Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story
Available now!16 pages of color photosIn trade paperback, ebook, and audio Would you kill for love? ALICE & GERALD tells the grisly story of a loving couple who killed at least […]
Read More…Author: Ron Franscell
Atticus Finch and the #MeToo movement
You know the story: A young lawyer named Atticus Finch is appointed to defend a black man against rape charges in Depression-era Alabama. His defense is vigorous, but ultimately futile […]
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History repeating? Anita Hill, Kavanaugh … and George Hennard
While he ate alone at a small table, he watched the TV over the beer cooler. The evening news was replaying yesterday’s clips of the Senate hearings into […]
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Stealing pennies from dead kids’ eyes
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” —Rahm Emanuel, Obama aide and Chicago mayor Today, the Left is outraged that the Right has instantly politicized the murder […]
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Dead Man Talking: Killers’ last words can be humorous … and monstrous
As it does fairly regularly, Texas executed a killer on Tuesday. Christopher Young, 34, shot a San Antonio convenience store clerk to death in 2004. The victim’s family had begged […]
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A father, a son, and the longest day
Excerpted from “The Sourtoe Cocktail Club,” by Ron Franscell (Globe Pequot Press, 2011). While Matt sleeps, I watch the subtly changing sky as the sun circles around to the north […]
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A modest proposal to relieve the burden of immigrant kids
It is a sad thing to those who walk through this great country, when they see the streets crowded with immigrants followed by three, four, or six children. Instead of […]
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Is true crime as entertainment morally defensible?
I’ve been writing true crime for 10 years. I confess to occasional pangs that I am reopening wounds for a few people, but the old-school journalist in me rationalizes that […]
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20 years ago today, ‘Angel Fire’ was published
On this day—June 4—in 1998, a tiny publisher in an Alabama small town released a little book, a first novel by an unknown writer in Wyoming. It didn’t change the world but it changed the writer’s life. The little book was titled “Angel Fire.” And the author was me.
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Just hanging out at the library
In my hometown of Casper WY, the Natrona County Public Library is celebrating local authors such as CJ Box, Craig Johnson … and me … with colorful banners along the […]
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For writers, endings are beginnings
“I hate writing; I love having written.” —Dorothy Parker Once upon a time, early-day typesetters recognized the end of a newspaper story when they saw “XXX” at the bottom of […]
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DARKEST NIGHT among 10 Most Underrated TC books, says website
A popular crime website and podcast has rated THE DARKEST NIGHT one of the 10 Most Underrated modern true-crime books. TheLineUp.com put the story of the horrendous 1973 abduction, rape, […]
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Broken Windows: One thing we can do tomorrow about school shootings
We are engaged—again—in a great, uncivil war. Another mass murder, this one a school shooting, fuels a debate that often seems to threaten to rip the fabric of our American […]
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Old West serial killer
In 1868 in the boomtown of South Pass City, Polly Bartlett ran a boarding house … where she reportedly liquored up a couple dozen travelers and poised them with arsenic-laced steaks. […]
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‘Wine of Wyoming’
Prohibition was in full swing in 1928 when Ernest Hemingway came to Sheridan and met an immigrant couple making their own wine in a little house on the outskirts of […]
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Was the genius artist Vincent van Gogh murdered?
The feverish life and curious death of Vincent van Gogh have become a kind of myth, partly true and partly what we wish to be true. His disappointments, his genius, […]
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The Black Dahlia dissected again
Today, it’s been 71 years since Elizabeth Short’s grisly parts were discovered in a vacant Los Angeles subdivision, sliced cleanly in half and posed lasciviously. This obscure waitress suddenly became far […]
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45 years ago today, Mark Essex unleashed himself
This was excerpted from Ron Franscell’s DELIVERED FROM EVIL, a book that explores the lives of 10 ordinary people who survived mass killers. One of those monsters was a racist […]
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New earthy, Wyoming true crime by Ron Franscell is in the pipeline
The good news is, I have just signed the contract for a new true crime book with Prometheus Books of New York. It will be published in Spring 2019 and […]
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Before Vegas and Orlando, there was Luby’s Cafeteria
The entire restaurant was eerily silent, except for the pop-pop-pop of George Hennard’s guns and his profane ranting. Frightened diners hid the best they could, sometimes protected by nothing more […]
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The flags of our killers
In the last couple football seasons, Americans have exhausted a lot of very personal energy arguing about our flag. What it stands for. Whether it’s bigger than us. What respect […]
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How pioneer rocker Gram Parsons went up in flames
One night, Gram told his friend Phil Kaufman that when he died, he wanted to be cremated and his ashes sprinkled over the Cap Rock outcropping in the park. Kaufman took it as a solemn responsibility.
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Waxing Brazilian … a new edition
Ponder the enigma of a writer who can’t read the words he’s strung together. No, I’m not having a stroke. I simply cannot speak, read, or write Portuguese. And that’s […]
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