as a bartender and acted in the local theater. He reportedly had an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare and remarkable stage presence. But when the daughter of a local politician invited a slew of U.S. Army officers and a federal marshal to her fabulous wedding, St. Helen mysteriously disappeared.

In 1871, he popped up in Granbury, just up the road. He again worked as a bartender at a local saloon and befriended a local lawyer named Finis Bates. Bates noted years later that although St. Helen was a teetotaler, he drank himself silly on one day of every year, April 14 — the anniversary of Lincoln’s shooting.

While in Granbury, St. Helen got sick and believed he would soon die. Secretly, he whispered to his friend Bates, “My name is not John St. Helen. I am John Wilkes Booth, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.”

To be sure, he bore a resemblance to the famed actor and dastardly killer. His age (about 40) was about right, and his theatrical demeanor gave one pause. And he told a remarkable story of mistaken identity on the Virginia farm where Booth was supposedly killed by federal troops.
But St. Helen didn’t die. He recovered long enough to disappear again, reportedly leaving behind a pistol wrapped in a Washington newspaper dated April 15, 1865.

That was the last anyone heard of St. Helen — until 1903, when an itinerant housepainter named David George committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma. He’d again confessed his “true” identity to a local widow, who described him as an intelligent man who often quoted Shakespeare when in his cups. And the coroner discovered George’s right leg had been broken just above the ankle years before, and he was born in the same year as Booth. They wondered, might David George’s alias be a combination of two Lincoln conspirators’ names, David Herold and George Atzerodt, both hanged for their roles in the assassination plot?

George/St. Helen/Booth’s corpse was mummified and displayed for two years in the front window of an Enid funeral home until his old friend Finis Bates (future grandfather of actress Kathy Bates) came to identify George as his old friend, John St. Helen. He claimed the body, had it positively identified by Booth relatives, then sent it on a carnival sideshow tour as the mummy of John Wilkes Booth.

In 1931, a team of doctors and detectives X-rayed the mummy (pictured above). They allegedly found a broken leg and thumb, and a scar on the neck that matched wounds Booth was known to have suffered. Oddly, they also found a corroded signet ring in the mummy’s stomach — bearing the initial “B.” Suddenly, people began to wonder … could it be?

In 1937, the mummy reportedly attracted more than $100,000 from sideshow gawkers. Various carnivals displayed the mummy over the years until it vanished completely in the mid-1970s ... about the time the feds were cracking down on displaying human remains. Whether the Booth mummy was destroyed or is now in a secret collector's care, the central question is ... where is it?

~~~~~~~~~~

Personally, I am skeptical that David George was Booth ... but it's that sliver of possibility that intrigues me. Even if he isn't, though, maybe we can explore the tragedy of being nobody wanting to be somebody ... and ultimately being lost altogether. Whether the mummy is found or unfound, the book will explore bigger issues of culture and psyche ... and cultural psyche.

Who wants to play? Doesn't matter if you are a skeptic or a believer ... let the courts and scientists sort it out. If you have clues or special inside knowledge, let's see if we can crack the Case of the Missing Mummy. (And you thought it was easy?)

You may post here or write directly to Ron by clicking here

Worst U.S. serial killer behind bars tonight?

2009-04-30T20:38:00.000-06:00

Los Angeles police today arrested John Floyd Thomas, Jr., a name no self-respecting true-crime buff will want to forget.

After a recent arrest, a DNA database matched Thomas to evidence left in two 1970s killings in Southern California. Thomas, they say, might have begun a serial rape and murder spree as early as 1955.

Police believe Thomas might prove to be the most prolific serial killer in American history, with an estimated 30 cases in the L.A. area alone.

Stay tuned ...

16 Pages of Shocking Photos! Do you look?

2009-04-06T07:37:00.001-06:00

Funny story. Not long ago, I was telling a fascinating little yarn about the autopsy of a deranged killer whose body was riddled with more than 200 bullets after pursuing police cornered him at the end of one of modern America's bloodiest massacres.

Then my wife nudged me with one of our secret signs that maybe I should change the subject because, after all, we were at a funeral.

In 30 years as a newspaperman and a couple true-crime projects, I sometimes forget my threshhold for grisliness is somewhat higher than the ordinary human's. I have attended autopsies and exhumations, thumbed through hundreds of coroner reports, pored over grotesque evidence photos, learned a couple cool tricks to keep from retching from death-stink, and seen more than my share of gore-splattered crime scenes. Most times, I know how far is too far, but sometimes I forget that I chose to see these things so you (the common public) didn't have to ... mostly because, trust me, you don't want to.

This, of course, totally neglects the voyeurism that is such an intimate part of true crime. From graphic descriptions of rape and dismemberment to uncloseted skeletons, many of us want to see the darker elements of crime and punishment.

This week, while researching an upcoming book, I was given a crime-scene photo that actually caused me to gasp. Honestly, that's hard to do. The first thing that went through my mind was, "God, the publisher will never print that." The second thing was, "God, what if they want to publish that?"

Honestly, I don't know which bothers me more.

I have held forth here and elsewhere in the past that true-crime publishing has become largely pulpy and exploitive, splashing faux blood on bookjackets and promising "16 Pages of Shocking Photos!" I cannot believe that shocking photos are more attractive to true-crime readers than good, dramatic storytelling ... but it wouldn't be the first time I've been dead wrong.

One of the classics of the genre is Gary Lavergne's 1997 "Sniper in the Tower," about Charles Whitman's 1966 shooting spree from the University of Texas Tower. It set a standard for detailed research and reportage, but more interestingly, its photo insert contained images of Whitman's dead wife and mother in which their actual corpses were Photoshopped out. Only the blank outline of their bodies remained. While I understand the motivation to show a little dignity in a genre that usually doesn't, I also felt that someone decided my constitution wasn't strong enough to see two tiny black-and-white dead people. Run the image or don't run the image, I thought, but don't manipulate it.

Bloody crime-scene photos don't affect me much, but I must realize I'm far more jaded than most. For me, color seems to be more provocative than black-and-white; yesterday's images are far more affecting than tintypes of Jesse James' corpse. But in the end, I would neither buy (nor refuse to buy) a book based on my reaction to a surreptitious glimpse of its photos in the checkout line. The images, like the adjectives, just add color to the movie that unreels in my head as I read.

If my wife were here right now, she'd nudge me. She'd remind me that not everyone has inspected, up close, the logo on a dead man's socks, or seen a dead man's bloated body burst like a sad balloon on a hot summer afternoon.

And not everyone can come here to ask some of true crime's most devoted fans how they feel, so ... what's your feeling about disturbing crime photos in true-crime books and magazines? Are they truly off-putting or an essential part of why you read true crime? Will grotesque pictures influence your purchase (or refusal to purchase) a book?

Eye Candy: If thine left eye offend thee ... eat it

2009-01-11T22:17:00.001-06:00

Accused of murdering his estranged wife and two children and ripping their hearts out, Andre Thomas plucked out his own right eye just before his 2004 murder trial. His self-surgery didn't win any sympathy from his Sherman, Texas, jury: they sent him to Death Row.

But apparently he didn't like the view from his cell. Last week, Thomas plucked out his remaining eyeball -- and ate it.

Look -- oh, sorry -- this guy is obviously either or starving. But Andre Thomas proves what your mother always told you about the first-degree slaughter of your family: "You'll put your eye out, kid"

A Killer Test: How sharp are your murder wits?

2008-11-10T10:32:00.000-06:00

It's safe to assume the readers of this blog are fairly conversant in matters of mass- and serial-killing. You know your Mansons from your Bundys, right? Well, it's Monday and you've got a tough week ahead, so here's something fun -- in a macabre sorta way -- to distract you from your nasty obsession with Dr. G.

In the next 60 seconds -- and before you read any further in this post -- list as many mass-murderers and serial killers as you can ... ready ... set ... GO!

How many did you get? 10? Watch more TruTV.

20? Not bad.

30? Impressive.

OK, here's another little test for you, and this one is a little harder: In the next 60 seconds, name as many victims of mass- or serial killers as you can. Ready ... set ... GO!

Oh c'mon, if every name you came up with was killed by the Manson Family, that's no better than the devoted readers of Mommy Blogs! Pre-schoolers wandering through the true-crime section at Borders can do better! DN readers are the cream of the crop! What? You couldn't name a single victim of Bundy, Dahmer, BTK, Gein, Gacy or the Ripper?

OK, forget that test, let's try another one: In the next 60 seconds, name as many survivors of mass- or serial-killers as you can. Ready ... set ... whaddya mean you're not even gonna try?? C'mon it's just for fun. Please?

If some idle cybersurfer drifts through here, he's gonna think that we are more fixated with the killers than with their victims. That just doesn't seem right, does it? I mean, we know ordinary folks are fascinated by demented killers, but we're supposed to be ... I dunno ... extra-ordinary.

Our infatuation with the perverse sometimes leaves little room on our emotional hard drive for the victims of perversity. That's not to say we cannot appreciate the horrors faced by Catherine Eddowes, Nancy Fox, Bobby Piest or Debra Lynn Bonner -- but we forget their names and faces far quicker than the names and faces of the killers who ended their lives.

And when it comes to survivors of these monsters, barely a single name would kindle a spark of recognition in even the most devoted true-crime reader.

Talk to me, friends. What does this say about us?

(How did I do on my own test? Hey, I'm a true-crime writer and a career journalist who started his newsroom life in the cop shops and courtrooms of this great ... OK, I sucked, too.)

Old Crimes, Long Memories: Bonnie and Clyde are bullet-riddled dust, but they are immortal in our imaginations

2008-09-09T10:03:00.003-06:00

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, two of the most infamous outlaws of America's Outlaw Age, have been rotting for 74 years in their Texas graves. But still today, you can buy a 1-inch square swatch of Clyde's blood-soaked trousers at one of two roadside museums, just up the lonely backroad from where the star-crossed lovers -- and cold-blooded killers -- were fatally ambushed by lawmen in 1934.

The Bonnie & Clyde Ambush Museum is one of those places that crime history buffs like me would drive a hundred miles out of the way to see (I did). It's been open less than a year in Gibsland, La., and is run by the son of one of the six cops who gunned down Bonnie and Clyde. It's also in the building that was once Ma Canfield's Cafe, where the lover-killers stopped minutes before the ambush -- their take-out sandwiches were found half-eaten on the dead Bonnie's lap.

The main industry in Gibsland (Pop. 1,091) in Bonnie and Clyde. Boots Hinton's Ambush Museum has artifacts related to the outlaws, including some of the guns seized from the outlaws' well-perforated car, the famed swatches of Clyde's pants, Bonnie's red tam, rare photos and films, even the prop car used in the 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde" starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. (The real death car and Clyde's bloodstained shirt are displayed at a Nevada casino.) But there's another museum next door with more stuff. And every May, there's a festive re-enactment of Bonnie and Clyde's Shakespearean end.

Apparently nothing else of note has ever happened in Gibsland, which is fortunate for Gibsland. This little burg has capitalized brilliantly on its single grotesque event. History buffs, crime fans, or just tourists with quirky tastes flock here to pay $7 a head for a peek at a bloody page of history.

Just about 8 miles down the road, a cracked, graffiti-ravaged stone monument marks the exact spot where Bonnie and Clyde died in a hail of 130 bullets fired by 6 Texas and Louisiana lawmen who never gave the killers a chance to reach for their weapons. Within minutes, the place was crawling with curious bystanders, who snipped some of Bonnie's hair and pieces of her gory dress, picked up shell casings and broken glass, even tried to cut off Clyde's finger and ear ... all for souvenirs. Like something out of the Old West, photographs were taken of the disfigured corpses, and the town where the couple was embalmed -- not buried -- swelled to five times its normal size with gawkers hoping to catch a glimpse of the dead couple.

But what's the modern fascination with Bonnie and Clyde (or Dillinger, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy or Al Capone)? It's one thing for a true-crime author and history nut to chase ghosts of unrepentant, angry thugs, but ordinary people? It hardly seems to be the opportunity to live a moment of justice, but maybe ... Is it the promise of blood? A chance to rub up against death?

In the case of the former (and to some small degree the latter), author Joseph Geringer, who wrote "Bonnie and Clyde: Romeo and Juliet in a Getaway Car," explained the long-lived legend this way: "Americans thrilled to their 'Robin Hood' adventures. The presence of a female, Bonnie, escalated the sincerity of their intentions to make them something unique and individual -- even at times heroic."

Indeed. A few of the vandals who have defaced the stone marker at the death site pay tribute to Bonnie and Clyde. To be sure, locks of Bonnie's hair or even that half-eaten sandwich might turn up on eBay when you least expect it.

DNA SNAFU: Questions erupt about strange matches in FBI's DNA database

2008-08-06T16:19:00.002-06:00

Ron Franscell, author of the bestselling true-crime THE DARKEST NIGHT, will be the guest on Burl Barer's Internet radio show at 4 p.m. CDT Saturday (8/9). Listen on your computer by clicking on OutlawCrime.com

By Ron Franscell

You might think from watching the dizzying array of TV crime fare that DNA evidence is the incontrovertible defense killer (or in some cases, the golden key to the jailhouse door for wrongly convicted inmates). In most cases it is definitely the most trustworthy evidence ... except that for the past 7 years, questions have been rising about matches in the FBI's central database that defy the odds and send a little quiver through our faith in this science as a prosecutorial tool.

It all began in 2001, when an Arizona crime lab worker tested the state's DNA database and found two felons with similar genetic profiles. Remarkably, they matched at 9 of the 13 locations on chromosomes, or loci, commonly used to distinguish people from each other. In court, a DNA expert would say that the chance of these two men sharing these same markers would be 1 in 113 billion -- or nearly impossible.

But these two men did. And they weren't related: one was black and one was white.

Crime labs began conducting other searches. In 2 states, nearly 1,000 such cases were found where two criminals matched at 9 or more "loci."

This weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported that this surprising discovery has ignited a legal fight in which the FBI is trying to block similar searches and forestall even court-ordered inquiries into its DNA database known as CODIS (Combined DNA Index System). The FBI asserts the data was misleading and misrepresented, and further mucking around in its system will simply harm crime-fighting. The FBI has even reportedly threatened to cut off some states' access to CODIS if they persist in so-called "Arizona searches."

Nobody knows exactly how rare DNA matches are; they are just FBI estimates. But the dispute here focuses on one word: "profile." Your complete genetic makeup is unique, but your "genetic profile" is just a narrowly focused snapshot of your genes. As the Times said, siblings often share these genetic markers, and unrelated people can share some by coincidence. An exact match of 13 markers by two unrelated people is unlikely. The odds? 1 in 1 quadrillion.

DNA evidence laws have changed since that 2001 search. States now require DNA profiles match at 13 loci instead of nine, enormously strengthening the odds. But in some older, colder cases, 9 loci can still be used, and the Arizona results have thrown a huge wrench into those prosecutions.

What happens now? DNA remains a strong piece of evidence, and an even stronger argument for releasing wrongly convicted people. But the fight over the data is likely to muddy every single case in the near future where DNA is the only evidence against an accused offender.

'FALL' wins two gold medals in Los Angeles

2008-05-30T21:28:00.005-06:00

PRESS RELEASE -- Author Ron Franscell won two gold medals in True Crime for his atmospheric 2007 true-crime "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town" (New Horizon Press) during BookExpo America in Los Angeles Friday night.

One was awarded by the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and the second by Foreword Magazine. Both ceremonies were held Friday in conjunction with BEA.

"FALL" is part true crime, part memoir about the monstrous 1973 abduction, rape and murder of two of the author's childhood friends in the small town where they lived, and it examines why the crime remains an open wound there 35 years later. Departing from the genre's usual reportorial style, "FALL" was hailed by true-crime legend Ann Rule, "Helter Skelter" author Vincent Bugliosi and media critics as a direct literary descendant of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

St. Martin's recently released the paperback edition of "FALL" under the new title, "The Darkest Night." The paperback has been in the Top 10 True Crime books at Amazon.com since it was published in March.

"This book exploring the lives and horrid deaths of two friends was difficult to write," Franscell, a veteran journalist, said after thee awards were announced. "But somewhere in their tragic stories is a beacon for the new world we occupy. From a very dark night, some light. This award belongs to them."

The silver medal was awarded to "The Case Against Lucky Luciano," by Ellen Poulsen (Clinton Cook Publishing) and "Black Gangsters of Chicago," by Ron Chepesiuk (Barricade Books).

The bronze went to "The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories," by Elizabeth A. De Wolfe (Kent State University Press) and "Hunting the American Terrorist," by Terry Turchie and Kathleen Puckett (History Publishing Co.)

IPPY is the colloqiual name given to the Independent Publishers Book Awards. This year's contest attracted 3,175 total entries, with over 2,500 entries in the national categories and over 600 entries in the regional competition.

Podcast: Interview with host Steve Shaman at Earth Frenzy Radio

2008-04-29T11:48:00.004-06:00

You might think online booksellers are a miracle of modern technology, but here's something even more modern and miraculous: Internet radio. No more transistors and rabbit ears. No expensive satellite receivers. No worrying that you're out of the reception area. Host Steve Shaman of Earth Frenzy Radio conducted an hour-long interview about THE DARKEST NIGHT on April 29, 2008. In case you missed it, here is the podcast:

DARKEST NIGHT interview with Steve Shaman

Book of the Year finalist at Foreword Magazine

2008-03-07T16:10:00.004-06:00

"The Darkest Night," the St. Martin's paperback edition of "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town," had just hit shelves this week when Foreword Magazine named its hardcover version among its Book of the Year finalists in true crime.

The winner will be announced in May at the Book Expo America in Los Angeles, Calif.

Foreword is a trade magazine for America's independent publishers -- all those small- to medium-sized houses that are publishing the bulk of U.S. books these days.

The Darkest Night: Coming in paperback

2007-10-10T21:39:00.001-06:00

One of the unique thrills of being an author is seeing the cover of your next book for the first time. I got that thrill this weekend. "The Darkest Night" is the St. Martin's paperback version of "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town," my true-crime/memoir published earlier this year.

It will be released in March 2008, although pre-orders are being taken at all online booksellers (hint, hint.)

Natural or nurtured? Are sociopaths born or made?

2007-10-09T08:50:00.001-06:00

It seems as though I've written about sociopaths from the time I typed my first lede 27 years ago. I started my journalistic life as a cop reporter and, now 27 years later, I'm still interviewing criminals with at least some passing interest in understanding the "why" of their acts.

But last week, a true-crime reader friend who is even more intensely interested in criminal behavior asked me if I believed sociopaths -- the politically-corrected word for what we once called "psychopaths" -- were the products of genetics or their circumstances. Not having any bonafide psychological training beyond what I've picked up on the street -- and you know what Mom said about picking up things on the street -- I equivocated. I told her I believed criminal sociopaths were the product of a "perfect storm" of nature and nurture ... incomplete souls who are born into poisonously fertile homes or neighborhoods. Some piece is missing in them and they are made worse -- made criminals -- by their families, neighbors or times.

But the fact is, I have no idea.

Smarter people than I have looked at the question, and they disagree. One of the best books on the matter is Dr. Martha Stout's "The Sociopath Next Door." Stout surmises that 4% of us are sociopathic, charmers living without conscience, but with a compulsion to dominate. Not all sociopaths are criminals ... but all criminals are sociopaths.

For all the headiness of the phrase "natural born killers," I wonder if there is truly such a thing. We deal with sociopaths every day in the office, the block, the gym, church ... but what keeps most of them from becoming crime stats?

My most intimate contact with a classic sociopath was rapist-killer Ron Kennedy, who very nearly checks every box on a psychiatrist sociopathy checklist. In 1973, he abducted two young childhood friends of mine, raped one of them and threw both from a dizzyingly high bridge into a remote canyon in Wyoming. One died and one lived ... at least for a while. (The harrowing story is told in my 2007 book, "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town.")

Kennedy was born into mean circumstances on the wrong side of the tracks. By the time he committed the rape and murder that landed him on Death Row briefly more than 30 years ago, he'd already spent more than half his life in jail, reformatory or prison. In 14 hours of prison interviews, he blamed his criminality -- although he wouldn't call it that -- on the world's sundry prejudices against him. But since many people were born in his circumstances and never became rapist-killers, there was clearly more to it.

At the true-crime blog where I first posted this, In Cold Blog, we have some of the most critical observers of human behavior -- especially criminally. I didn't come to answer questions, but to promote a discussion of this topic, which lies at the heart of every true crime we write, read, investigate, prosecute, or mourn. I wanted to know from them -- and now from you:

Is a criminal born or made?

The color of his skin?

2007-09-20T09:51:00.000-06:00

This racism thing confuses me. It seems like every time I think I've got it figured out, they change the rules. I'm trying really hard to be a color-blind white guy, but I keep getting rear-ended by the fact that some people of color are anything but color-blind.

Don Imus (who is white) calls some college girls '"ho's" and loses his job ... the NBA's Isiah Thomas (who is black) calls a female team executive a "ho" and it barely gets noticed. Then Thomas says he winces when white guys use the word "bitch" but it's OK when black guys do it.

Now Rev. Jesse Jackson says presidential candidate Barack Obama (who is black) is "acting like he's white." What the hell is that supposed to mean? What stereotypical white behavior is the founder of the so-called Rainbow Coalition referring to? And if a white power-broker accused a white candidate of "acting like he's black," wouldn't Jesse Jackson (and his buddy Al Sharpton) be in the front row of the lynch mob calling for his disembowelment?

I'm so confused.

The double standard on racism is weighing us down. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when his children would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, yet his most intimate followers -- including Jesse Jackson -- seem more obsessed with the color of a man's skin than the content of his character. If Jesse Jackson (and many, many other black leaders) cannot live up to King's standard, can they truly expect other races to do it?

The current Jena 6 controversy in Louisiana is an example of harvesting what we have sown. There, six black teens are charged with beating a white classmate. Supporters says the beating was a response to three nooses hung in a tree three months before (the white students responsible were suspended from school, but no criminal charges were filed.) At bottom, it's a complex case where two sides -- black and white -- are justifying criminal behavior in their own interest. Jesse Jackson (there he is again!) is in Jena to support the black assailants, even though his own mentor advocated civil disobedience and non-violence as a response to racism.

Many of us -- me included -- truly dream of a color-blind world. Among my friends and co-workers of color, I would much rather be judged by my character than the color of my skin. It cannot be a judgment of convenience, where color is more important than charcater some times but not others. Color matters or it doesn't. And it can't be only a white expectation.

If our goal is a color-blind society, we can reasonably expect blacks, Hispanics and all other people of color to join in the movement. We cannot go down this path alone.

The Longest Murder: Can a murdered man take 41 years to die?

2007-08-23T08:46:00.000-06:00

On a winter night in 1966, 23-year-old rookie cop Walter Barclay (pictured at left) was shot several times as he investigated a late-night burglary at a Philadelphia beauty salon. The bullets didn't kill him, but they splintered his spine and permanently paralyzed him. Later, the burglar -- William J. Barnes -- was convicted in the shooting and sentenced to 10-to-20 years in prison.

This week, Barclay died at age 64. The coroner ruled his death a homicide because Barclay died of a urinary tract infection directly related to his paraplegia -- which was directly related to being shot by Barnes.

Barnes (pictured at right), now 71, is a career criminal who served his time for the shooting, and has been in and out of prison in the past 40 years. He was picked up yesterday at a market where he works ... right across the street from the funeral home where his victim's funeral will be later today.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are considering whether to charge Barnes with murder. Was the death a direct result of the shooting? Did shooter Barnes already pay his debt to society, or only a down payment? Can a fatal split-second decision take 41 years to unfold?

We're a nation of non-readers

2007-08-22T09:26:00.000-06:00

Unless you work at a library, one of every four people you see today will not have read a book in the past year.

According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released yesterday, Americans' fat and lazy habits extend to reading, too. The typical American claimed to have read four books in the past year -- half read more and half read fewer.

Who is reading ... and who is not? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women are non-readers. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

Readers tend to include slightly more women, college graduates, and older Americans. Democrats and self-described liberals typically read slightly more books than Republicans and conservatives. Westerners and Midwesterners tend to be the most well-read; Southerners the least. But Southerners who do read tend to read more religious and romance books than everyone else. Anglos read more than blacks and Hispanics. And people who never go to church read almost twice as much as regular churchgoers.

Didn't Oprah, Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble transform America's book-reading habits? Actually, no. They merely transformed America's book-buying habits. Fact is, books remain too much work for a big portion of our wussified, slothful culture. It takes an effort (and, often, an expense) to read a book, but TV is cheaper and requires no effort. And it's becoming too much work for TV-watchers to go to the neighborhood video store, so they have their DVDs mailed to them in pre-paid return envelopes.

Publishers sold $35.7 billion in books around the world last year, 3 percent more than the previous year, according to the Book Industry Study Group. About 3.1 billion books were sold. That's one book for every two people on the planet!

Yes, more books are being sold today than ever before in history, but here in the States, it's only because Americans are so susceptible to marketing. In 50 years, John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" never sold a million copies -- until Oprah chose it for her book club. (I'm personally convinced that most of Oprah's readers never read it, and many of the rest didn't understand it.) Many of those books are being purchased and sit unread on the nightstand until they go in the garage-sale pile or to Goodwill.

Fergawdsakes, go read a book. Join Shelfari. Visit a book club. See the inside of your library (which your taxes built.) Discover the power of your imagination. If you have never read a book, post a message here or email me and I'll arrange to send you a discounted, signed copy of my first novel, Angel Fire.

Just read.

Texas will execute No. 400: What took so long?

2007-08-13T15:46:00.000-06:00

Sometime this month, Texas will execute its 400th killer since 1982, when it resumed executions. Five Death Row inmates are scheduled to die in August, and that's OK by me.

Now, depending on your view of capital punishment, 400 dead men walking might seem like a senseless massacre or merely a good start. The second most aggressive state, Virginia, has "only" executed 98.

A news report by Reuters (following on a similar PBS report) chalks up Texas' Death Row sensibilities to the state's huge population of evangelical Christians, a legacy of racism, and its Southern and Old West roots, "with a cowboy sense of rough justice."

It also reports that 41% of Texas' Death Row population is black, even though the state is only 12% black. The article does not report, however, the percentage of black population where the condemned inmates' murders and rapes happened, nor whether accused whites, Asians and Hispanics really have higher rates of dismissed cases or not-guilty verdicts. Didn't the myth that race played a superseding role in murder prosecutions end with O.J. and Clara Harris?

Every so often, a killing comes along that must certainly challenge the beliefs of the most die-hard death-penalty opponents. If not, please make a case for the rehabilitation of the two thugs who invaded, robbed, raped and killed a Connecticut doctor's family -- then burned down their house. Or Paul Hill, who gleefully admitted killing an abortion doctor and, shortly before his 2003 execution, said if he were free, he'd kill more.

My feelings about executions are deep-seated and I make no apologies. In 1973, I was 16 when two thugs randomly abducted two young girls who lived next door to me, terrorized them through the night, raped one and dumped them alive from a 12-story bridge into a rocky, remote canyon. Miraculously, one lived, and she identified the killers. They were sentenced to die, but in the national spasm of debate over the death penalty, their death sentences were commuted to life ... with the possibility of parole.

That possibility so obsessed the survivor of their crime that her life cratered. She went back to that same bridge 19 years later and leaped to her death. One of the killers died in prison in 1998, but the other, now age 60, survives today and still hopes to be paroled in the near future. Who will speak for my friend when it comes time to deny his parole?

It's all laid out in my new book, "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town."

I believe executions have a deterrent effect. I don't know about other would-be murderers, but nothing stops a killer from doing it again like a lethal injection. Plus, I don't kid myself about retribution. A 2006 Gallup poll showed that 67 percent of Americans favored the death penalty, 28 percent opposed it, and 5 percent had no opinion ... who has no opinion about killing another person?

I have an opinion. We made a promise to my friends' killers, to Ted Bundy, to John Wayne Gacy, to the more than 3,300 inmates now on America's Death Rows. Those promises should be kept. At least Texas is doing its part.

When life imitates art imitating life imitating art

2007-08-09T10:13:00.001-06:00

In a true story that would make a great plot for a novel that was about a true story, a Polish mystery writer is facing murder charges for allegedly committing the real torture-murder that he fictionalized in his grotesque best-seller "Amok" (pictured at left).

My head hurts already.

When cops realized that the murder described in author Krystian Bala's novel matched the actual facts of a grisly murder in Wroclaw, Poland, they busted the author. The author, claiming he merely used newspaper accounts of the killing to write his story, passed a lie detector test and was actually halfway around the world at the time of the murder. But investigators found that the victim had been involved with Bala's estranged wife, and that Bala himself had sold a cell phone exactly like the victim's missing phone four days after the crime.

Even better, the lead investigator is a detective named Jacek Wroblewski. Can you just see the the book-jacket now: "A Jacek Wroblewski Mystery." That's better than Stephanie Plum!

Now this whole life-art-life puzzle would make a great book, wouldn't it? A novelist writes about another novelist who might have committed a murder and then fictionalized it. Then somebody could tell the story of how it happened, and it would be an author writing about a novelist who write about another novelist who might have committed a murder and then fictionalized it.

My head still hurts.

Why do you read true-crime books?

2007-08-08T08:28:00.000-06:00

Who reads true crime books?

That's a pretty important question to true-crime authors (and their editors), who should know their audiences intimately. But what do we really know about the typical true-crime reader?

Well, the one of most startling facts to me is that the typical true-crime reader is a woman. What, you thought bloody crime stories were only male territory? I did ... until I wrote one. In fact, the number of female true-crime readers is said to exceed the 60% of general female readership of all books (although probably somewhat less than the 99% female readership of romances.)

The numbers hold true in reader responses about my true crime/memoir FALL. Easily 2 of every 3 letter-writers and readers at a signing or other book events are women. True, it's a story about a crime against two young women, randomly chosen and brutally terrorized by a couple of male thugs ... talk about most women's worst nightmare. But I never saw it as a "women's book." Why are women drawn in greater numbers to such stories?

"I know I am in the right career when I hear from women who feel their lives have been saved by something they read in one of my books," true-crime queen Ann Rule says.

Somebody has probably studied this phenomenon, but I'd prefer to hear from real readers -- especially women -- why they are drawn to true-crime stories.

So ... why do you read true-crime? What fascinates you about the genre?

Who needs Match.com? These guys can help you dig up a date in Wisconsin

2007-07-27T10:26:00.000-06:00

In Connecticut, it might a felony to bash the vandals who bashed your mailbox, but in Wisconsin, it's entirely legal to have sex with a corpse.

Last September, three guys went to a cemetery in Cassville, Wis., to dig up the body of Laura Tennessen, a 20-year-old girl killed a week before in a motorcycle crash. Seems they'd seem her obituary photo and thought she was a hottie. So naturally they wanted to have sex with her. Apparently the "being dead" part wasn't a deal-buster.

But a judge dismissed the necrophilia charges against twin brothers Nicholas and Alexander Grunke and Dustin Radke, all 21. Why? In Wisconsin, it's not against the law to have sex with corpses. (These fun-loving fellas still face misdemeanor theft charges, because it IS against the law to steal a corpse in Wisconsin, just not to diddle it.) An appeals court has upheld the dismissal of the charges.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know our justice system isn't perfect, it's just the best one we have. But if our justice system can't smack a couple grave-robbing, corpse-diddling freaks, it's farther from perfect than we thought.

Mailbox BaseballHomeowner knocks two out ... and gets benched

2007-07-26T11:05:00.001-06:00

Every homeowner harbors a common suburban revenge fantasy. They all dream of ways to confound -- and possibly wound grievously -- teenagers who play "mailbox baseball," a late-night game in which vandals skulk around destroying mailboxes with baseball bats. My personal fantasy involves rigging a small nuclear device to the mailbox that explodes when somebody hits it with a bat, killing or blinding everyone within 16 feet at the moment of impact ... presumably the cretins who bashed the mailbox.

Like most fantasies, making it happen is a lot harder than imagining it over and over. I admit I know nothing of making nuclear devices, especially ones that would be limited to 16 feet. And I like my mailman too much for there to be an atomic accident that would kill him and all my neighbors and their pets. And I'd hate to cause nuclear winter, even though it might be preferable to global warming. And I'm not sure when I transitioned from fantasizing about swimming with Farrah Fawcett to daydreaming about nuking some pimple-faced hoodlums.

But I now have a new hero. His name is Lee Yattaw in Colonie, N.Y. A couple weeks ago, Yattaw surprised some mailbox-baseball players with his own bat and knocked them both out of the park! One of the vandals even required 12 stitches for a head wound. Purposely destroying a mailbox is a federal crime that's theoretically punishable by up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service says, but it rarely happens. These two underdeveloped creeps -- not teens but aged 27 and 33 -- face misdemeanor charges.

But Yattaw faces up to 7 years in prison on two counts of felony assault. For defending his own property? No, says the DA, for taking the law into his own hands.

OK, we can't have vigilantes prowling around with darker intentions of taking the law into their own hands, but as we learned in the case of the two paroled veteran burglars who invaded a Connecticut doctor's home and wiped out his family after both had served time on at least 20 prior burglary convictions, sometimes the justice system simply doesn't dispense justice. And that's frustrating. It leads to vigilante action ... and to nuclear fantasies.

(If you feel strongly about this, you may contact the Albany County, N.Y. DA through his website.)

Gag Me: Omaha judge bars the words 'rape' and 'victim' ... in a rape trial

2007-07-11T11:48:00.000-06:00

Can you imagine a murder trial in which the words "murder" or "kill" cannot be spoken? Or a burglary trial in which the words "steal" or "break-in" couldn't be uttered? Hard to imagine, isn't it?

Well, an Omaha judge believes that if anyone says "rape" or "victim" before the jury in a rape trial, the jurors might become prejudiced.

I'm not sure how using the words "sexual assault" might be more genteel. And Roget's and I can come up with some really good synonyms for "rape" ("ravish" is such a quaint word and "violate" just doesn't reflect a rapist's violence.) Substituting another word for "victim" might be harder.

One problem with lawyers and judges is their trumped-up language, where we have learned that a whole case might depend on what the meaning of "is" is. Too often in the Halls of Justice, precision of language is measured by the number of syllables spoken.

But plain folks like me (and jurors) understand shorter, more evocative words ... like "rape." In those four letters are contained a mental picture most of us would rather not see. And for a prosecutor to be robbed of such precision seems to tip the scales of justice infinitesimally out of whack. Let the defense post its own mental pictures in jurors' minds and the chips will fall where they might.

Let's hope the Omaha jurors see through the judge's unwise order and make a fair and reasonable decision based on connecting the dots.

Fade to black: Serial-killing heroes?

2007-07-07T22:23:00.000-06:00

You simply haven't lived until you've traveled more than 9,000 miles with a family of serial killers.

Maybe you know them: Otis B. Driftwood, an on again-off again albino serial killer who makes sculptures out of his victims, or skins them to wear as costumes; Baby Firefly, the blood-thirstiest hot chick since Patricia Krenwinkle; and Captain Spaulding, Baby's creepy clown father (and the white brother of a black pimp) who's named after a Groucho Marx character.

Ah, but I was never in any danger as I hurtled toward (and home from) the Arctic with my 19-year-old son Matt in our three-week adventure. This ever-so-extraordinarily dysfunctional family is the creation of monster-metal auteur Rob Zombie in his indie film "The Devil's Rejects" (actually a sequel to "House of 1,000 Corpses"), and they were safe in my son's vast DVD collection. They came out only once, when Matt popped the disc into the portable DVD player somewhere between Valhalla Centre and the tundra, but they left their mark on our journey.

You see, they are the HEROES of "Devil's Rejects." Not the bad guys. They rack up more kills than the Red Baron in this blood-spattered film. They butcher an entire country-and-western band, a revenge-obsessed sheriff (they slaughtered his brother in the first film), and between them and director Zombie the blood flows swifter than concession-stand soda pop. And their methods, ranging from very sharp knives to speeding 18-wheelers, simply don't tolerate subtlety. They make Hannibal Lecter look like a Peace Corps volunteer.

Anyway, the road-tripping Firefly clan survives every attempt to capture, prosecute and kill them ... until the final scene, when they go out in a slow-mo blaze of glory, speeding their car toward a phalanx of state troopers and firing every weapon in their considerable arsenal. To the heroic, romantic strains of "Freebird," no less.

Freeze frame. Serial killers fade into heavenly bright light as cops' bullets tear them apart. Smiling. Angelic.

"So what'd you think?" Matt asked me. It's one of his favorite flicks and he wanted to share it with his occasionally-hip 50-year-old dad. "Cool, huh?"

"Are you freaking kidding me?" I harumphed in slightly bluer language. "They made those freaks into heroes!"

"No, they didn't," he responded. "It's just that not every story has a happy ending" -- adding for effect -- "like your old movies."

"Hey, not every old movie had a happy ending. But almost every old movie had a message that was worth pondering. This one had no message. It had nothing but blood and guts."

"It had a message."

"What was it? Serial killers can have fun, too?"

"They get killed at the end," he said, angling like a lawyer for anything that will stick. "Who would want to be like them?"

"That's not a message!" I shot back.

"How about ... not every movie has to have a message?" Matt said.

"That's not a message either."

"Who says? That's the message I got. Everything in this movie could happen. Probably has at sometime. Just because this isn't a movie that looks like all the movies you ever saw doesn't mean it isn't a valid work of art."

Godammit, I hate to get out-maneuvered. I had to stay in this game. Losing would be intolerable. I'd have to give back my "Father Knows Best" T-shirt.

"Serial killers who chop the faces off people and wear them aren't heroes! You can't have them being admired at the end of the movie. You can't make them look like Marines charging into a machine-gun nest on Iwo Jima for God and country! They're freakin' serial killers! You can't have this slow-motion sequence that transforms them into mythic heroes! You can't tell kids that crime is cool. And 'Freebird' ... criminy. This isn't revolutionary filmmaking ... it's just sex-and-shoot 'em up exploitation thumbing its nose at convention and anybody over 18!"

I was starting to sputter and spit, but I had him there ... Matt just smiled.

"Oh, you mean like 'Bonnie and Clyde'?"

Dammit. I hate it when serial killers win. Here's my T-shirt.

When memory fails us

2007-06-08T07:22:00.000-06:00

"Although I tried, I couldn’t remember much about the crime, just the skeletal facts. Their abductors’ ruse, the bridge, Becky’s desperate climb out of the canyon … like everyone else, I knew what I thought I knew, but nothing was clear anymore. … time had scattered its lies throughout my memory."

From Ron Franscell’s
true crime/memoir FALL

Thirty years had passed since her 11-year-old daughter was flung like a pebble from a towering bridge into a black river carving the bottom of a fearsome gorge, but a mother’s memory of such a brutality carries the painfully exquisite quality of crystal clarity. She could remember the night sky as she searchd desperately for her missing daughters, the gravitational tug of sleeplessness, the grayness of the sunny next morning, the bite of autumn in the air … the sight of her little girl on a morgue table.

But she got one thing wrong. A detail you wouldn’t imagine a mother could misremember.

“Amy was raped, you know,” she told me a few years ago as I talked to her about the abduction of my two childhood friends, which ended with both being thrown off that haunting bridge.

I struggled to find the right words, because the facts were clear from my research, even though I, too, had once believed Amy had been raped: She hadn’t. It was part of the mythology of this particular crime.

While little Amy’s older sister Becky was raped by both of her abductors, Amy had merely been a possible disposable witness, so she was dumped early on in the crime. The autopsy later proved unequivocally she had not been sexually molested.

But her mother remembered it that way.

Memory is a fickle thing. It is both the savior and the nemesis of crime-writing. It plays tricks on all of us.

True-crime stories are a kind of history. Readers embrace the genre, in part, because they want the true facts. As a journalist and author, I think it is much more difficult to write truth than fiction, because the reader is far more demanding of truth.

Oh, but there looms memory -- so often the bastard child of a perverse liaison between wishing, rumor and imagination -- ready to disembowel the truth. Sincere people can hear gossip and give it the weight of truth; others can forget facts and fill in the blanks; still others can aggrandize themselves by elevating their roles in the story. Not a single person of the more than 150 I interviewed -- and not me, either -- had every fact right, and not always because it was 30 years before. I lost count of the number of people who told me they were the best friends of my two young friends, or who now say they were intended to be with the girls on that fateful night, or who claimed to have similar encounters with the killers. These people wanted to be part of the story they had told endlessly for 30 years, and maybe the truth had been lost long ago. Face it, a lot of crimes quickly rise to mythical levels and the facts get tossed aside.

They simply made me more intent to get it right, not to disprove or expose these people, but to tell the truest story. And that’s one value of true-crime writing, often derided as a morbid attempt to “cash in” on someone else’s tragedy and pain: Memories need truth to thrive.

And in the case of Amy‘s mother, I like to think that the truth was more comforting than the myth.

It was for me.

Justice parlayed: Paris gets out of jail free

2007-06-07T10:47:00.001-06:00

This just in ...

This morning, Paris Hilton was released from LA County jail after only four days in lockup on what was to be a 23-day drunk-driving probation violation beef. Why? She "wasn't eating much of the jail food" that was served, according to sources quoted by CNN.

Our poor little rich girl will wear an ankle bracelet at home for the next 40 days. Undoubtedly, it will be a very fashionable piece of jewelry.

Can you imagine a judge reducing the sentence of just any ol' drunk driver just because he didn't like the food? There might be more to this story -- one hopes there is -- but the appearance of special treatment for this celebrity Hilton heiress hangs heavy in the air at the moment.

In Cold Blog: To miss it would be a crime

2007-05-31T05:23:00.001-06:00

Is your VCR set permanently to "The Forensic Files"? Is your dream date Dr. G? Have you bookmarked The Smoking Gun? Would you rather watch a cop's dashboard video than the next Lindsay Lohan film (which, come to think of it, might be the same thing)? Well, I've got a great new blog for you!

It's In Cold Blog. And you're gonna love the true-crime figures it puts at your fingertips every day. Maybe even Dr. G will drop in.

It's the brainchild of Los Angeles Times best-selling true crime author Corey Mitchell of San Antonio, author of "Hollywood Death Scenes," "Dead and Buried," "Murdered Innocents," "Evil Eyes," and "Strangler." He's cajoled and corralled 30 of the most interesting names in the field of true crime ... and me ... to spill our guts every day about crime and punishment. The topics will range far and wide, I promise, and it's likely that more blood will be spilled than in an Ann Rule paperback.

Among the bloggers will be best-selling author and O'Reilly Factor correspondent Aphrodite Jones; true-crime media personality Dr. Katherine Ramsland; author Joyce King, who chronicled the James Byrd dragging murder in Jasper, Texas; Edgar-winning author Carlton Stowers; 48 Hours Mystery producer Paul LaRosa; crime victims' advocate Andy Kahan; and crime blogger/lawyer Laura James.

And while In Cold Blog will feature 22 true-crime writers, its featured writers also will include a sheriff, forensic artist, TV producer, book editor, TV personalities, a true-crime radio host, a historical-crime blogger, the mother and brother of a serial killer's victim, and even a rock 'n' roller whose art is inspired by crime stories. Plus, you can expect the unexpected high-profile guest to pop in every so often.

Each contributor will blog one day a month, but will drop in randomly, too. So if you have a favorite author, such as Gregg Olsen or Kathryn Casey, stop by just to chat.

And it ain't for the money, friends. In Cold Blog will donate all of its advertisement revenue each month to a charity devoted to victims' aid and law enforcement. In fact, all proceeds earned this month will go to Trooper Island in Albany, Ky., a program where needy kids who might benefit from a fresh environment are given the chance. So click on our advertisers freely! It's for a good cause.

Want the whole roster of In Cold Bloggers and a glimpse of their particulars? Click through to the blog.

Me? I'll be posting my thoughts at In Cold Blog on the 8th of every month, but I promise that every day you'll find a challenging perspective at what's already been called the "mother of all crime blogs." Spill a little cyber-blood of your own.

Goin' Cajun: Louisiana book events

2007-05-02T11:54:00.000-06:00

Down here in these parts, we don't tell blonde jokes. We tell Cajun jokes that usually star a couple characters named Thibodeaux and ... Thibodeaux.

But I love Cajuns. Full of spice and passion. A beautiful accent. And great food. And this weekend, I'll be in the heart of Cajun bayou country for a book-signing and (I hope) a lunch with a bunch of real Cajun authors.

I'll join the conversation with the Bayou Writers Group from 10 a.m. to Noon on Saturday at the Carnegie Library in Lake Charles, La. (By the way, the president of the Bayou Writers Group is Pam Thibodeaux.)

And then from 2-4 p.m., I'll be signing books for the public at the Books-a-Million store, also in Lake Charles (2934 Ryan Street, 337-436-3577) CANCELED! Some kid named Thibodeaux at this big ol' chain bookstore forgot to order the books!

Somewhere in between, I hope I can make at least one crawfish's sacrifice worth his reasonably brief and muddy life.

In the company of writers

2007-04-22T20:36:00.000-06:00

Edgar-winning mystery writer Rick Riordan (left), me and true-crime writer Corey Mitchell, at my San Antonio signing this weekend

A book-signing is almost always a good time. Authors love the direct contact with readers because, after all, they're why we write. But sometimes, even other authors show up, making the event even more delightful and interesting ... especially for passionate readers who might show up in the middle of shop talk!

In San Antonio this weekend, the first "reader" to visit me at Barnes & Noble was Corey Mitchell, a veteran true-crime author and founder of the upcoming In Cold Blog. Corey has pulled together a rather remarkable team of authors, criminalists, editors, anti-crime activists and even a death-metal rocker to blog on crime issues. After June 1, you'll be able to log into InColdBlogger and read the intimate and immediate thoughts of people like Aphrodite Jones, Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Joyce King, Gregg Olsen and many others (me, too) on crime and crime stories. Watch this space for an announcement when it launches.

And right behind Corey was one of my favorite authors, Rick Riordan. I was drawn into the contiuing saga of San Antonio private eye Tres Navarre when I reviewed Riordan's "Last King of Texas." It was the beginning of a fascination with the series, and a friendship with Rick, who has recently launched a children's book series, too.

So what do three writers talk about then they get together? Well, the three of us talked about the joys and perils of book-publishing, about upcoming projects, about other writers from whom we are all seprated by less than six degrees. But we also chatted about our families, about the gray skies outside, about life outside our garretts.

Oh, readers came, too, and they bought books, which I signed. They wanted to talk a little about the story, and I was glad to do it. There's no feeling better than talking to readers, especially when they're occasionally writers, too.

Signing San Antonio: Next stop, Alamo City

2007-04-18T08:39:00.000-06:00

San Antonio's Mission San Jose (Photo by Ron Franscell)

Any excuse for me to visit San Antonio is a good excuse, and when it's to sign "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town," it's the best excuse ever! If you are in -- or anywhere near -- San Antonio this weekend, please drop by my book-signing 2-4 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at San Pedro Crossing, 321 Northwest Loop 410.

Great reviews for FALL keep rolling in. Look at these from this week:

"Ron Franscell's FALL gets everything right: Casper, Wyoming in the boom-town 1970's, the effect of an unspeakable crime on an entire generation of residents, and a diligent search for why it happened when the only answer can only be true evil. I know he got it right because I was there. I remember Amy Burridge and Becky Thomson before the crime and Becky after. I remember the names "Kennedy and Jenkins" spoken only with naked hatred and contempt. And I remember where I was when I heard how Becky dealt with the horror and violence after so many years. FALL is a true story that you wish wasn't true because it will haunt you long after you've read it. A remarkable achievement."
— C.J. BOX
Best-selling author of "Free Fire" and "Blue Heaven" and Wyoming native

"Ron Franscell has penned a true-crime book reminiscent of Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' ... a grim reminder of ubiquitous violence. ... As a testament to the depth of evil and an elegy for a simpler time, FALL delivers a crackling story of lives and innocence lost."
— BOOKMARKS Magazine

"FALL reaches out to everyone who cherishes the unique attributes of life in a close community ... a hard-hitting yet poignant chronical of a senseless event perpetrated by two sociopaths who outdistanced an overburdened and often too lenient system. The manner in which FALL is written is a tribute to the author's integrity, and the reader reaps all of the benefits. FALL goes beyond a must read. It should be placed in our homes in a prominent location to remind us of everything that is right with our system of justice--and everything that isn't."

-- ROBERT BACON

Author of "FACES IN THE TREES"

VIRGINIA TECH:The coming storm for immigrants

2007-04-17T09:16:00.000-06:00

Today, authorities have identified the Virginia Tech shooter as a South Korean immigrant named Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major. No motive has yet been offered for his likely slaughter of 32 people before killing himself.

Last February in Salt Lake City, a young Bosnian immigrant killed five mall shoppers before off-duty police killed him.

How long before the radical anti-immigration crowd begins to agitate for tighter borders? And can otherwise undecided Americans be swayed by the notion that these senseless bloodbaths might have been avoided by a more exclusive immigration policy?

It's unlikely the anti-immigration people will mention that just two weeks ago, a red-blooded, native-born American named Anthony LaCalamita allegedly burst into his former Detroit employer's office and shot three former co-workers, killing one. Most mass murderers in American history have been Americans born and bred -- Charles Whitman, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Charlie Starkweather, Tim McVeigh, Richard Speck and John Allen Muhammad, among several examples.

In fact, according to Mayhem.net, immigrants aren't more likely to become mass murderers than reasonably reared white folks ... even though the American mass-murder record-holder is now a South Korean kid:

"Most mass murderers are male, white, conservative and come from relatively stable, lower-middle-class backgrounds. They are not usually adopted, illegitimate or institutionalized as children. They are usually people who aspire to more than they can achieve. They see their ambitions thwarted, and blame other people for keeping them down. They feel excluded from the group that they wish to belong to, and develop an irrational, eventually homicidal, hatred of that group. Invariably, they choose to die in an explosion of violence directed at a group they feel oppresses, threatens, or excludes them."

Certainly, we can trace several criminal lines to immigrant communities. Italian and Irish organized crime, the Russian mob, and various imported gangs such as MS13, are easily identified as "foreign" elements that tap into rich American veins. But one might argue that these immigrant groups were doing exactly what the immigration fanatics want most: Assimilation. They were merely becoming "real" Americans and reaching for the brass ring by using every cheat in the book. After all, Enron's sleazy bosses might have done more damage than MS13 ever has.

Nonetheless, get ready for the coming anti-immigration storm. Is wiser immigration policy necessary? Yes. Should it be more than talk? Yes. Will it unfailingly reject mass-murderers, terrorists and other criminals? No.

So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut is dead

2007-04-12T08:46:00.000-06:00

KURT VONNEGUT, 1922-2007

I was in high school when I read "Slaughterhouse-Five," only a few years after it had been released. For someone weaned on Jack London and Ernest Hemingway and the frustrating oeuvre of classroom classics, Vonnegut seemed so ... refreshing. His prose was lyrical and loopy and ... fresh. I wanted more, and I quickly blasted through everything he'd written to that time: "Welcome to the Monkey House," "Breakfast of Champions," "The Sirens of Titan," "Cat's Cradle" and all the rest. I didn't know at the time that I was reading the best books he'd ever write, but I became an insatiable 15-year-old Vonnegut fan.

"Slaughterhouse-Five" remains one of the great influences on my writing life; the way he handles his non-linear narrative still impresses me like no other author, except John Fowles. And if one considers its commentary on the human tendency toward self-righteousness, and the need to speak of atrocity and injustice, then maybe Vonnegut secretly influenced my journalistic life, too. By God, I believed a man could fly through time.

In "Slaughterhouse-Five," Vonnegut also taught me the value of a simple, recurring word-moment. In his story, when he wrote about dying or any sort of transition from one state to another, he left us with one simple catchphrase: "So it goes."

Now, Vonnegut is dead. He died last night at age 84. Nothing lasts.

So it goes.

Tales from the Big House

2007-03-16T22:12:00.000-06:00

Speaking to a small audience at Off The Beaten Path Books in Rawlins, Wyo., home to the Wyoming State Penitentiary, where one of the FALL killers remains behind bars. (Warden Michael J. Murphy at right)

In one of the most extraordinary book events of this tour, I was joined tonight in Rawlins, Wyo., by a number of past and present prison workers -- from the current warden Michael Murphy to caseworkers and prison guards -- to talk about FALL. Why? because, in part, the book explores the lives of two killers they all have known ... one of whom remains behind bars today.

It was extraordinary because many offered personal observations about their two tenants that enlarged my view of them. Where they had previously been described as lifer-loners who kept to the quiet, safer edges of prison society, tonight I got a larger -- if not different -- view of these two pivotal characters in my real-life murder mystery.

Among the readers who came to my signing at the intimate, warm Off The Beaten Path Books was Warden Michael Murphy, who's had his job only 6 months now and barely knows killer-rapist Ron Kennedy, the second most senior inmate in his prison. (His cohort Jerry Jenkins died of a heart attack in prison in 1998.) But some of the current and former guards who came remembered Kennedy well. By and large, they described him as a manipulating narcissist who has enjoyed unusual perks -- and an unusually warm relationship with a least one past warden -- even though he was once condemned to die on Death Row. From keeping a pet in his cell, to monthly conjugal visits for about 10 years, to occasional secret trips back to the town where he committed his crimes, there is apparently much more to his story than I ever knew.

Among the readers was former guard Mike Lujan. Kennedy haunts him in a strange way. He recites Kennedy's inmate number as if it were seared into his brain. He had a sense of evil the first time he met Kennedy, and he never got over it.

It all made me want to talk to Kennedy again. This year, he'll turn 60. Our 14 hours of interviews in 2003 sufficed until now, but now I have more questions. Whether his answers would ever see the light of day, I don't know ... but I'd like to be able to ask.

Wyoming tour gallery

2007-03-15T20:36:00.000-06:00

Signing at B. Dalton Books, White Mountain Mall in Rock Springs, Wyo., Thursday 3/15

Signing at Wheatland Mercantile, Wheatland, Wyo., Wednesday 3/14

Outside Whistlestop Books, Douglas, Wyo., Wednesday 3/14

Visiting with a reader, Books & Briar, Riverton, Wyo., Tuesday 3/13

Signing at Hastings Books, Gillette, Wyo., Monday 3/12

With a Sheridan Press reporter, Book Shop on Main, Sheridan, Wyo., 3/12

Badlands

2007-03-14T23:38:00.000-06:00

Ron at Hell's Half Acre, Wyoming, a true badlands where death is just a part of history. (Photo by Mary Vandeventer)

My second tour in Wyoming with FALL has taken me into the hinterlands of a hinterland state. Before it's done, we'll drive 1,400 miles in 9 days, with 11 book events. Just halfway through, it's already been more churn than homecoming, with a few personal visits interspersed with a lot of book business. The moments of relaxation have been few, but so far so have the obstacles (the usual stuff ... one bookstore that goofed on the date in its ads, and another that didn't get its books until less than 24 hours before I arrived.)

When I debuted my new book FALL last December in Wyoming, it was a sort of soft launch a month ahead of its official national release in January. I wanted the readers of Wyoming to get something first, for once, and it was their story, after all. Now that it’s been two months since FALL hit shelves, I am returning to Wyoming, my home, to do some book events and signings in many cities where I could not go on December’s limited schedule. This time, readers have had a chance to see the story and are not mere book-buyers.

It all began last Saturday night with a community conversation in Casper -- a “town hall meeting,” if you will -- about the crime’s lingering impact in my hometown. Many of the police, medical and legal players in this 30-year tragedy were there, and although I had hoped a few family members of the killers would attend, they didn't. I also brought messages from the wives of the two rapist-killers at the time of the crime in 1973. But the crowd was festooned with people affected by the crime in some significant way (to them), and who just wanted to talk about it. What have we learned, if anything? How might the lessons of two girls’ night of terror in 1973 be useful in a post-9/11 world? Are we doomed to be surprised by Evil until the end of human time? The audience itself provided as many answers as questions, and I functioned more as a moderator-guide than a speaker.

And today I met the proprietress of a Wyoming gift store who, when she found out I was a visitor from Texas, apologized for the famous Wyoming wind. I told her it was not bothering me, since I had already suffered the numbing violence of a Category 3 hurricane. She told me she grew up in Texas hurricane country.

"Where's that?" I asked.

"Beaumont, Texas," she said proudly.

God, the world gets smaller every day.

The Bopper has left the building ... again

2007-03-07T10:41:00.001-06:00

Jay Richardson spends his first quiet moment alone with the father he never met

In every exhumation, there's a tense moment just before the casket lid is raised. What's inside? How has the natural process of decay reshaped this human?

It was no different Tuesday at the exhumation and autopsy of J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, a native Beaumont son who grew up to be one of rock 'n' roll's earliest stars and one of it's earliest tragedies. He died on Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash that also killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Some 48 years later, during the process of moving his remains to a more visible new grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery, the Bopper's only son asked renowned forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass to examine his dad's corpse and offer an opinion on the cause of his death. You see, over the years, wacky conspiracy theories have arisen about gunplay on the plane and the possibvility that the Bopper died while trying to go for help after the crash.

The results of the autopsy were not surprising, but conclusive: The Big Bopper might have died instantly from a number of massive injuries, including a smashed skull, a broken neck and a crushed chest. Other injuries -- a shattered pelvis, broken back, and several compound fractures in his legs -- would have made surviving more than a few minutes unlikely. The poor man came undone in a thousand ways. There was no foul play.

But, again, what was in the casket when they opened it? Read my story in today's Beaumont Enterprise, and stay tuned for a deeper piece to come on Sunday.

The Big Bopper returns ... one night only

2007-03-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

Today, I will attend the exhumation and autopsy of J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, who died on Feb. 3, 1959, in a plane crash that also killed early rock stars Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

Nobody knows what remains, but for the first time in more than 48 years, his family might know what actually killed the 28-year-old Beaumont, Texas, deejay who bellowed, "Hellllooooo Baaaaaby!" at the start of "Chantilly Lace."

Let's hope.

Back on the airwaves

2007-03-02T11:25:00.000-06:00

I'll return to the nation's airwaves next week (March 4-9) to talk about my new book FALL with listeners in Oregon, Missouri, Minnesota and Wyoming. If you're within broadcasting range of any of these stations, please tune in!

MONDAY, MAR. 5: 2 p.m. CST on KIML/KAML (1270 AM) in Gillette WY

MONDAY, MAR. 5: 4:10 p.m. CST on KLFD (1410 AM) in Litchfield MN

THURSDAY, MAR. 8: 7:30 a.m. on KKID (92.9 FM) in Rolla MO

THURSDAY, MAR. 8: 10 a.m. CST on KLBM/KBKR (1450 AM) in La Grande OR

Swimming in the Dead Pool

2007-02-25T20:36:00.000-06:00

You might not think a weekend with a bunch of coroners, death investigators and medical examiners would be a lively one (pun intended), but you’d be wrong.

This past weekend, I addressed a gathering of such professionals. They didn’t invite me to talk about CSI stuff like cause of death, Y incisions or corpse-eating bugs. Rather, because my new book FALL explores a 30-year-old abduction, rape and murder that destroyed two childhood friends of mine and swept my small hometown up in its wake, they wanted to hear about the ripple effects of a single crime in a community and what lessons can be gleaned beyond the morgue slab.

There’s not much obvious parallel between coroners and newspaperman authors, but if you aren’t constrained by the obvious, you can see we are both explainers of death. Yes, we approach our “storytelling” in different ways, but the result is the same: We interpret dying for the living, and where we can, we try to find meaning. Most deaths defy meaning, but it’s a quirky habit of the not-yet-dead to try to rationalize it.

My only job was to address the coroners’ Saturday lunch, but I attended all the other convention sessions I could. I heard Special Agent Ray Lundin of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation dissect the investigation of the infamous BTK serial killings in Wichita. I heard professional death investigators and forensic pathologists explain autopsy techniques that led to solving a young girl’s cold-case serial murder, and reveal for the first time (in marvelously grotesque detail) the world’s only known case of autoerotic death by gunshot, as well as enough unusual forensic cases to fill a whole season of CSI. Some of these people had used the growth rate of pubic hair as a death indicator, or concluded that Pooky, your precious pet Pekingese, will indeed eat your head if you die and she doesn’t have any other food in the house. Trust me on this.

And pictures. Everybody had resplendently colorful PowerPoint presentations filled with crime-scene and morgue photos, swathed in all the pale, violent and congealing colors of death. I was the only amateur in the room, and while I long ago steeled myself against such visual proof of man’s inhumanity to man (and woman), I still avoided the spaghetti and marinara for dinner.
But all was not morbid … well, at least not as morbid as you might imagine.

During a morning bathroom break, I found myself at the middle urinal with coroners on either side of me, and others waiting for their chance. The guy on my left mentioned how he’d recently been called out on a double homicide that turned out to be simply two drunks who froze to death together. The guy on the right one-upped him with a tale of a reported suicide that turned out to be merely a brain aneurysm. Suddenly, everyone in the loo was telling personal anecdotes of death gone bad. So if you have a taste for macabre Twilight Zone moments, just hang out with a gang of peeing coroners.

I delivered my luncheon speech without the benefit of colorful photos. To be honest, I now wish I’d shown some crime-scene photos, if only just to satisfy my audience’s professional jones for visuals. But, alas, I long ago set the photos of my two dead friends aside, hid them in a file I wouldn’t thumb through regularly. I never offered them to the publisher of my book simply because I feared they would be used gratuitously to snag the typical true-crime reader into buying it. They pop into my brain less and less now. My account of their deaths was delivered in resplendently colorful words, not pictures. But even so, those photos linger undeletable in the photo archive of my mind.

We Americans have succeeded in concealing death from view, and in the process, we have made talking about it bluntly difficult, even ghastly. We’re OK with TV shows like CSI or Cold Case that shine it up with makeup and computerized special effects for mass consumption, but we still prefer to treat it as a distasteful development rather than a natural process. We’ve come a long way since the days when Grandpa’s body would be kept in the back bedroom or parlor until we could dig his grave out back. Imagine living every day with Grandpa’s remains until after the spring thaw, when the frozen earth was dig gable again.. Today, we hand over Grandpa to the nursing home, hospital or, ultimately, the mortuary to handle out of our view. We’ll pay dearly to make him look, one last time, just like he did in life. Why pretend, even subconsciously, that he’s not really dead and that decay hasn’t already begun?

Ah, but I suppose none of us wants to be seen in a crime-scene or morgue photo. That generally means our end was unseemly, unexpected or undreamed. And, face it, if you think your driver’s license photo is bad, you’re gonna hate how you look in the morgue. I don’t know how I’ll die, but I hope that nobody must photograph it for the public record. That would suggest it didn’t happen the way I’d always hoped or imagined.

Sweet home ... Alabama Theater

2007-02-18T17:29:00.000-06:00

A view of the Alabama Theater Bookstop's beautiful main floor from the 'balcony'

It's easy to think that if you've seen one Barnes & Noble, you've seen them all ... bargain books up front, New in Paperback in main aisle, fiction to the right, nonfiction to the left, kid stuff in the back, the scent of Starbucks everywhere ... well, OK, maybe you've seen most of them if you've seen one.

But not-so-hidden in Houston's Montrose District is the Alabama Theater Bookstop. Built in the restored shell of a 1930s-era Art Deco movie palace, with a few distinctive upgrades, it might just be Barnes & Noble's most unique store. Manager Cathy Nezuh gave me a personal tour before my Saturday book-signing at the Alabama, from the "balcony" (now the Starbucks Cafe) to the "stage" (now the newsstand.) The screen area is intact, and my name appeared on the marquee where the names Brando, Peck, Hepburn and Bogart once appeared.

Many of the Art Deco touches remain in the theater/bookstore, which could seat 1,130 theater-goers. The screen (where "The Sound of Music" flickered for 90 weeks in 1965-66) is still there and the lighting feels more like a movie house than a chain bookstore. Today, the seats are gone, replaced by bookshelves and thousands of books, but wandering through this grand old place, you still whiff the ghostly aroma of buttered popcorn, not Starbucks coffee. Ah, but it's all in your imagination.

Houston preservationists say the theater is endangered. A big developer owns the building, not Barnes & Noble, and has reportedly said it plans some redevelopment in that area. The theater's proponents fear that "progress" will run roughshod over her and we will lose yet another grand old movie palace. I don't know how likely it is, but what a shame that would be. One hopes the people of Houston have at least a small place in their hearts for history.

How fun it was to sign autographs at the Alabama, which the spirits of great films and great actors still seem to haunt. Even if you're not shopping for books, you should drop in at the Alabama. But, of course, if you're looking for good reading material, I can make a suggestion ...

With Dallas romance author Rebecca Russell in the Alabama's 'lobby'

See you in Houston Feb. 17

2007-02-11T20:47:00.000-06:00

If you live anywhere within a comfortable drive of Houston and you're free next Saturday (Feb. 17), come to the Alabama Theater Bookstop, 2922 S. Shepherd Drive in Houston for my next book-signing! It'll be 2-4 p.m. Saturday afternoon, and any time spent with a reader is time well spent. Y'all come!

The Louie B. Free Show

2007-02-08T16:49:00.000-06:00

Louie B. Free reads books for a living .... then talks about them on his radio talk show at WWOW-AM in Cleveland. This morning, he planned to spend a half-hour talking to me about FALL, sandwiched between his interviews of Joe Pistone (you know him as Donnie Brasco) and his new book, and bestseller James L. Swanson, whose "Manhunt" chronicles the 12-day hunt for Abe Lincoln's assassin. Heady company.

But Louis, who'd read FALL, was entranced with it. We went an extra half hour talking about it. The story was very emotional for him, and his interview was remarkably passionate (listen to the whole interview here.) Among Louie's praises of FALL was this:

"Amazingly well-written, this is an important story for America today, maybe for the world."
LOUIE B. FREE
Talk-show host at WWOW-AM, Cleveland

Thanks, Louie, for the air ... and for the kind words.

One crime, two visions

2007-02-06T11:35:00.000-06:00

"It all depends on how we look at things,
and not how they are in themselves."
Carl Jung

One dark night, two girls, two killers, and one desolate bridge. And as time passes, the players all rearrange themselves in the wake turbulence of an enormous tragedy ... which plays out its next act, on another night many years later, on the same desolate bridge when the survivor returns to face her demons. The facts are known, the memories still a little too vivid, the sense of justice a little murky.

Ah, but that's all a long time ago. Now, all we have are stories. The girls were my friends in the small town where we grew up. Thirty years later, I went home to write about the crime on Fremont Canyon Bridge ... and the endless ripples it caused in my hometown, and my heart. I told the story the best I could, relying on a lifetime in newspapering, and the whispers from deep down inside.

But someone else was telling the same story, at almost exactly the same moment. The result was a display of the fascinating mystery of art, vision and perspective.

My book is "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town," a true crime/memoir about real people in a real tragedy. But for moments of introspection and a harrowing glimpse inside a killer's rotten mind, "FALL" is a narrative nonfiction in the mold of Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," at least, according to reviewers.

But when poet Robert Cooperman (at left) told the same story -- a story he heard from a friend in my old hometown -- he elevated it to a different plane, imbuing it with an otherworldly quality. Indeed, he took the story to a completely new world, the 19th century Colorado Rockies, and he transmogrified the real victims and killers into imaginary ones whose lives, histories, dreams, tragedies and betrayals could be more powerfully dissected for the reader.

The former English professor at the University of Georgia and Bowling Green wrote "A Killing Fever" ($13.95, Ghost Road Press, 82 pages.) This collection of related poems explores the abduction of sisters Mercy and Merry Goodwin, who are dragged by miscreants to a sheer cliff and thrown off by their assailants. One lives and one dies. The endless ripples go on for years, until the survivor returns to that precipice to face her demons.

"If Mercy lives, it'd not surprise me
to see her back at that cliff someday:
her body a dragged log of pain.
This time, she'll make sure."

Cooperman, who lives in Denver, captures the cant and voice of 19th century poetics marvelously, but more fascinating is his telling of the story with which I have lived for more than 30 years -- and told myself in "FALL." I have long marveled at a reader's intuition about messages in my own books, how they can see some gem I never saw, or never intended. Here Cooperman, a storyteller, has taken a painfully true story and turned it into a beautiful work of fiction that captures the essence of tragedy as well as the truth can.

One crime, two visions.

Midwest Book Review weighs in

2007-02-03T09:10:00.000-06:00

Founded in 1976, the Midwest Book Review is one of the major book-reviewing journals in the USA, publishing several monthly publications for community and academic library systems. Here's what the editors had to say about FALL:

"FALL: THE RAPE AND MURDER OF INNOCENCE IN A SMALL TOWN tells of a Casper, Wyoming crime involving two girls who were raped, tortured and thrown off a bridge. The citizens struggled with the crime in all its ramifications, and FALL traces this struggle, comes from a journalist who was a teen neighbor to both girls at the time of the crime, and who revisits the scene here 30 years later to explore the crime's ongoing impact upon the town. A 'must' for any lending library strong in true crime exposes."

Subscribe to FALL today!

2007-02-01T16:29:00.001-06:00

Bloglet has apparently bitten the dust, which means that if you were a Bloglet subscriber to the FALL blog ... well, you aren't anymore. They're kaput.

No problem. Just scroll down the index at right to the FeedBlitz subscription box (right below my links) and fill in your email address. You'll receive notice of updates at FALL as they're made. And don't worry, your email isn't shared with anyone or anything.

Hey, it's free!

Chicago Sun-Times review

2007-02-01T13:46:00.000-06:00

The Chicago Sun-Times is the latest to weigh-in on FALL. Its review by author and professor Stephen J. Lyons ("Landscape of the Heart") says, in part:

"Heartbreaking ... the girls' last terrifying moments are delivered with such vivid texture that they are almost too painful to read. The technique and execution is not unlike Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' ... And just when your heart is broken by this terrible tragedy, Franscell adds a coda that will further disturb your peaceful sleep."
-- CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Read the whole review by clicking here.

Coming to a radio near you ...

2007-01-22T07:34:00.000-06:00

As part of FALL's national launch, Ron will be interviewed by several radio stations all over the USA. More will be added as shows are scheduled. If you're within broadcasting range of any of these stations, tune in!

(All times at Central Standard Time)

NEXT:
Thursday, Feb. 8: 7:30 a.m. on WWOW-AM in Cleveland OH

Wednesday, Jan. 3: 8:25 a.m. on KFRU-AM in Columbia, MO
Thursday, Jan. 4: Big Chuck's Morning Show on WDOS in Oneonta, NY
Thursday, Jan. 4: 7:40 a.m. on KYMO-AM/FM in East Prairie, MO
Thursday, Jan. 4: 3:15 p.m. on KOLE-AM in Beaumont, TX
Sunday, Jan. 7: 6:30 a.m. on WIP-AM in Philadelphia, PA
Monday, Jan. 8: 7:10 a.m. on WMJI in Cleveland
Monday, Jan. 8: 8:10 a.m. on Cable Radio Network with Jack Roberts
Tuesday, Jan. 9: 9:30 a.m. on KBUL-AM in Billings, MT
Wednesday, Jan. 10: 9 p.m. on XM Radio with Jan Summers/It's About Life
Monday, Jan. 15: 11:05 a.m. on WRVC-AM in Huntington, W. Va.
Wednesday, Jan. 17: 7:40 a.m. on WCBQ-AM in Raleigh, NC
Wednesday, Jan. 17: 4:20 p.m. on WKCT-AM in Nashville, TN
Wednesday, Jan. 24: 9:05 a.m. on KYW-AM in Philadelphia, PA
Thursday, Jan. 25: 9:50 a.m. on KCMN-AM in Colorado Springs, CO
Friday, Jan. 26: 6:04 a.m. on WIOJ in Jacksonville, FL
Friday, Jan. 26: 7:40 a.m. on KUKA-FM in Corpus Christi TX
Tuesday, Jan. 30: 11:40 a.m. on syndicated Lifestyle Radio Network
Thursday, Feb. 1: 8:30 a.m. on WABJ-AM in Toledo, OH
Thursday, Feb. 1: 11:40 a.m. on WSDE-AM in Albany, NY

Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones and me

2007-01-18T07:22:00.000-06:00

In the midst of a 20-city radio tour, I have come to one conclusion only: Some talk-show hosts are very smart and very eloquent. Not all, but some. (A few -- horrors! -- don't even read the book before the interview!)

Among the best talk-radio hosts is Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones, who has interviewed some of the most provocative figures in modern American literature, sports, politics and entertainment ... always with an eye toward messages we can all glean from their experiences. Listen to my interview with Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones on WCBQ-AM in Raleigh. N.C., recorded on Wednesday, Jan. 17.

Rocky Mountain News' review

2007-01-12T14:21:00.000-06:00

An outstanding review of 'FALL' by Rocky Mountain News writer Karen Algeo Krizman appeared in today's "Rocky." Here's an excerpt:

"Ron Franscell's breathless 'FALL' [is] a true-crime tale that grabs readers on the first page and doesn't let go until long after the final word. ... Thanks to Franscell's daily journalism experience, his polished, yet conversational writing style appeals to the Everyman. 'FALL' barely stumbles as Franscell delivers a crackling story of lives and innocence lost."

For the entire review, click here.

(And, yeah, for those who wonder, it does feel good to get a good review this one!)

New interview at Hot on the Trail

2007-01-12T12:39:00.000-06:00

A new Web interview about "FALL" was just posted at Hot on the Trail, one of the hottest true-crime sites on the Internet. Check it out!

It's official today: 'FALL' debuts

2007-01-05T10:01:00.000-06:00

Launch Day is an anxious moment for most authors. The great bulk of reviews are still out, readers will be getting their first looks at the new book, which has its whole life lying ahead ... and the author who likely spent three years (or more) getting to this day will either continue forward on his creative path by the public's embrace or unceremoniously diverted by a lack of interest. Imagine dedicating three years of your life to one project, only to send it out into the world for people to judge in a matter of minutes. This one day embodies all that angst.

But it's all part of the beauty of storytelling. It likely wasn't much different for Homer, certainly not for Hemingway, that first time you tell a story to a large group of people. Today, I feel a part of a very exclusive club of people who know this exact feeling, and it feels like belonging.

And two new reviews today make it a little easier. One is from a leading book-review site on the Internet, the other from a leading newspaper-industry trade magazine. Here are some excerpts:
"In a style similar to “In Cold Blood”, Mr. Franscell captures, from start to finish (if there is ever a finish), this terrible saga. He went to enormous lengths to provide vivid and unforgettable narrative. ... The end will floor you. If it was fiction, no one would believe it could happen."
Columnist Ken Blum in PUBLISHERS AUXILIARY

"FALL is a heartbreaking story but is also dynamic, which makes it an extraordinary book. Franscell has imbued every page with exquisite Didionesque prose, perceptive analyses of the events and the persons involved, and thorough interviews and research, drawing readers intimately into the vortex of a hideous crime. ... Ron Franscell takes readers on a journey into the nature of evil and the pain of survival."
Barbara Gershenbaum at BOOKREPORTER.com

Why wait for the book to be published? Buy it on eBay today!

2006-12-26T08:21:00.000-06:00

What's faster than the speed of a reading light?

eBay and Amazon sellers hustling "used" books that aren't even on the market yet!

FALL's national release will be Jan. 5, 2007 (although as readers of this blog know, a very limited sneak-preview was allowed in early December) but with almost two weeks before FALL officially debuts, a copy is already on the block at eBay.

Yep, bidding on this unread copy has started at $7.99 and (at the moment) almost five days remain. And any day now, expect to see "used" copies pop up at FALL's Amazon.com page, too.

It's freakish how the cyber-flea market can sell books even before brick-and-mortar retailers can shelve them. And it makes one wonder about the economics of it all, since deeply discounted new copies are available from both Internet and land-based stores.

Of course, the author doesn't make a penny in royalties from these sales. Plus, publishers often "dump" their slightly damaged books on eBay and other auction sites, so you should be especially suspicious of getting a "pig in a poke." And these eBay-style vendors don't often know much (if anything) about what they're selling, because they're simply dealing with too much volume -- and will put a lot more sizzle in the steak than they should. In the case of FALL's eBay seller, she bought it from another eBay seller and immediately put it online ... originally labeling it as a "fiction" (it's not) by a "New York Times best-selling author" (I'm not) that had been pulled from a bookseller's shelf (it wasn't.) Worse, she hadn't read the book ... although her site contains her glowing recommendation. Until I emailed her, she wasn't even aware that the book wasn't on the market yet.

Used-book dealers have been around a long time, maybe since Man began writing things down. But if some ancient form of eBay had been around at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, you might have seen a copy for sale the day BEFORE the author wrote "The End" on the last page.

A Wyoming view of 'FALL'

2006-12-12T13:36:00.000-06:00

By D. Reed Eckhardt
Editor, Cheyenne (Wyo.) Tribune-Eagle
December 6, 2006

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not a big fan of true-crime stories.

More often than not, they simply repeat the details of a crime, cover the ensuing trial of those arrested and provide the current status of everyone involved. That doesn't do it for me; I like a little more suspense in my reading.

But let me recommend one of these books to you anyway: "Fall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town."

"Fall" is the story of crimes that occurred in Casper in 1973, when 12- and 18-year-old half-sisters were tossed from the Fremont Canyon Bridge by a couple of good-for-nothings.

Amy Burridge, 12, died immediately. Becky Thomson, 18, who was raped by both men, survived and dragged her broken body 300 feet up the canyon wall. She eventually saw both men sentenced to death. Their punishment was changed to life, thanks to legal technicalities. One of the men, Ronald Kennedy, still resides in the state prison.

Ms. Thomson never fully recovered emotionally from the incident, and she returned to the same bridge 18 years later and threw herself over the side.

What sets this true-crime story apart is that it is told by a Casper native who knew the two victims. As a 16-year-old, Ron Franscell lived next door to them, and he and his younger brother played baseball with Miss Burridge. The crimes brought him face to face with evil for the first time in his life and changed him forever.

Mr. Franscell now edits the newspaper in Beaumont, Texas, and has served stints at the Denver Post and at the Gillette News Record. He set out to understand this 30-year-old crime, which remains prominent in the minds of many Casper and Cowboy State residents. In the end, he discovered more about himself than anything else.

In terms of the crime, he uncovered few answers because the two criminals - Mr. Kennedy and Jerry Jenkins - were sociopaths, empty shells of human beings without compassion and incapable of remorse. Unfortunately, the crimes happened because the two girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But Mr. Franscell did discover something else: that he was changed by the experience as he used his skills to dig deep into this crime that haunted him for three decades.

It is this personal journey that makes "Fall" work. Its lessons are universal. There is much you and I can learn here - as can all of Wyoming - if we are willing to listen.

In a telephone call this week, Mr. Franscell and I talked about "Fall." We agreed that, as with any work of art, readers will take their own lessons from the 271-page book. But the author also sees several, more universal, themes:

n The pervasiveness of evil. Evil didn't come to Casper, Mr. Franscell writes; it always was there. Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Jenkins were born and raised in the shadow of Casper Mountain; they didn't come there to do their evil deeds like the killers in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

"No one expected (these crimes)," he said. "They were so random; the victims so innocent; the setting so unique."

The author said it is important to acknowledge the existence of evil, not ignore it or pretend it is not there. He said those latter attitudes are still far too pervasive in Wyoming.

"It's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security," he said.

The key, he added, is how one deals with evil. At the extremes, people can disregard it and engage in risky behavior or they can over-regard it and hide themselves away. Neither is right, Mr. Franscell said. Rather, the answer is to strike a balance.

"You need to accept the risk, that you're going to bump into evil," he added. "Be guided by your emotions and your senses, not by your fears."

n Individuals, states and even nations all are part of a greater community. Mr. Franscell explains in "Fall" that Ms. Thomson was lost when she refused to reach out for the help. She walled herself away with her fears and pains, and they overwhelmed her.

He points out, though, that the wider community was not much help. There were no programs for victims, no counseling, no medical aid. She had to pay her own way - and set her own course - while the killers had their medical care paid in prison and were fed and clothed on the state tab. That has changed since, but too late for Ms. Thomson.

"All of us are clearly dependent on each other," Mr. Franscell said. "The world has grown too small for us to be otherwise."

n It is important to strive for justice. Mr. Franscell writes in "Fall" that justice was not served, that society promised that both men would be put to death; neither one of them was (Mr. Jenkins died in prison).

But instead of being made cynical about the lack of justice, Mr. Franscell says the experience of writing the book actually honed his belief that justice can/should/must be served - even if not in every instance.

"I had been lamenting for 30 years that justice had not been served," Mr. Franscell said. "It had made me cynical, given me a jaded view about the whole thing.

"But I was not giving as much energy to justice now as I was giving to the injustice of then. Yes, justice is often illusive and occasionally impossible, but that shouldn't stop one from believing in (it)."

Indeed, Mr. Franscell has chosen a profession - journalism - that often strives for justice. And the writing of "Fall," he added, re-emphasized the value of that.

"The point is to move on to the next thing, to get justice done the next time," he said. "Yes, stuff happens. But you need to get over it and move on, give justice a chance in the future."

Thoughts on the pervasiveness of evil, on need for community, on the positive power of justice - in a true-crime book? That, and more. This is why "Fall" is worth your time and money.

Mr. Franscell argues that these are the worst crimes in Wyoming's history. But that would mean little if all he did was tell of the incidents, the perpetrators and the victims without helping readers come to terms with it all.

"Fall" may not provide healing for those hurt by these crimes, for Casper, for Wyoming. But it certainly won't be because one of the victims, author Ron Franscell, didn't try.

D. Reed Eckhardt is the managing editor of the Cheyenne (Wyo.) Tribune-Eagle.

Denver Post review of 'FALL'

2006-12-11T10:08:00.000-06:00

The first major newspaper review of "FALL" appeared in the Denver Post's Books section on Sunday, Dec. 10. Under the headline "Crime's lasting legacy of evil," Staff Writer Janna Fischer writes (in part):

"The book is as much Franscell's own story as it is Becky [Thomson's] or [Ron] Kennedy's, making "Fall" stand out from the legion of true-crime books. The author here was an affected bystander, not a neutral observer after the fact. ... The story in "Fall" is, in the end, too horrifying to try to explain."

Fischer's piece is an excellent summary of the story. Read her whole review here.

'FALL' Book Tour Day Six:Poster boy

2006-12-07T16:15:00.000-06:00

Barnes & Noble, Cheyenne WY

Today was the most hectic day of the tour. A breakfast with friends and organizers, a half-hour talk-radio show, a 90-minute presentation for high school literature students, lunch with two friends (Mongolian grill), a busy two-hour Barnes & Noble signing, a quick coffee with a newspaper reporter, and a nightcap workshop/reading for the Writers Voice ... it was a booked-up day without a lot of wasted time.

But the only thing that pays less than a book tour is a book tour spent in a hotel room. The day passed quickly, I met lots of readers (old and new), and signed a load of books. Perfect.

How much does an author really make on a tour? Generally, he makes nothing, and maybe even comes out in the red. That's because publishers have successfuly shifted the bulk of book promotion to authors (except for the authors who don't need their publishers' support ... and they get the bulk of it.)

"The unspoken truth is that except for perhaps 250 giant books every year [out of 75,000 published], the publisher is expecting the author to do 100 percent of the sales and promotion," author and marketing guru Seth Godin told the Miami Herald last month. "Because authors don't understand that, they end up bitter, angry and perhaps destitute. The most successful authors drive from store to store in a sort of perma-tour, selling books out of the back of their car or just working with individual stores to make their titles stand out."

Let's do the math for an imaginary 5-day tour, with two signings every day: Assume the author buys a $500 plane ticket, then pays $70 a night for lodging, $60 a day for food, $50 for a rental car, and $20 a day for other incidentals. That comes to about $300 a day in expenses, or a total $1,500 out of his pocket. He meets a lot of readers, plants the seed for future sales with media interviews, builds word-of-mouth, and generally shows the colors.

A typical mid-list author sells only about six books in the average in-store book-signing. That author earns roughly $1.50 per hardcover book -- a reasonable estimate. So if he does 10 signings in those five days, he can expect to move about 60 total books ... but let's be crazy-generous and double it to 120.

That means the author's tour directly generates about $180 in royalties for himself. (Compared to the author's $1.50, the bookstore makes about $12.50 per book, the distributor about $2.50, and the publisher about $8.50.)

So the author spends $1,500 to make $180. He runs ragged for a week, doing signings, workshops, readings, lunches, breakfasts, interviews and other promotional activities -- all designed for long-term good will but meager immediate rewards.

So book tours don't make good, short-term economic sense. Their value is for the longer run, and provide the best opportunity for authors to commune directly with readers, an intimate relationship that most authors cherish. I got a chance today to talk to old friends, re-connect with some "lost" acquaintances, make some new "fans," and prove to bookstores that they won't be sorry if they keep my books on hand. Does it pay down the line? Maybe ... maybe not ... but "being there" is still the most powerful sales tool we've got (well, Oprah doesn't count.)

So is it worth it? Sure it is, although it reveals the increasing unwillingness of the industry to invest in its own success. It's wise for an author not to expect a book tour to make him rich, but to enrich his relationship with readers.

All for the amazing price of only $1.50 a book!

'FALL' Book Tour Day Five:Prairie, Home, Companion

2006-12-05T23:53:00.000-06:00

Yes, they buy books here, too

I grew up in the Great American Outback, where the landscape shapes people at least as much as we shape the landscape. Uncharitable folks might call it the "middle of nowhere," but they are wrong. It is most definitely somewhere, although not likely the middle of it. How do I know? Well, planes make regularly scheduled landings here and I gotta believe that Nowhere wouldn't exactly be a profitable route.

And because planes come and go, I return here occasionally. This time, it is both the reason and the jumping-off place for my journey. 'FALL' is a story about this place, so I have launched it here a month before the rest of the USA can read it. Wyoming has seldom been the first to get anything worth getting (except maybe voting rights for women and the latest open-pit coal-mine technology) so it tickles me to say that some guy named Buck who lives in an Airstream trailer on Poison Spider Road will be able to read my book a full month before even the biggest fans of true crime in New York or Los Angeles. Yeah, I know, an insignificant skirmish in the culture wars, but insurgency can be fun!

But this is hearth-earth to me. And why not? Former Wyoming Gov. Mike Sullivan, who later served as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland during the Clinton Administration, once said, "Wyoming is a just a small town with exceptionally long streets." He was right. Today, I bumped into Mike at the airport and our conversation started up where it left off the last time we saw each other a few years back.

And yesterday I spent the morning talking to high school journalism students at my old high school, trying to convince them that being from Wyoming is not the handicap they might imagine. It's easy for kids in Wyoming to have a chip on their shoulder about their literal place in life, fooling themselves into thinking that kids in more populous and urbane places have an edge in every way.

I spent the afternoon today at a little book/gift/espresso shop in the small town of Douglas, Wyo. (a town that's no stranger to crime stories: This is where mass-murderer Charlie Starkweather was captured on my first birthday in 1958.) It's some 45 miles east of Casper, but -- no kidding -- it's the next closest town with a bookstore. My book-signing there was marvelous, with steady stream of readers coming and going all afternoon, along with a steady stream of peach smoothies.

I drove home in the chilly December dark, few lights on the long highway. Back in Casper, I stopped for dinner at a popular local steakhouse that hasn't yet succumbed to Outback-ification. But the smoothies had made a long journey, too. So as soon as I'd been seated and ordered a 24-ounce local brew, I went to the restroom.

While I was standing at the urinal, a couple oilfield guys came in. One stepped up to the fixture next to mine and, to my surprise, spoke to me (violating a basic Guy Rule.)

"Are you that writer guy?" he asked.

"Uh, well ..." I stammered. "I guess so."

"I thought you looked familiar," he said. "Saw yer picture in the paper a couple days ago. Book looks interestin'. My mom knew them girls. Good girls. Maybe I'll git yer book."

"Thanks," I said. Since I am not often recognized, I was literally speechless. Not to mention conflicted by the Guy Rule.

"Good luck with it. Hope you sell a bunch," the roughneck said as he zipped up and left.

I'll take "fame" where I can find it. Even in the loo at a steakhouse in Casper, Wyoming. Or maybe especially there.

'FALL' Book Tour Day Three:Your Name Here

2006-12-03T23:14:00.000-06:00

The cowboy boot must mean this is the Wyoming section

Today, I signed more than 450 books to stock shelves of local bookstores through Christmas. I didn't set any land-speed records, mostly because I stopped to talk with readers who drifted through every few minutes, but I averaged better than 110 per hour, even with the delightful conversations!

Because of the intensely intimate nature of this true crime, readers aren't chit-chatting about writerly habits and favorite verbs. These readers have stories to tell, and a few more provocative questions than, "Why does Chapter One always come before Chapter Two?" Most of them lived here at the time of the crime, and some knew the key players, even the killers. Like last night, it was my pleasure and privilege to hear their tales.

But I know that in other circumstances, they'd have other questions, such as "Where do you get your ideas?" and "How much money do you make?"

(Just in case you are suddenly provoked to ask such things when you meet an author, I'll save you some time: Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere ... dreams, eavesdropping, bulletin boards, funny remarks, newspaper articles, your mother's bridge club ... wherever they pop up. And the average author on the average $25 book makes only about $1.50 per sale, more or less, depending on his contract ... you can do the math.)

Sometimes, these passerby-readers know they have a book or a screenplay in them, yearning to breathe free. Dad's World War II adventures, Cousin Earl's two-headed pig, the night Grandma met Fatty Arbuckle ... these earnest folks are as certain as sunrise that if only they had Mel Gibson or Steven Spielberg's number, they could hand them the next big Best Picture Oscar on a silver platter ... so, oh by the way, do you know how to get hold of Mel or Steve? Yeah sure, but I left my cell phone in the car.

One fella breezed past my signing table today and, without slowing too much, asked if I'd sign the new John Grisham book. "He always gets mad when I do that," I joked. But he was only half-kidding. "He never reads anything except Grisham," the bookstore owner told me later. A failure of imagination? Not at all. He just knows what he likes.

"I always wanted to write a book," another visitor said. "But I'm only in third grade."

My dad ain't got much time left so I really need to make contact with Mel Gibson purty soon. This'd be like that one movie, where they landed at Normandy ... oh, what the hell was that movie?... Was that Mel Gibson? ... Or that other one that he made. 'We Was Soldiers.' That was him for sure. This is like that except it's World War II and there wouldn't be no helicopters"

I love these people. Truly. They are why I write. They are life in high-def. They have favorite writers, which means they read. They imagine stories, movies and fourth-grade best-sellers. Maybe they're afraid to dream sometimes, but today, they have a vision.

Sure, I'll make a few calls and see if I can find Mel's agent for you.

'FALL' Book Tour Day Two:The first readers

2006-12-03T01:22:00.000-06:00

The signing table at Roberts Commons Ballroom on Saturday

When lawyer Miles Jacoby saw a story about 'FALL' in his morning paper, he jumped in his car and drove two hours on dark, icy roads to attend the book-signing in Casper on Saturday night. Why? Because a long time ago, he knew one of the victims of this crime.

Donna Strube, my high school journalism teacher, left her daughter's Christmas recital to race to the ballroom where I was signing books.

A lot of the good guys were there, too. Slim Hollembaek (photo at left), a retired deputy and jailer who escorted the killers through many of their journeys, came to buy a book and share his memories of those sordid days. So did Dr. James Thorpen, the medical examiner who saw this a story from a perspective no one else shares. And Fred Klein, the rescue diver who found little Amy's body in the sluggish river and never dived again, embraced me. So did Dave Dovala, a key investigator who later became so close to one of the crime's survivors that he gave her away at her wedding.

They and more than 130 others came, each for his own reasons. It was not just to buy a book with the author's name scribbled on a flyleaf, but often to remember out loud among people who shared the same nightmare and the same old memories. I wanted to be able to reach out to each of them, to hear their stories and to lend some hope that revisiting it might help us all mend whatever needed mending.

For the first half hour of this three-hour event, I mingled among them, hugged some, laughed with others. I spoke a few minutes about the sequence of events that led me to writing 'FALL,' thanked some people who helped make it happen. Then I sat down for the next two hours to sign books for a steady stream of readers -- for the first time, real readers -- many of whom had come seeking some reassurance, some answers, and maybe some Christmas gifts for the right family and friends.

I saw many familiar faces, and a few new ones. I had always known that launching this book in the city where the crime had torn a gaping hole would be emotionally difficult, but it was the only right choice. These people had the strongest feelings, fears and curiosities. They wanted more answers than anyone else could. They had more stories to tell. It was a delight to listen, for once, to other storytellers.

We auctioned a bound galley of 'FALL,' one of those uncorrected early versions of the book that contains relentless typos and unfinished business, to benefit the Wyoming Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children Inc. The book raised $100 (Gen Cotherman was the winning bidder), and we donated another $225 that we raised to help surviving relatives in other murders. Karen and Tony Charvat, the POMC's marvelous coordinators here, accepted the donation.

But not all who came were convinced that this story at this time at this place was a worthwhile or worthy pursuit. Some believed it might be exploitive and mercenary. I told them to read the book and if they felt that way after the last page, they could express their feelings here freely. What matters is the story.

One of those was Jackie Brown, a friend of the victims' family. She was angry about the book's mere existence and she shared her opinions freely in the line waiting for the doors to open. Once inside, she saw photos in the slide show we had prepared for the event and began to cry. I was summoned to talk with her and sign two books -- one for her and one for the victims' mother, who had publicly expressed her non-endorsement of 'FALL.'

After I signed her books, there was a gift I'd been holding for this moment: I gave her two strange black stones I had picked up at the scene of the crime on its 30th anniversary. They had been above my word processor throughout the writing of 'FALL,' constant reminders of the two souls about whom I was writing.

"Give these to Toni [the girls' mother]" I told Jackie, pressing them into her hand as she wept. "She should have them. They really belong to her."

My hometown paper comes through

2006-12-02T09:08:00.000-06:00

This morning, Barbara Nordby of the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune published a marvelous article about the new book -- especially the crime's enduring effects for a handful of local people. Nordby grasped the consequences of the crime, understood its impacts ... and actually read the book.

My first-ever real newspaper job was at the Star-Tribune. When I wasn't playing sports in high school, I worked as a clerk in the sports section under the locally legendary sports editor Chuck Harkins (who once told me, "Always come back with something, dammit," and I always have, mostly because he was a tough son-of-a-bitch whom I still think of as one of the great newspapermen I've ever met.)

I worked at the Star-Tribune again as a young reporter after college, rising eventually to being the assistant city editor before moving off to become the Features Editor of the Santa Fe (N.M.) New Mexican at the tender age of 26.

It's good to be home, but it's also nice to see my name -- if not my byline -- back in my old hometown paper.

'FALL' Book Tour Day One:Being There

2006-12-01T21:08:00.000-06:00

I might have known this day would be long when my takeoff from Houston -- Houston, mind you -- was delayed by a frozen water line in a Boeing 737. Frozen. It only got more comical in Denver when the jetway's hydraulics were also frozen and our already-late plane was stranded on the apron just a few tantalizing feet from the air-bridge to the terminal, unable for more than 15 minutes to disgorge its passengers toward our next flights. And my flight to Casper in 60 mph headwinds and a storm's swirling swath on this Arctic-tinged day was, well, a rodeo at 24,000 feet.

So it was good to set foot on the tundra of Wyoming a little past noon today, for many reasons. Home. Solid ground. People who know how to fix frozen water lines. And that's just the first few hours of an 10-day book tour that's been in the works for about a year. Just goes to show that the best campaign plan in the world goes out the window when the first water line freezes.

By mid-afternoon, my coffee-soaked gut had settled and I visited one of the two local bookstores co-hosting FALL's Debut Signing tomorrow night. My job was to sign about 100 books for people elsewhere who had pre-ordered a signed first edition that would be mailed to them next week. That's a great pre-launch number for a small, independent bookseller out here, and it was gratifying to know that the book -- or at least the idea of the book -- already has its fans.

My signing reverie was interrupted a few times by bookstore customers who had dropped by to meet me. Small towns are marvelous. The bookseller apologized quietly for the intrusions, but far from being a nuisance, that's my favorite part of being a writer: Talking to readers. I could do it all day -- everything else can wait. I have long thought of book-writing as requiring at least two people: A writer and a reader. I have no quarrel with diarists and secret journal-keepers, but a storyteller needs a listener, or his imagination is stillborn. I can sign books -- and sleep -- when I'm dead. Well, maybe.

Worse than not having readers is being interviewed by a TV reporter who admits before the interview she hasn't read the book, then proceeds to pretend for the viewing audience that she has. While a local TV station devoted some nice, valuable prime-time to my visit and the book, the reporter tried a little too desperately to make an issue out of the fact that surviving relatives of the two young victims in my book -- both childhood friends of mine -- haven't endorsed it. Why? They haven't read it; they don't know what it says. But when TV can infuse faux drama in a story, Don Henley was right: They leap at the chance. (And don't get me started on the camera crew that shows up for an interview with only three batteries that all are dangerously low on power, ending the interview on a speed-talking note.)

Being on this side of The Media from time to time, I get a better glimpse of how awful we sometimes look. No matter. The book was hyped, my name was pronounced right, tomorrow's Big Launch was mentioned. And maybe a little faux drama is better than no drama at all. If I were more mercenary, I'd be happy for any muck-stirring that made people want to see what all the fuss is about. But here in the town where I grew up, I want to deliver a book that's authentic and moving. Does it matter if a crime victim's family endorses a book about the crime? No, but it doesn't hurt. Can the horrific ripples of a crime transcend one family's tragedy, and become a community's collective tragedy? Yes, and in this case, it is such a crime. I didn't tell this story to salve only a single family's wounds, but to offer some perspective for a much larger family: My hometown.

Tomorrow, the first books will go out to a very special group of readers: friends, neighbors, acquaintances and strangers with whom I share a special bond of place. After that, it's their interpretation that matters, not mine.

(PHOTO ABOVE: Friday's TV interview at Ralph's Books of Casper.)

Radio interview about 'FALL'

2006-11-29T12:31:00.000-06:00

Today, morning talk-show host Brian Scott of KTWO-Radio in Casper, Wyo., conducted the first broadcast interview for "FALL," my book about one of the most monstrous crimes to ever hit that city. Great questions, provocative observations ... Give it a listen here.

Touring with 'FALL' ... and blogging

2006-11-07T11:34:00.000-06:00

"FALL" actually hits American shelves on January 5, 2007, but because it's about arguably the most heinous crime in Wyoming's history, and because my home state almost never gets anything first, New Horizon Press has allowed me to launch it in early December in Wyoming and Colorado.

So from December 2-9, I'll be on the road in the Rocky Mountain winter, talking about "FALL" to people who live at the epicenter of the story. And I plan to blog daily in words and pictures about the experience of sharing this story with friends -- old and new -- for whom "FALL" has a special echo, and about the life of an author on the road. You might be surprised at how unglamorous it can be!

So stay tuned to this spot ....

The first review

2006-10-17T06:40:00.000-06:00

With about six weeks to go before its launch in Casper, Wyo. -- literally the scene of the crime -- FALL got its first review on Moday. Oct. 16.

Laura Thornton of ReadersRoom.com, a well-established site devoted to true crime and crime fiction, said this:

Veteran newspaperman and novelist Ron Franscell kept this story stored in his heart ... Full of facts, this horror that stunned an entire community will leave you breathless at its end. This book is a must-read for the fans of the true-crime genre. Franscell's personal feelings make this a memorable account of the crime.

That's the book-jacket summary of Laura's excellent review! If you'd like to read her complete assessment, click through to Laura's review here.

You may pre-order FALL today

2006-10-16T13:04:00.000-06:00

Want a signed first edition of "FALL" but won't be able to make any of the scheduled signing events? No problem!

A small, independent bookstore in Casper, Wyo. -- where this crime happened in 1973 -- is now accepting orders for signed copies that will be mailed after Dec. 1, 2006. The only extra charge is $3 for shipping and handling.

Interested? To learn how to get your signed copy, email, snail-mail or call Ralph's Books, 215 S. Montana, Casper WY 82609. The store's phone number is 307-234-0308.

~~~

And if you don't have a favorite bookstore near you, you can now place pre-orders at all online booksellers by following these links to Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, Buy.com and Books-a-Million.

Or if you speak Japanese, at Kunokuniya.

Sometimes We Forget to Fly

2006-08-22T18:18:00.000-06:00

Sometimes We Forget to Fly

by Genie Maples

Oil on canvas, 2005

One late night, surfing through the back-channels of cyberspace, I stumbled upon traces of a future friend. I had recently finished a rewrite of the manuscript of FALL, so perhaps my mind was vulnerable to an image that was both colorful and somber. Or maybe it was the feeling of falling. Or that two figures ... one bigger and one smaller ... or one older and one younger ... or both angels alive but seemingly dead ... would fall into the counterglow of my night like false dawn. I don't know.

But the painting captivated me, haunted me. In it, I saw the two girls, Amy Burridge and Becky Thomson, I had just written about. Not just their figures, but their entire life-stories. The falling/flying figures seemed to describe a desire by all of us to feel solid ground beneath our feet again, to dig our toes deep into it ... a desire that eluded my two friends who never knew that comfort the way I have.

I wrote a note to the artist, Genie Maples, to tell her how her painting had affected me. As an author, I knew how it felt to be told by someone that your art had a visceral and profound effect. I wanted to pay it forward. In time, she wrote back, explaining that the painting was unlike most of her work and that it had always been a mystery to her where it came from, and we began a distant artistic friendship that thrives today.

But maybe a week after that first note, a large flat box arrived at my doorstep. It was the painting. She wouldn't accept any money for it, even for the shipping. So I immediately mounted it where I would see it every day, to be reminded of the story of Amy Burridge and Becky Thomson, but also to remind me of my living friends, like Genie, who remind me that maybe solid ground is just an illusion, but maybe it's only because we sometimes forget to fly.

Thank you, Genie.

Excerpt from 'FALL'

2006-08-21T08:15:00.000-06:00

THE COLD AND THE DARK and the fear of death kept her awake, praying for first light, for another morning.

Just one.

The long plunge into the black river had crippled her somehow. Her legs didn’t work. Maybe when she’d hit the rocks. Even at eighteen, she’d never had a broken bone, but now believed her legs were broken. They protruded from her frozen hips, useless and thick with pain.

They hadn’t let her put her panties and bra back on, just her light sweater and jeans. When they dumped her off the bridge into the infinite darkness, she slammed hard into a stone ledge, but not the bottom. Her long, lithe body caromed off the wall and spiraled down again, seconds that seemed like forever, not knowing what was below. Then she hit the water, in the eye of a liquid detonation that embraced her rather than vaporized her.

Her body plunged deep into the river, like a knife through soft flesh. Her lungs smoldered, and water filled her sinuses and mouth, crashed against her eardrums, and trickled into her lungs. She wanted to scream, to exhale, to inhale, to know she was alive, but in the water down there in the dark, half blinded already by the beating she’d suffered before the fall, she couldn’t know the way to the surface. She sank farther, but there was no bottom.

Then she stopped. She clawed against the water with her hands, unable to make her legs obey. The weight of water pulled her down, and she fought against it so hard her pants slipped off her useless legs. She felt she might be a hundred, a thousand, feet below the surface, and her lungs would burst before she found air, but she clawed at it, raged against it.

When she burst through the placid surface of the deep river, the night air swept into and over her. It was near freezing but still warmer than the water and felt like her mother’s hand on her face ... It’s all right, baby, breathe, breathe ... but her mother wasn’t there.

She was alive. She managed to paddle to the rocky granite slabs beside the river, where they formed not a soft shore, but an insurmountable curb. Dragging her deadened legs out of the black water into the black night, she wormed across the sharp stones, naked below the waist, beaten and bruised, in shock. What blood remained in her kept her heart beating and served only the most primitive part of her brain, where survival came before all else.

She grasped for purchase among the river stones, and a water rat skittered across her arm. She stifled a shriek, but she worried more about the two men who might be waiting above than any other vermin below. The autumn wind swirled in the bottom of the canyon, trapped like she was, chilling her naked skin. Silent.

Stones carved her flesh as she dragged herself toward softer, flatter earth. She collapsed in a clump of river brush rooted in the loose talus between two boulders, protected from the churning wind, from the Wyoming temperatures that fell abruptly after midnight, from the view of anyone who might come looking for her — even in the dark.

She folded herself into her stone womb, pulling her dead legs against her body with her hands until she was balled tightly in a fetal position. She draped her long brown hair across them, then covered herself with uprooted bushes, and waited.

Don’t fall asleep. Her mind flashed out some ancient wisdom of warm-blooded humans in desperately cold climates. I won’t wake up. Fall asleep and die.

Then she heard the voices from the lip of the canyon, more than a hundred feet above. Two men talking and laughing. It was them, she knew. All was black. Even if her left eye hadn’t been swollen shut and throbbing, she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face, and they would not be able to see her, but she knew they were there and they were trying to see her. She made herself smaller and wished she were invisible, part of the earth itself. Unseeable. While it was dark, she was as close to invisible as she could be, but at dawn … would they still be up there, watching?

Don’t fall asleep.

As the analgesic shock trickled away, pain seeped through her like some poisonous liquid. Her hips pulsed and oozed with a deep-down ache, and her stunned heart pumped pain into the rest of her. She wanted to cry, but dared not, for fear of them hearing. The more it hurt, the more she wanted to slip into unconsciousness, but not to die. To be freed from the unknowable pain that was slowly saturating her, from the fear and from the thought that her little sister might be there, within a few feet.

Maybe alive.

Maybe a corpse.

FALL: THE RAPE AND MURDER OF INNOCENCE IN A SMALL TOWN. Copyright © 2006 by Ron Franscell. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, including electronic, mechanical or any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher.

Q&A with Ron Franscell

2006-08-20T11:09:00.000-06:00

This year, journalist Ashley Franscell talked with her father, author Ron Franscell, about his new true crime/memoir, “FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town” (New Horizon Press). Ashley, a third-generation newspaperwoman, is a 2005 graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s acclaimed School of Journalism.

As a photojournalist, she and her father have already worked together on a few projects, including his 2001 exploration of the Little Bighorn River’s deep and ancient cultural significance to the Crow tribe in Montana.

~~~~~

QUESTION: In some past essays, you’ve described true crime as a genre that too-seldom has a soul. What did you mean by that?

ANSWER: Only that most true-crime writing has become a formulaic exercise since Truman Capote gave birth to the genre in “In Cold Blood” back in 1966. Today, the typical true-crime writer parachutes into town, maybe attends the trial, takes some notes (extra points for a jailhouse interviews!), snatches some grisly crime-scene photos and catches the next plane home, where somebody slaps a blood-spattered cover on the book and sells it in supermarkets to readers who furtively glance first at the photos inside. Where Capote wanted to tell a deeper story about society on two sides of a dark mirror, today’s true-crime writer (and editor) plays more to the readers’ lurid fascination with blood and betrayal. So the genre has moved from the mind to the abattoir.

In the past 40 years, we’ve seen some extraordinary exceptions: Vincent Bugliosi’s “Helter Skelter,” Joseph Wambaugh’s “Onion Field,” Joe McGinniss’ “Fatal Vision,” and James Ellroy’s “My Dark Places.” Those books had soul. They weren’t just commercial exercises.

Q: OK, so tell me about the title of your book, “FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town.”

A: This monstrous, small-town abduction of two young sisters in 1973 -- my next-door neighbors and friends at the time -- ended in rape and murder at a towering steel bridge over a deep, dark canyon. Both girls were thrown from the bridge. One plummeted into oblivion, the other into an even darker life that became a kind of corrosive purgatory for her. So the crime itself involved a fall that still twists my gut.

But the two killers fell, too. They were caught quickly, tried and condemned to die. Although their death sentences were overturned in our national spasm of conscience about the death penalty in the 1970s, their free lives -- however unnatural they had been -- were over, too.

And finally, for me and a lot of other kids who were splashed by this crime, it was a plunge into reality. We lost our childhood sense of security and our innocence. In my interviews I discovered profound emotions lingering among the now-grown children who were there, and whose safe world was suddenly not so safe.

Q: This story is now more than 30 years old, and although it was a grotesque case, it wasn’t widely publicized in 1973. How do you bring a fresh perspective to an old story?

A: That’s a question a lot of editors asked just before they rejected the proposal! The zeitgeist in crime stories today is ripping stories from yesterday’s headlines, so it was certainly a tough sell. Certainly the fact it isn’t a widely known story helps. But while it’s not a current story, it’s got some current elements. How do we confront our fears in a post-9/11 world? How do we awake from our false sense of security and go forward, despite the lurking dangers? How and why does tragedy ripple through human hearts across generations?

And in some ways, this story continues. I can assure you that in the small city of Casper, Wyoming, where I grew up and this all happened, it remains a fresh wound.

Q: You spent a lot of time interviewing the killer Ron Kennedy. His presence haunts this entire book, and the past 30-plus years of your life. What was it like to talk to this guy whom you say robbed you of innocence too young?

A: Our seven phone conversations lasted a total of about 14 hours (undoubtedly monitored by prison officials) and were remarkably friendly. Ron Kennedy exudes a country-boy charm that’s seductive, just part of his sociopathic makeup. He’d get angry at some questions (usually about his treatment by the law or society in general) and he’d choke up at others (usually his mother.) He talked about what he could see beyond the prison walls, about friends and family. He was genial and joked freely. But he never stopped playing me.

He was the most important piece of this story to me. Not because he’s the last survivor of the four people whose lives converged on Fremont Canyon Bridge on a black night in 1973. Not because he was likely to reveal anything new about the crime itself, much less finally accept blame. And not because a jailhouse interview has become a standard component of true crime.

But because he was my mirror. I wanted to know something about me. I believe deeply in the value of honest journalism, that messengers have played a vital role in the human community since the dawn of man. I wanted to know if my deep-set feelings about this man -- or rather what he represented and did -- were stronger than my passion to be a conscientious messenger. If I couldn’t take a step back from my feeling to allow him to tell his own story in his own voice, I wouldn’t be the newspaperman I thought I was … and he would have raped me of that, too.

Q: You spent the night of the 30th anniversary of the crime under the bridge, in the same spot where Becky Thomson sheltered herself in the dark after she was thrown from the bridge, just a few feet from where Amy Burridge’s body was found. How did you prepare yourself for that?

A: When I started researching this book, I had always planned to visit the bridge on the 30th anniversary -- Sept. 24, 2003 -- just to offer a prayer and leave two flowers. But while researching the moon phase for the unusually dark night of the crime, I learned the moon would be almost exactly the same on the night of the 30th anniversary. I wanted to live through a similarly dark night under that haunted bridge, especially if the sky and weather conditions were going to be similar. And they were.

It was late September in Wyoming, and I knew the overnight temperatures would fall to near-freezing, but I dressed lightly -- jeans and a sweatshirt -- and went down there for the night. Because of the steep canyon walls, dark fell early. Before midnight, I began shivering and didn’t stop until well past dawn the next day. The intense blackness of the night, the wild sounds, and the loss of any sense of time or space … it all forces you inward in a frightening way. The night seemed to last that whole sad year, and when dawn came, I scrambled out of the treacherous canyon and never went back.

God, Becky had been down there in a light pullover top, naked below the waist, raped, her pelvis broken in five places and her skin carved open by glancing off the canyon wall -- ironically, a crash that saved her life. Her would-be killers were still up above her someplace, and her little sister’s corpse floating in the water a few feet away. She warmed herself by curling up and partially covering her legs with her long dark hair. At the trial, she talked about a water rat crawling across her hand, but she was so afraid of being found by the two killers that she didn’t make a sound. Before daybreak, she literally dragged her wounded legs up an impossibly steep wash to the dirt road where she was found by fishermen. [See excerpt in this blog]

Spending that night below the bridge told me more about Becky’s will to survive than I could have learned in a million interviews.

Q: You took more than a year off from newspapering to research and write this book. Did it mean so much to you that you’d walk away from a regular paycheck to live with this story 24/7?

A: Yes. And I’d do it again.

Q: While you were writing this book, you also visited Holcomb, Kansas, where the grisly “In Cold Blood” murders happened. Why?

A: To seek ghosts. I wanted to see how a community survives trauma. I wanted to see what it looks like 40 or 50 years down the line after a man-made tragedy shakes a place to the core of its beliefs and its complacence. I also wanted to make a pilgrimage to the spot where the first and greatest true story about crime in a small town happened. Maybe I just wanted to catch some of Capote’s mojo. I didn’t write about Holcomb in “FALL” but it’s there.

[Ron’s essay about the visit to Holcomb appears in this blog]

Q: You’ve written novels and now a nonfiction book. Do they have anything in common?

A: The main thing they share is a small-town setting. Whether it’s because I grew up in an isolated community, or because I have always found small towns to be far more fertile ground for storytelling, I don’t know. The world has plenty of big-city authors writing about the concrete jungle and the urban battlefield, and many of them are very good at it. I wouldn’t be very good at it. I know small towns intimately.

But my stories, both true and imagined, also feature characters who seem familiar to us -- at least, to me -- even if their problems are uncommon. Whether it’s Cassidy McLeod in “Angel Fire,” who fears intimacy because of what it might do to anyone he loves, or Becky Thomson in “Fall,” who keeps her fears and her fatal sadness a secret until it’s too late, these are people we know.

Q: What’s harder: Fiction or fact?

A: Good question. I’m glad to see the investment in your college education paid off!

Neither is easy. Each presents unique problems and requires unique skills. One thing they share is an obligation to consider the reader’s trust.

In nonfiction, the reader trusts an author or journalist implicitly to tell the truth. Telling the truth isn’t hard (except for James Frey) but making the truth clear, useful and important is more problematic. In fiction, you admit you’re lying and the reader knows it, but the trick is to make it seem so real that a reader can believe every word. So in both cases, readers trust an author to fulfill his promise.

JonBenet's killer? Maybe

2006-08-17T10:35:00.000-06:00

The startling news that a former second-grade teacher/pedophile has confessed to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey feels like a relief, but in these first 24 hours there are troublingly few details that convince me this fellow was actually inside the Ramseys' Boulder, Colo., home on the night after Christmas 10 years ago.

John Mark Karr, 41, has made several chilling statements about being with her when she died, but has deflected questions about details. Authorities say he gave certain details that only JonBenet's killer would know, but we must wait until Karr returns to American soil and begins his long journey through the justice system to find out more. A DNA match between the scrapings under JonBenet's fingernails and Karr hasn't been established. Despite Karr's "confession," I need just a little more proof that he's an insane, child-raping killer, and not just an insane, child-raping sicko with delusions of criminal grandeur.

Nobody has showed so far that Karr was even in Colorado, much less the Ramsey home that night. His ex-wife says she was with him in Georgia at the time of the murder, and his father -- who doesn't seem like the protective type -- says he didn't think his son was ever in Colorado. If John Mark Karr killed JonBenet, the twisted story of the crime will be sickening.

Karr is also reportedly unusually fascinated with both the JonBenet and Polly Klaas killings. He clearly didn't commit the Klaas murder, but is he seeking the notoriety that has obviously come with claiming to be JonBenet's killer? Could he be an extraordinarily well-versed but insane person who is guilty of many things but not JonBenet's killing?

In my heart, I hope he's JonBenet's killer and the whole sordid tale can be laid to rest. I hope the facts-to-come prove Karr is the monster he claims to be, for the sake of the family, the cops, Boulder and parents everywhere. I hope that the case ultimately proves that justice delayed is not always justice denied. And I hope if he did it, his journey to the death chamber is swift.

But more of this story remains to be told.

BLOODY KANSASHolcomb, Capote and me

2006-08-01T07:39:00.000-06:00

“Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans – in fact, few Kansans – had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”
Truman Capote, “In Cold Blood”

~~~~~

Outlanders have almost no good reason to be on Kansas Highway 50 past Holcomb and Lakin, Kendall and Syracuse … In the circulatory system of American roads, it’s a thin, black capillary, a minor vein barely pulsing with the rhythms of the Heartland.

Yet there I was, an outlander. I had driven all day from Denver on a journey that was part research, part pilgrimage. I was about to begin writing an intimate book about a monstrous crime that had splashed me in 1973, when I was a child growing up in another isolated small town that almost nobody had heard of – an abduction, rape and murder involving two young friends who were, at the end of a dark night of terror, thrown from a very high bridge. And that was only the beginning, not the end, of the horror.

My book was to be their story, but I also wanted to tell the story of a close-knit community’s unhealed wounds more than 30 years later. I wanted it to be more than a true-crime yarn; I saw it as a classic tragedy about how the past echoes poisonously into the present -- for individuals, for families, for entire towns.

I came to Holcomb to look for ghosts. On November 14, 1959, two men killed Herb Clutter, his wife, daughter and son in cold blood, desperately hunting for a stash of money that didn’t exist. The horrifying murders were the spark for Truman Capote’s (left) groundbreaking book, “In Cold Blood,” which, in turn, unleashed a new wildfire that would be known as “literary journalism” – completely true stories written with all the drama, language and structure of literature.

Holcomb was the epicenter of it all. In this shy Plains village that barely rises two stories above the surrealistically flat earth, something happened a long time ago that changed my little corner of the literary world. I came here to learn and to see many things, the way the faithful run to a church to seek answers. Holcomb had almost 15 more years than my hometown of Casper, Wyo., to understand its crime, to sort out what was worth remembering and what should be forgotten, to decide to move forward the best it could, or surrender to whatever held it so close to the ground.

With a copy of “In Cold Blood” still on my front seat, I arrived after dark and checked into a motel in nearby Garden City. The next morning, over a muffin and juice in the motel lobby, I read the Garden City Telegram. Among the routine reports of farmbelt life – the livestock and grain prices, the comings and goings (mostly goings) of little businesses, and perfunctory meetings of boards even locals couldn’t care about – I saw Herb Clutter’s face. It appeared with a story about Clutter receiving some kind of farming honor, even though he’d been dead for almost 44 years.

“Today, [Herb] Clutter was to be inducted into the Kansas Co-op Hall of Fame,” the story said. “Clutter's surviving children, Beverly English and Eveanna Mosier, both of Newton, were expected to accept the award for their father today … This morning, English couldn't recall any neighbors still living in Holcomb who might of known her father…”

I was shocked to see it, but one question was answered: They hadn’t forgotten.

Small towns have long memories.

~~~~~

“The graves of the Clutter family, four graves gathered under a single gray stone, lie in a far corner of the cemetery – beyond the trees, out in the sun, almost at the wheat field’s bright edge. As Dewey approached them, he saw that another visitor was already there …”
Truman Capote, “In Cold Blood”

The Valley View Cemetery gravedigger’s shack and the caretaker’s office sit together, so close as to be two halves of the same building. A newspaperman’s life, and now this book, had led me to more cemeteries than I care to contemplate, but I learned long ago it was pointless to wander around hoping to see the graves I sought. So I parked my car and cut across the graveled lot toward the caretaker’s office.

A lanky young guy in a ballcap and cutaway sleeves emerged from the early-morning shade of gravedigger’s garage, smiled at me and nodded. I wished him good morning.

“Need some help?” he asked. It was a small town, I reckoned, and he knew I wasn’t from around here. I told him I’d come to visit the Clutters’ graves.

He beckoned me to follow him to a spot on the shady lawn, and he sighted down his slender arm toward the back corner of the cemetery. “See right through there? Four rows from the west road, four rows from the north. A big stone, just in from that tree. That’s them. Lots of folks come to see them. Alvin Dewey’s over there, and the judge is here, too. They’re all here. What’s your interest?”

I wasn’t inclined to launch into a full-blown synopsis, so I just told him I was writing a book about another crime in another small town at another time, something a lot like what happened to the Clutters and, I dunno, I just wanted to pay my respects.

I walked through wet spring grass to the gravesite. It was just as Capote described, four graves side-by-side, beneath one gray stone that said, simply, Clutter. The cemetery had evolved since Capote was here: its borders had expanded, and more graves had embraced the Clutter family, the way the whole town had embraced their memory.

I wasn’t good at praying, but I said one anyway. Thinking back, I’m not sure if I spoke to them or to some higher being who might be in charge of their souls for eternity, a notion that seemed out of sync with my idea of Heaven. But they had suffered before they died, and I wanted to say I was sorry for that. I told them a little more about Becky and Amy than I had told the gravedigger. And I said if there was anything they might do to help me tell the girls’ story right, I’d be grateful.

Back at my car, the gravedigger sloped across the lot to see me off. I shook his hand and thanked him for his help.

“My aunt, she owns that farm now,” he said. “I didn’t tell you before.”

“The Clutter place?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You wanna see it?”

“I’d hate to just show up and …”

“Not a problem. Just tell her your story. She’d show you.”

He whipped a cell phone from his leather belt and dialed. He stood in the bright blue sunlight, listening for somebody, anybody, to answer. I remembered that Capote had reportedly peeked inside the Clutters’ coffins at the funeral home, and I was suddenly slung uncomfortably between my curiosity and my sense of propriety. At this moment, I wanted to be neither too curious nor too proper, as if a journalist were capable of either.

Nobody answered. I was disappointed and relieved. But the gravedigger gave me directions and told me the back way, if I still wanted to see the place.

~~~~~

"Situated at the end of a long, lanelike driveway shaded by rows of Chinese elms, the handsome white house, standing on an ample lawn of groomed Bermuda grass, impressed Holcomb; it was a place people pointed out.”
Capote’s description of the Clutter farmhouse

The 480-acre River Valley Farm, on the edge of Holcomb, was a more melancholy spot. The gravedigger’s aunt and uncle, Donna and Leonard Mader, run the place now, and they treat it as a sort of national trust, allowing a chosen few to see the rooms inside where the Clutters were viciously killed. I stood at the end of the lane and looked at the house across a quarter-mile of corn stubble, through the enfeebled Chinese elms that hadn’t yet leafed out. It was just a house, and didn’t strike me as the country palace Capote saw. Whether it was haunted, or merely my vision was haunted, I didn’t settle for myself.

Questions started to drift in the darker corners of my mind: Were there still bloodstains beneath the paint and wallpaper? Had the shotgun blasts carved indelible furrows in the concrete floors and plaster walls? … Oh for crying out loud, I didn’t come here for salacious bullshit like that! … but I had come here to see what marks, if any, the criminals had left, didn’t I? Yes, but how could I knock on the door and intrude on this spot if I was no better than a pervert with his dirty pictures? These weren’t even my pictures. They were a borrowed horror.

I saw what I came to see, and I went back to town to decompress. I talked to a few people, walked down a few streets. Here on Main Street was the tiny café where Capote ingratiated himself with the town gossips, a place that is now a Mexican restaurant. I’d seen the fields, ready for a new season. I could smell the nearby meat-packing plants, where slaughter is routine. Over in Garden City, somebody told me, the motel where Capote stayed still has his picture in the foyer, even though he’s been dead for more than 20 years.

The crime’s wounds remained open, if not fresh, after more than 43 years. Everybody knew the story, and would tell you how sister Jenny had been friends with Nancy Clutter, or Aunt Jane had befriended Truman Capote at Hartman’s Cafe, or how the dog was acting kinda funny that winter night, or … it was a small town and the mythology had four decades to steep. They tell their stories readily, and why not? I asked, didn’t I? The next step in this town of modest altitude will be a rather macabre dance: I clipped a newspaper story last year in which a local Chamber of Commerce official admitted not enough time had passed for the area to market its “In Cold Blood” cachet … but maybe, he said, in another 60 years …

So just off Kansas Highway 50 sits a low-slung metaphor for grief. It’s called Holcomb. I had come here to see if the town had somehow transcended its own horror, and was satisfied it hadn’t. It had merely continued to survive, and maybe that was good enough. It had reduced its single most notorious moment into a kind of communal scar, a badge carried with neither pride nor shame.

These days, the mass murder of four people in a small town by a couple of drifter-punks wouldn’t likely rate the attention of the New York Times, which is where Capote first read about the Clutter murders. Nine months after I visited Holcomb, I finished my book. After an uncomfortably long time, my agent sold it to a small publisher who loved the story just the way I told it. But readers (and editors) remain cynical. Capote might have started something else: A literary culture where murder is made more commonplace, and every new true-crime book must exceed the last in its brutality, inhumanity and body count. Forget double-killings, we want triple killings! Forget stabbing, we want beheadings! Forget history, we want headlines! Forget the fucking meditations on mortality, show me the blood!

But a place like Holcomb doesn’t forget. Small towns have long memories.

Ellroy on Ellroy: The Big Crackup

2006-07-31T10:00:00.000-06:00

Author James Ellroy has never been quite right, but he's been quite good. As a boy, his mother was murdered after a likely sexual tryst with a strange man in Los Angeles. As a man, Ellroy became became obsessed with solving the case and exploring his darker Oedipal spaces. The result was a book, "My Dark Places," one of the best examples of intimate true crime ever written.

Last weekend, Ellroy wrote about returning to Los Angeles in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. he wrote, in part:

I was midway through a three-year crack-up. It was the upshot of long transits of overwork and emotional seepage held in check by near-insane ambition. Brutal sleeplessness and panic attacks. Sobbing jags and weightless plummets. It was a six-week hotel stay. My alleged L.A. agenda: take a neurofeedback course to curb insomnia. My real L.A. mission: hide out and seek safety in the wild-ass place that made me. ...

This essay is a travel document and a homecoming brief. It will stand as my final autobiographical statement. The gist is simple: My birthplace made me, I ran away, I ran back.

If you've ever wanted a glimpse behind a tortured soul, a creative presence and a guy who just wants something he's never really had, click through to Ellroy's essay.

FALL now at Amazon.com

2006-07-11T09:55:00.000-06:00

"Author and newspaperman Ron Franscell is

one of the most versatile writers on the scene today..."

STEVE JACKSON

Author of "MONSTER" and "NO STONE UNTURNED"

~~~~

You can now pre-order "FALL: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town" at Amazon.com.

The early-bird price is $15.72 -- a huge discount from the $24.95 cover price. Your book will be shipped after its December 28 publication date.

(Money-saving tip: If you also order Ron's debut novel, "ANGEL FIRE," at $12.50, you'll qualify for Amazon's free shipping!)

Superlawyer Gerry Spence lauds 'FALL'

2006-06-21T12:54:00.000-06:00

Gerry Spence is one of America's most renowned defense lawyers, and he's also a Wyoming native who knows the impact this case had on crime and punishment. He weighed in this week on Ron Franscell's "FALL":

"FALL is an intimate true crime story. Franscell tells his story from a truly unique perspective. What sets FALL apart in the genre is that he was there, not as a victim or a perpetrator, but as a child splashed by the unexpected evil of it all -- and he grew up with a gift to be able to tell the story in all its violent colors."

GERRY SPENCE

Famed trial lawyer, Wyoming native

and author of "GUNNING FOR JUSTICE"

(Want to see what others like authors Ann Rule, Vincent Bugliosi and Steve Jackson, and NBC's Justice Correspondent Pete Williams are saying? Check out the Index bar on the right side of this site!)

Author Ron Franscell at Fremont Canyon Bridge

2006-06-21T12:51:00.001-06:00

Ann Rule praises 'FALL'

2006-06-13T13:53:00.000-06:00

Ann Rule is the reigning queen of true-crime and she has added her voice to a growing list of authors and journalists praising Ron Franscell's "FALL." Here's what she said this week:

~~~~~~

"Few authors understand what makes a true crime book stand out like a beacon from the mass of prosaically gruesome re-telling of police reports. Ron Franscell does! 'FALL' explores the true story of this unholy sacrifice of youth and misplaced trust in a gripping, throat-tightening way. It is an almost-hypnotic read, hard to look away from. But it is also compassionate as we question the awful fate of the victims, sadly singled out by fate or luck or whatever shapes our destinies. This is a very, very, good book--a gem for readers who look for the whole story, written by a very, very, good writer. Every time I hear a neighbor or a local lawman in a traditionally low-crime town, say 'Something like murder doesn't happen here' -- when, of course, it does -- I shake my head. This time, it happened in Casper, Wyoming, and Ron Franscell takes you there ... completely. It will make you cry honest tears. The victims deserve no less."

ANN RULE

New York Times bestselling author of
"WORTH MORE DEAD"
"GREEN RIVER, RUNNING RED"
"THE STRANGER BESIDE ME"
"KISS ME, KILL ME"

(Want to see what others like authors Vincent Bugliosi and Steve Jackson, and NBC's Justice Correspondent Pete Williams are saying? Check out the Index bar on the right side of this site!)

Crime news as a cultural ink-blot test

2006-06-06T10:29:00.000-06:00

A happy ending to a frightening story: The sickly infant abducted in Lubbock, Texas, earlier this week has been found and reunited with her mother. A 33-year-old woman has been arrested.

Much has been made -- in the blogosphere and mainstream media -- about the perceived tendency by news reporters to focus on missing or murdered white women and children while ignoring missing or murdered women and children of color. In this case, the baby was Hispanic, born to a single Hispanic mother, but is it possible the media are not color-blind in such cases? Can all the headlines be condensed to "Beautiful White Woman Murdered In Sex-Related Slaying"?

Proponents of this position herald Natalee Holloway, Nicole Brown-Simpson, Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson and Jennifer Wilbanks as examples of the national-media bias. And it's hard to hold up examples of women of color in similar circumstances. But is it truly a matter of racial bias ... or possibly just the need of the national media to have a story with a special emotional twist?

The American Society of Newspaper Editors estimates 13 percent of journalists at newspapers are minorities (including Hispanics). In TV newsrooms, minorities make up about 22% of the workforce, according to the Radio-Television News Directors Association. About 32% of the U.S. population is non-white or Hispanic. (USA Today, 6/15/05) Does that lead to a bias in story choices?

But not every "white woman in peril" story makes the front page of the NY Times or prime-time CNN, so immediately a viewer/reader must ask what makes these cases special? I propose, modestly, it's not color but the uniqueness of the case. The more mystery and intrigue, the higher the news value.

As the managing editor of a mid-sized daily newspaper, I assure readers that the color of the victim is of absolutely no importance to news decisions, except in crimes where race is central ... I'm more interested in the extraordinary circumstances. The 10th fatal mugging at a midnight subway platform by a gangster is less intriguing than the discovery of a grandmother's corpse in a public park and the realization that her 4 grandchildren are now missing. Which would you put on the front page?

Here's another twist you won't hear about: Men also get ignored generally in such cases. FBI statistics show men are more likely than women to be reported as missing, and that blacks make up a disproportionately large segment of the victims. On May 1. 2005, there were 25,389 men in the FBI's database of active missing persons cases, and 22,200 cases of women. Blacks accounted for 13,860 cases, vs. 29,383 whites. (USA Today, 6/15/05)

Should men rise up and demand equal attention from Nancy Grace or Greta van Susteren?

Facts have no moral quality, only what we project upon them.

Crime news is like a cultural ink-blot test, in which society looks at a set of insensate, numb facts and projects its own history, fears, impatience, insolence, clemency, insecurities, dreams -- and nightmares -- upon those facts.

In theory, we are not really describing the ink blots, but something inside ourselves. And what's inside is every fairy-tale monster: A brutal ogre, a bloodthirsty werewolf, an elegant vampire, a bullying giant, a scheming devil, a predatory wolf, a sneering troll, or maybe just an abusive step-mother.

The archetypes of our fears have trickled into every heart. And when a crime captures the public's imagination before a trial, the great majority of citizens are already projecting the monsters of our collective mythology onto the suspects.

And that's a bigger part of choosing the stories on the front page than the color of the victims.

On the bridge

2006-05-24T07:51:00.000-06:00

I can't stand on the Fremont Canyon Bridge without being a little off-balance, without feeling some evil gravity tugging me toward the green water 12 stories below. I went there last weekend -- my first visit since I spent an extraordinarily cold and black night under the bridge three years ago. And when I stepped onto its steel span, I felt its magnetic warp, as if true north were neither true nor north.

It's not some natural phenomenon. The haunt is not there in the girders, rocks and the sage. It's inside me. I know what happened there, and I wince as I count the 2 or 3 seconds it takes a stone to fall where my two friends fell in 1973. I am haunted by memory, not tricks of paranormal geography.

But there’s something else, it seems to me: The bridge.

Or at least its visceral symbolism.

Bridges are part of our mythology, furniture in our folklore. They represent unnatural paths to new places, transitions in spirit as well as geography. On a bridge, we are suspended between what lies ahead and what we left behind. We have taken the first step out of our comfortable world into something new, but we have not yet crossed the threshold. Offering no safe escape while suspended in the air between two pieces of terra firma, bridges are symbolic of change, risk, transformation and, in the case of a mythical hero’s death, a place of resurrection.

We associate bridges with death, partly because of their metaphoric value to our literature, film and art, but there is likely a more instinctive dread. Did the ancients fear they were defying the gods by bypassing their natural, impassable rivers and gorges? Do we fear our own vertigo will carry us too close to the edge, perhaps over it? Why do we awake startled when, in our dreams, we fall? Even now, in the days of jumbo jets and space shuttles, a journey that takes us over empty space or water can be unnerving.

Very simply, we fear falling.

The bridge is symbolic of something in Becky Thomson’s story, too, not just a wrinkle, not just a happenstance. I don't believe in wrinkle theories. It’s there for a purpose. Something, somewhere was waiting for the bridge, the opportunity, the harmonic convergence of cohorts, a moonless night … I don’t know.

But it was not an accidental prop.

Sneak peak at BookExpo America!

2006-04-09T15:57:00.000-06:00

Booksellers, librarians, reviewers, educators, agents, editors, publishers and book-lovers: You can get a sneak preview of "FALL" at Book Expo America May 19-21 at the Washington D.C. Convention Center!

Stop by the New Horizon Press booth (#2652) and learn more about this intimate true crime/memoir, already hailed by Vincent Bugliosi, New York Times best-selling author of "Helter Skelter," as an "uncommon story" told in "an elegant and powerful voice normally seen only in fiction."

"FALL" will hit shelves in January 2007, so pick up a catalog at BEA -- and get acquainted with New Horizon Press and its other excellent titles.

Booksignings, events, discussions, etc.

2006-01-07T11:02:00.000-06:00

Return often! We update this page regularly with new events.

OCT. 20, 2007: 2-4 p.m., Barnes & Noble @ West Oaks, 2450 State Hwy 6, Houston TX

NOV. 10, 2007: Bayou Writers Group Annual Conference, Lake Charles LA

APRIL 3-5, 2008: Seven Hills Writers Retreat, Tallahassee FL

PRAISE FOR 'FALL'

2006-01-07T10:57:00.000-06:00

"Heartbreaking ... the girls' last terrifying moments are delivered with such vivid texture that they are almost too painful to read. The technique and execution is not unlike Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' ... And just when your heart is broken by this terrible tragedy, Franscell adds a coda that will further disturb your peaceful sleep."

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

~~~

"Ron Franscell's breathless 'FALL' [is] a true-crime tale that grabs readers on the first page and doesn't let go until long after the final word. ... Thanks to Franscell's daily journalism experience, his polished, yet conversational writing style appeals to the Everyman. 'FALL' barely stumbles as Franscell delivers a crackling story of lives and innocence lost."

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

~~~

ANN RULE, Best-selling author of 'STRANGER BESIDE ME' and 'GREEN RIVER RUNNING RED'

~~~

"FALL is an intimate true crime story. Franscell tells his story from a truly unique perspective. What sets FALL apart in the genre is that he was there, not as a victim or a perpetrator, but as a child splashed by the unexpected evil of it all -- and he grew up with a gift to be able to tell the story in all its violent colors."

GERRY SPENCE
Famed Wyoming trial lawyer and author of 'GUNNING FOR JUSTICE'

~~~

"On more than one level, FALL rises above most books in the true-crime genre, mostly because it searingly depicts a type of evil not too often exceeded. … This uncommon story has every chilling component of human terror, drama and suspense that readers of true crime look for. In an elegant and powerful voice normally seen only in fiction, Ron Franscell captures the sights, sounds and smells of this Wyoming saga and masterfully gets inside the emotional marrow of its participants. I highly recommend this engaging book."

VINCENT BUGLIOSI
Best-selling author of 'HELTER SKELTER'

~~~

"The book is as much Franscell's own story as it is Becky [Thomson's] or [Ron] Kennedy's, making "Fall" stand out from the legion of true-crime books. The author here was an affected bystander, not a neutral observer after the fact. ... The story in "Fall" is, in the end, too horrifying to try to explain."

DENVER POST

~~~

"A chilling account of this country's more brutal crimes. ... This sad tale underscores what we already know but wish were not so: that one chance event can not only mar a person's life but the lives of everyone connected to that person, and that no earthly justice is truly available for some crimes."

SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

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C.J. BOX

Best-selling author of "FREE FIRE" and "BLUE HEAVEN," and Wyoming native

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"Read it in broad daylight, because “Fall” is going to chill you like no other true crime book you’ve ever read. Author Ron Franscell mixes his own memories of Becky and Amy with re-creations of the crime, the trial, and the lives of those who were affected in almost every way by that terrible night.Lock your doors, make sure your kids are safe in bed, and pick up this horrifyingly absorbing memoir. If you’re a true crime fan, this book will undoubtedly cause a reaction: goosebumps."

TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER

Syndicated reviewer

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"In a style similar to “In Cold Blood,” Mr. Franscell captures, from start to finish (if there is ever a finish), this terrible saga. He went to enormous lengths to provide vivid and unforgettable narrative. ... The end will floor you. If it was fiction, no one would believe it could happen."

PUBLISHERS AUXILIARY

by Columnist Ken Blum

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"Ron Franscell's investigation into a town scarred by evil strikes some unexpectedly resonant chords. A true insider, Franscell's insight into the case is more than equaled by his insight into the tight-knit town, making windy Casper, Wyo. one of the book's most mysterious characters. ... [his] reportorial vigor, fine pacing and moral center carry the grim story, and he's also capable of great moments of eloquence."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

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"A 'must' for any lending library strong in true crime exposes."

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

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"Amazingly well-written, this is an important story for America today, maybe for the world."

LOUIE FREE

Talk-show host at WWOW-AM, Cleveland

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"Ron Franscell reveals extensive new details of one of the vilest crimes in Wyoming history, one that cast a long and poisonous shadow through more than three decades. He returns to his hometown (and mine) of Casper to illuminate how it touched the lives of so many who were dragged along in its wake. This is first-rate reporting and a riveting read."

PETE WILLIAMS
Justic Correspondent for NBC News

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"Author and newspaperman Ron Franscell is one of the most versatile writers on the scene today, as FALL amply demonstrates. FALL is one of those rare true-crime books that crosses genre lines into what is simply dramatic literary nonfiction at its best. This is much more than a book about one of the most chilling crimes I can recall. In the vein of 'In Cold Blood' – and perhaps even more meaningful with the author's personal connection – it is a deep and moving tale about the impact of a crime on a small town, written with the flair of a novelist, and a journalist's eye and ear for truth."

STEVE JACKSON, Best-selling author of 'MONSTER,' 'NO STONE UNTURNED,' and 'PARTNERS IN EVIL'

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"Veteran newspaperman and novelist Ron Franscell kept this story stored in his heart ... Full of facts, this horror that stunned an entire community will leave you breathless at its end. This book is a must-read for the fans of the true-crime genre. Franscell's personal feelings make this a memorable account of the crime."

LAURA THORNTON
Reviewer at ReadersRoom.com, a crime-book site

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"FALL is a sad and heartbreaking story, but it is also dynamic, making this an extraordinary book. Franscell has imbued every page with approachable prose; perceptive analyses of the events and persons involved; through interviews and research he has drawn readers intimately into the story. ... Ron Franscell takes readers on a journey into the nature of evil and the pain of survival."

BARBARA GERSHENBAUM
BookReporter.com

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"Not only is this a thrilling true crime story, it's also a personal narrative about the loss of security and innocence."

STRANDBOOKS.com

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"What sets the book apart from others in the true-crime genre is that Franscell grew up next door to the victims. ... Fall doesn't give Franscell his needed closure, but it does give him a chance to meditate on the bonds of community, the nature of evil, and the need to move on. It is also serves as a grim reminder that random, senseless crimes happen regularly and can never truly be explained or understood."

WINNIPEG (Manitoba) FREE PRESS

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"Suspenseful narrative and amazing detail ... a classic tragedy about how the past never really separates from the present."

RAWLINS (Wyo.) DAILY TIMES

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ROBERT BACON, Author of "FACES IN THE TREES"

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"Although I tried to prepare myself for the grueling details that I would encounter, I went numb. The torture that these two girls suffered is unimaginable by any measure, but Franscell's ability to describe and place the reader in the scene gave me an image of their living nightmare. ... Not only will this true crime open your eyes, but it will tug at your heartstrings."

ASHLEY KLONE
Reviewer for the Kelly Walsh HS Kelly Kall, Casper, Wyo.

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"By far right up there with the best true crime books ever written. ... 'Fall' takes the reader to the scene of the crime with eloquently written details and specifics of the case, leaving the reader feeling emotions that run the gamut."

MELANIE CRAVEN

TrueCrimeInsider.com

DARK END OF THE SKYNew posts appear below this preface

2006-01-01T02:00:00.000-06:00

On a chilly autumn night in 1973, 11-year-old Amy Burridge eagerly rode with her 18-year-old sister, Becky, to a neighborhood grocery store in the small town of Casper, Wyoming. When they finished their shopping, they discovered a flat tire on Becky’s car. Two men politely offered them a ride home. But they were not Good Samaritans.

In the next few hours, the two girls would endure unimaginable horrors before they were pitched alive off a dizzingly high bridge into a dark canyon. One would live and one would die.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end. It was the beginning.