s&d: True Crime! books

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJzGE00wncU

That was a really tough book to read but this looks like it could be good.

Sweet Beadie Russell!

oh wow, def on board for this

Liz Garbus is directing and I just realized she directed Who Killed Garrett Philips? which I’m in the middle of watching

Just started this:

http://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0111-1/4C5/8A5/98/%7B4C58A598-1499-49CE-B63E-503057B7D693%7DImg400.jpg

Story may only be familiar to Canadians: in 1959, Steven Truscott, 14 at the time, was convicted of raping and murdering 12-year-old Lynne Harper. He was sentenced to hang, that was reduced to life imprisonment, in 1969 he was paroled, and in 2007 the verdict was overturned. Truscott is still alive and living in Vancouver.

I primarily bought the book because I found a newish hardcover dirt-cheap, but when I started reading and learned how close all this happened to where I recently moved, I've become fascinated. I'm in St. Marys, between London and Stratford; the murder was in Clinton, about an hour away. Two highways I use, 8 and 4, both take you right into Clinton, and it's even part of the school board where I'm just about to apply for supply/substitute work.

I love where I'm living, all small towns and country roads, but there is a weird Ed Gein vibe when I drive around at night.

Okay this story:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/27/us/idaho-missing-children-couple-found-hawaii-trnd/index.html

I mean the end result seems grimly obvious and awful and boy these two are real pieces of work.

Something v weird going on with cult/religious stuff

yeah that whole story is deeeeeeply fubar

Jeeezus

more details
https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-mysterious-events-surrounding-doomsday-couple-chad-daybell-lori-vallow-2020-2?amp#click=https://t.co/VCKI6mJ8dd

insane story. i am interested in mormons, cults, and doomsday preppers. venn diagram isn't it.

i am reading american predator by maureen callahan

law enforcement seems to be giving them a surprisingly long leash...i mean the kids are nowhere to be found and they still haven't taken them into custody.

Yeah I’d really like to know if there are particular legal reasons for that. It seems v weird to not be demanding they produce the kids immediately

what the actual

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/missing-idaho-boys-former-school-190833864.html

New information continues to surface in the bizarre case of Joshua “J.J.” Vallow and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan, two missing children from Rexburg, Idaho.

Before the family’s move to Rexburg, JJ attended Lauren’s Institute For Education (also known as L.I.F.E. Academy) in Gilbert, Arizona.

Margaret Travillion, the co-founder & CEO of L.I.F.E., has released a statement outlining the timeline of the little boy’s enrollment — as well as the news that his mother, Lori Vallow, has repeatedly continued to sign into the school’s classroom monitoring system using a special app, even though JJ has not been a student at the school since September 2019.

“It would appear that an application or phone identified as Lori Vallow has been continually monitoring JJ’s classroom communication system we use between the classroom and the parents, in addition to our organization as a whole,” Travillion says in the statement, which was provided to PEOPLE. “Upon discovering that Lori’s name was used to sign on to this app, the name Lori Vallow has been tracked multiple times since JJ was unenrolled.”

Travillion says some of these log-ins occurred around Thanksgiving, as well as around Christmas, when the news about JJ and Tylee’s disappearance took the media by storm. She also said someone using Lori Vallow’s name continued to access the school’s app even as recently as last week, after which administrators removed her access. “We cannot speculate as to why Lori or someone using her accounts or electronics would continue to follow the classroom or our organization during this time frame,” Travillion says.

weird

No criminal charges are pending against either Lori or Daybell, although authorities previously said that her refusal to produce the children last month as ordered by an Idaho court would risk civil or contempt of court citations that have not been issued.

^^^wow call me crazy but seems like a harsh punishment for two missing kids

i finished american predator. it was ok. low grade reading level, the author is a new york post critic, which i didn't realize until the acknowledgments. i'm not a big serial killer person, but it was interesting enough. i need another book now.

yeah i need some fresh recommends too

Has anyone read Chaos by Tom O’Neill?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/07/chaos-charles-manson-cia-secret-history-sixties-tom-oneill-dan-piepenbring-review

It’s as much about journalistic obsession as it is about the weird links between the Manson family and a whole host of government agencies, and is inevitably inconclusive, but it’s pretty wild.

I finished Grace Will Lead Us Home by Jennifer Berry Hawes, about the Charleston Mother Emanuel church shooting. author is a Local journalist, which lately I have found is usually a good sign of a sensitive telling. Really, really good. Mostly devoted to the survivors, does a great job of telling their stories. the details of the shooting itself were even more awful than I knew, and I knew it was beyond awful
alreeady.

sharivari i was looking at that. my library has the kindle so i will queue it. i started the last stone by mark bowden.

it’s a good one. harrowing though.

–Kaua‘i police arrest Lori Vallow on $5 million warrant from Idaho– pic.twitter.com/n2ghadtfal

— Kaua'i Police Department (@kauaipd) February 21, 2020

i am a little entertained watching her bail hearing because i do this irl like every day and it's equally mundane. i like people's accents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAbLceWMVkI

the guardian review of the o'neill book abt manson and mk ultra (weirdly not mention: call it by its name dude) is shockingly crappily written, given that its author peter conrad "is an australian-born academic specialising in english literature" (and also that the guardian has good sub editors some of whom we know on ilx)

"chaos" was interesting but exhausting

TIL that mari gilbert, the mother of one of the "lost girls" of the book of the same name, and whose tenacity lead to the investigation of those deaths, was murdered by her other daughter. gilbert is being played by amy ryan in the new "lost girls" movie based on the book but apparently they don't include her murder in the movie either. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/26/the-tragic-tale-of-a-daughter-accused-of-stabbing-her-own-mother-to-death/

oh god that is awful. that poor family :(

I never read the book -- and obviously won't, now -- but the FX series about The Most Dangerous Animal of All is pretty good. I think "guy desperately wants to believe his dad was the Zodiac killer and deluded himself into believing it" is actually weirder and more interesting as a show

catching up with this thread---re clemenza on British Columbia, thought of this, in latest dispatch from The Crime Lady (AKA Sarah Weinman, who has written about true crime and edited domestic suspense anthology, also that d.s. box set for Library of America):
If you are not listening to the podcast You’re Wrong About — and if not, why not, it’s wonderful — they are doing a book club-in-progress on Michelle Remembers, the long out-of-print 1980 tome by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist (and future husband) Larry Pazder, that was essentially the “Patient Zero” of the Satanic panic. I am beyond fascinated with this story, since it originated in Victoria, BC, and 40 years on, encapsulates everything about the panic in a single story.

From her enewsletter before that one: true crime and (mostly) related fiction:

So many authors are seeing their book tours canceled, years of dreams supplanted. Amy Klein, who has a book coming up in April, on https://electricliterature.com/what-its-like-to-try-to-promote-a-book-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic/ and alternative ways of doing so.

Which is also why I want to stump for my favorite books of 2020 so far, some that aren’t yet published yet:

The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg (I reviewed it here: https://airmail.news/issues/2020-1-25/chasing-rainbows)

Weather by Jenny Offill — a timely novel that’s only going to get more classic over time.

Pretty As A Picture by Elizabeth Little — the voice! The insight into moviemaking! The scathing commentary about sexual politics and true crime! The teens! We did an event at Chevalier’s Books last month and I’ve never wanted an event to go on for many more hours. That’s what the book is like.

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong — a brilliant collection as a whole, but I was particularly taken with her piece on the life and murder of Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, an artist I’ve long wanted to write about (Dictee is one of my favorite books of all time) but now I don’t have to.

Lurking by Joanne McNeil — for the Internet old-timers, for those who want to know when the Internet was good, why it went bad, how it can foster community, it’s just a wonderful, thoughtful book.

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson — for pure confection, post-modern mystery escapism.

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar — my favorite debut crime novel of 2020 (out in April), just spot on about transforming life into art and who gets sacrificed — particularly women — as a result.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker — Lost Girls was a stone masterpiece and so is this book, out in April.

Wandering in Strange Lands by Morgan Jerkins (it’s out in May, and it singed my soul for how good it is)

My Life as a Villainess by Laura Lippman — chances are you’ve read some of the essays already published in venues like Longreads and Glamour, but trust me, the entire collection — also out in May — is dynamite. I’ll be thinking about the final piece for a long, long, time.

These Women by Ivy Pochoda (also out in May, and it reverse-engineers the serial killer narrative from the vantage point of all the women — victims, loved ones, those on the margins — who don’t end up in his orbit, but supersede his orbit.)

Life Events by Karolina Waclawiak (also out in May!) — I loved how it mined a woman’s drifting ambivalence through life, marriage, travel, and there are no easy answers, nor should there be.

Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman (out June 23) — this novel had me questioning all of my life choices, and it wrung me dry. I felt changed reading this.

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt by Duchess Goldblatt (out in July) — it stole my heart and is a damn good memoir about creating a new identity to save yourself.

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby (out in July) — my other favorite debut crime novel of 2020.

The Devil’s Harvest by Jessica Garrison (out August 4) — I blurbed this because it’s a propulsive and incisive look at a hired killer who targeted those on the margins — often poor, undocumented immigrants living in the Central Valley — told with necessary compassion.

True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman (out September 29) — another book I blurbed because it made me understand the complex, hard-to-pin-down man that was Marvel Comics’ id and superego, and the archival research is amazing.

There will be more added to this list, of course. Let’s keep reading, let’s keep supporting authors, in this time and at all times.

Jenny Offill book is fantastic, Peter Swanson book is fun but daft as a brush

Got this from the cheap online remainder house I buy from:

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328347182l/8728693.jpg

As I started reading, I realized the story made an appearance on Mindhunter.

man the whole Dean Corll story is so fuuuuuuucked up. thats one that kept me up at night

Definitely. I'm just where Elmer Wayne Henley has killed him and they're digging up bodies. The first part of the book is mostly about a completely uninterested police department.

plus iirc that was published in 74... Brooks & Henley’s cases were still going through court up til like 79 or 80 i think. helluva long sad tail to that story.

Brooks died this year of COVID!

Wow, that's amazing. He hasn't been that prominent in the book thus far.

Has anyone read Chaos by Tom O’Neill?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/07/chaos-charles-manson-cia-secret-history-sixties-tom-oneill-dan-piepenbring-review

It’s as much about journalistic obsession as it is about the weird links between the Manson family and a whole host of government agencies, and is inevitably inconclusive, but it’s pretty wild.

― ShariVari, Friday, February 14, 2020 11:18 PM (six months ago)

ok i'm almost done with this and it's pretty good. i started helter skelter a long time ago but never finished it and it makes me never want to read it! since he's convinced me it's all LIES.

I just finished it recently!

Bug is widely accepted as a total douchecanoe & kinda poisoned the well

The CHAOS book is really good - worthwhile buuut but with some caveats: it’s largely an exercise in watching someone lose themself in the rabbithole;

on the Los Angeles-centered stuff he’s great & raises good questions about Melcher, the Sherriff’s actions, and Bugliosi too

But on the CIA & was he an informant bigger spook stuff he just doesnt have the connections or the right kind of investigative experience to really illuminate any new or good information, by the time he gets there it feels like he’s drowning in theories & not ruling anything out. Also a lot of “...but he’s dead” / “he refused to talk to me” / “and then he hung up” / etc

Also the moment when he caught himself imploring Sharon Tate’s *father* to “think of the victims” it definitely got very YOURE OUT OF YOUR ELEMENT DONNIE

But all those peripheral people are fascinating so it still leaves you with a lot to explore, even if it doesnt quite go anywhere

Hats off to the editor because LORD that must have taken some doing to turn O’Neills notes into cogent narrative of any kind

yeah, agree with all that. at least he was contrite about his mistake with sharon tate's father but he could have just cut that whole part out, it didn't add anything to the story. i do think there was something to the fact that a lot of these guys couldn't explain their unusual actions & were funded by known CIA fronts but agree that i'd like to see someone with a background in intelligence to dig into it, because he got to the point that *it's conceivable* there's something there but not beyond. they could have the same trouble with missing info though, who knows. had someone else made these connections before him? it's not a case i'd read a ton about.

would like to know more about roman polanski too but felt like his suspicions about him were not well founded, just some odd behaviors that could have been innocent

innocent is not the right word to describe polanski at any point in time but you know what i mean

polanski suspicions wrt sharon’s murder mostly feel opportunistic, it’s just over-scrutiny of someone who was grieving in a really unhealthy unhinged way
he is fucked up and guilty of many things & not deserving of much sympathy at all but i think melcher & wilson deserved way more scrutiny than polanski

i kept thinking, if someone like an ex local news journalist had done this, and really pushed their connections, you could probably get some interesting stuff

i think a lot of stuff is known in the manson-obsessed community but not many other books that I know of collect all the wackos in one place like O’Neill has here

Ed Sanders’ The Family is a good followup now that you have all the nerdy trainspotter stuff situated - it was written in 71 and is a good ground-zero place to really start honing your what-ifs ... plus he writes in a very grooooovybaby way lol

I read several reviews, saw a couple interviews with Jeff Guinn that made his Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson seem professionally credible: he researches details and familial-societal context of origin quite a bit, not settling for The Bad Seed but not reductive either.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/819EGR5PZXL.jpg

i guess one benefit of the first-person rabbitholeness aspect of this book is that it lends the theory more credibility than if he had come at it another way. he wants to assure you he is NOT a conspiracy theorist and is resistant to believing any of this is possible, which i can relate to. i think i am going to be reading more books about the CIA. lol.

yeah i read about half of that a while ago, it had to go back to the library. but i remember liking it.

Also, one of his lost girls (who testified for the prosecution):
Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties, by Dianne Lake, seems like it might be good---not enough by the female participants and/or survivors, seems like.

Guinn’s book is the best at unravelling the mythology of Manson & just showing him as the humbug he was: a carny, a pimp & an egomaniac. Highly recommend.

I have Lake’s book in my pile of “to reads” but I haven’t read it yet — need to dig in to that

xpost Those mentioned and several others, incl. O'Neill and Sanders, cited here, in the wake of Tarentino:
https://www.rollingstone.com/product-recommendations/books/charles-manson-family-murders-books-once-upon-time-hollywood-864908/

I think Guinn is a really good grounding, and the exact opposite of what-if. You really get a tangible, unvarnished & uncomfortable understanding of the reality of Manson, his crimes & his relatiinships. I think it would especially effective as a counterbalance to O’Neill’s freewheeling red-string-diagram.

Veg, pretty sure you will enjoy DES currently on in the UK: David Tennant as Dennis Nilsen
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11656892/