s&d: True Crime! books

Finished a letter by mentioning wild rumours, that is; it wasn't all about them. We were used to wild rumours; before she transferred from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, our campus officials and local cops had tried to put a lid on an outbreak of stories of rape, which had the opposite of the desired effect.

(Turned out the stories were basically true, duh.)

Come to think of it, I also knew a family who left San Francisco for sweet Columbine, right before the high school shootings.

Personal connections dept, while in Seattle I knew the son of Bob Keppel (instrumental on the bundy and green river investigative teams). And another guy I knew was whispered to be the son of a GRK suspect who had been ruined by the accusation (based on Rule's account and the guys last name, I'm doubting that rumor)

finally got into the Manson episodes on 'You Must Remember This' podcast -- recommendations itt are otm, it's really good!
it was also a good reminder that I need to get onto that Jeff Guinn Manson bio. So I ordered it from amazon :)

Because what I need in my life is more Manson rabbitholing. ffs.

Not wanting to break my mood, I have segued from green river running red to Fred and Rose, Howard Sounes book about Fred and Rose West. Jesus this awful awful couple, the details beggar the imagination, just stick an ice pick right in the imagination's eye socket.

i believe i need to read that right now

haven't read it but Happy Like Murderers is meant to be the definitive West book

I believe they may be the worst people I have ever read about in my life

That should be very thorough; Sounes' Dylan book uncovered several noteworthy items apparently not in any of the many, many previous Dylan books. Speaking of tenacity, would like to check xpost intrepid police investigator Bob Kepner's books (hoping co-authorship didn't get awkward).

xxpost Sounes was the journalist who broke the story of the Wests. i havent read either book but I would have thought his book to be the go-to

anyone read happy like murderers? sounds interesting:

An account of two people - Fred and Rose West - who lived together, raised (and killed) children, provided sexual services for anyone interested, and pretended to provide social services for single women. Investigated and told by one of the greatest journalists and writers of the last twenty years, this is the most powerful and upsetting true crime book you will ever read.

we talk about it upthread a bit - it's an amazing & profoundly grim book. Burn was a really serious, first-rate writer & you can see a couple of us have some nagging reservations that come from that, but tbh it's a great book, strongly recommend.

Gordon Burn was an incredible writer, and both that one and Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son: The Story of the Yorkshire Ripper are unmissable

The Brian Masters book on Rose West's trial - She Must Have Known - is also worth reading, if only because, by complicating the matter of Rose's guilt or innocence, it moves a tiny bit beyond the standard tabloid conception of 'evil' that sometimes blights more give-me-the-facts true crime books. Masters' books on Nielsen and Dahmer are also highly recommended.

Burns' book on the Yorkshire Ripper is best read in conjunction with Wicked Beyond Belief by Michael Bilton, a more straightforward narrative that offers a very full picture of the 'hunt' for Sutcliffe, and the many false turns that investigation took.

One of Robert Keppel's criminology textbooks has a very in depth analysis of the Yorkshire investigation and where things went wrong.

There is a Manson special on CNN at 9 PM EST tonight.

just finished Happy Like Murderers. I see what you guys were saying up thread about the dissonance between Burn's brilliant writing* and the sheer sordid evil of the subject matter. The cruelty of the Wests is genuinely unimaginable at times. Still, an incredibly powerful book.

*pretty obvious David Peace is a big fan

Started reading Krakauer's Missoula yesterday and every page makes me want to turn into The Hulk.

i do not need to read that book, esp after i heard him on the radio when he said that he didn't think really understand rape before he wrote it.
i understand it just fine! glad other people are getting it too, but it's definitely not a book for me.

he didn't think really understand rape
*he didn't think he understood rape -- i think he actually said he didn't understand what a big deal it is to victims. he thought it was more like a scary event but not a total violation of one's person. it was pretty shocking to hear that from an otherwise reliably ok person.

Jeez
How old is he?

idk, 40 something, 50 something? not boomer old.

young enough that i expected him to know better (although i gotta give him some credit for being honest)

I haven't read that many reviews of it yet, but a couple present it as not up to his usual standard of investigative journalism---not that it's likely(?) to blow up a la the Rolling Stone article, but his previous books have set the bar pretty high.

i've read a couple of his others, under the banner of heaven is all-time, but i have been wary of this one

This is a review of The Man In The Monster, about convicted serial rapist-killer Michael Ross. The author, Martha Elliot, is a legal journalist who got too involved with him, according to the reviewer, Nancy Rommelmann, who wrote a book about Gacy. Rommelmann really does review Elliot's book, rather than use it as a point of departure for her own show of expertise and righteous indignation, unlike so many others with such an opportunity. Don't know if she's right, but, as a journalist of some evident integrity, at least here, she includes information that doesn't necessarily sell her opinion (ditto Elliot, looks like). Anyway, the story is too brutal to paste; here's a link:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-journalist-and-the-murderer-1439586517

If any of these are new recs, feel free to update the spreadsheet of book recommendations from this thread - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IDauY2Ll7tceSnoE60V-OQdocFgI2wNJqWfuscqig_c/edit?usp=docslist_api

Or don't! This isn't work, after all.

xxp It definitely borders closer to polemic than investigative journalism at times so far, but one gets the sense that Krakauer became genuinely outraged once he got an up close look at how victims suffer, how perpetrators get away with it, and how unfair and insensitive police and other authorities can be.

If you're likely to be triggered, I'd definitely avoid it. He does not shy away from very graphic description.

Have we ever discussed Ann Rue's Bitter Harvest on this thread? Amazing book. Probably my favorite True Crime book.

Rule even

ooh havent read that one! what's it about?

omg. this crazy as fuck woman who burns down her house so her husband wont leave her and then we he finally does leave her she burns down a bigger house with her kids inside to get back at him. I mean, obviously so much more goes on but that's the very general idea. She makes Diane Downs look like mother of the year in comparison.

holy shit

adding it to my "want to read" list

i didnt know where else to put this

I was poking around finding out about erotomania. had not heard about this woman (obv pretty famous at the time tho?)

makes me sad for her
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mary_Ray

some more interesting reading here, relating to its disappearance from dsm

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-everyone-became-depressed/201507/erotomania-haunts-female-tennis-stars

NY Mag on the Slender Man stabbing: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/slender-man-stabbing.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/a-death-at-torrey-pines/403186/

I found a very good true crime podcast--"Sword and Scale"

It's mostly told through old interviews, news reports, 911 calls.
Episodes 5 & 6 are about the Larry King Bohemian Grove sex ring conspiracy. Pretty crazy.

wow, looks great. thanks, president.

i think vg posted about sword and scale, either here on fb, so i started listening to it this week - it's really good. i just finished up the two-part carnation murders episode, which was really weird.

that one bugged me because it was just an audio dump. i can kindacan see why he did it that way, it WAS weird but he didn't cover hardly anything else about the case & it just felt like "lol @ this guy"

the fetal homicide ep was interesting but v traumatic to listen to

the 911 calls in this podcast are hella stressful too, jfc

yeah it was less a story about the crime itself and more a study of this dude joseph. i felt like the podcast guy was... idk, like really really biased? i don't think that's the right word, but he just kept reading all this really negative stuff into everything joseph was saying and sounding kinda spiteful about it? i mean the guy murdered six people but clearly was a really fucked up dude and i felt pretty sorry for him.

but i did want to know more about the crime and more about michelle.

yeah he can be v immature & judgey with his comments, it's a bit offputting at times

he seems like a reddit dude, yknow, zero experise but likes acting like he knows ~stuff~

but i dont hate it so...shrug... lol

holy shit i just finished the two eps about toni ingram... what a clusterfuck!!! and that poor dude... i honestly can't believe he's managed to live 16 years dealing with this awful shit :(

I just finished the Robert Reed two-parter, gahhh racist small towns are the worst

Listening to the sword and scale psychopath episode. It's pretty amazing.

Listening to the sword and scale psychopath episode. It's pretty amazing.

the noreen gosch eps are pretty... unbelievable. especially when she says that her grown up son visited her in 2007 and is in hiding.