Everything I need to know, I learned in Little League

Essayist Robert Fulghum once surmised that everything he ever needed to know he learned in kindergarten, but I was a slow learner. Maybe Little League was just the beginning of my higher education, but everything else I ever needed to know I learned in the sandlot on endless summer days that simmered into night games […]

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You’ve Got Mail: A letter that changed everything

Satchell Paige, the great baseball pitcher and philosopher-from-left field, once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” I’ve never been sure what he meant. Do your best right now because somebody better is gonna catch up? Leave your past in the past and focus on the future? Or maybe he meant that […]

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How many murder victims can you name? Go …

Because you’re here right now, it’s safe to assume you’re 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, binge-watching obsession with “Making a Murderer.” […]

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Pioneering criminal profiler Howard Teten (1932-2021)

Today, I received word of the passing of Howard Teten, the pioneering criminal profiler who plays a front-and center role in my upcoming true crime book, “ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling.” His death was related to Covid complications. He was 88. Yes, he was a pioneer and pioneers always […]

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Pain & memory: The birth of Angel Fire

“Pain is the price we pay for memory. It’s some kind of sin to forget what hurts, as much as it is to forget what makes you smile. Suffering has its meaning, and memory has its graces.” —from ANGEL FIRE, A Novel  A lifetime ago, back in 1983, I took work as an editor at […]

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The Resurrection of Elmer McCurdy

Elmer McCurdy was a two-bit outlaw, a wannabe desperado who overshot the Wild West and landed in the 20th century. Nobody knew his name, and nobody in the Oklahoma Territory cared much. In 1911, Elmer was 31 years old, usually drunk, and flat broke when he decided to hold up a train. His booty: $46 […]

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Peace, love … and murder

How long did you think it would take me to find a good true-crime story in my new digs, the tiny village of Placitas in northern New Mexico? Yeah, well, I never bogart a good yarn. This’ll blow your mind. In the 1960s and ’70s, Placitas was a far-out satellite in the hippie universe, man. […]

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Better Angels: No veteran should die alone

It was after 2am and the graveyard-shift nurses drifted like ghosts in the hallway, tending to the dead and dying. It wasn’t that Michael* couldn’t sleep, even with meds he refused to take. He fought sleep with every fiber of his fragile body. He had fought in a war he barely remembered. A crucifix hung […]

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The entangled histories of 'In Cold Blood' and narrative journalism

Lecture: 9:30am to 11am on Feb. 20Book-signing immediately afterwardCasper College (WY) Humanities FestivalMusic Building’s Wheeler HallAdmission is free Ron Franscell, who has been called one of the exciting voices in narrative nonfiction by some heavyweight authors like Ann Rule and Vincent Bugliosi, will deliver a lecture about how his particular style of crime journalism has […]

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The best true-crime books of all time? Maybe not

Last weekend, USA Today published a Goodreads list of the “Best True Crime Books of All Time.” There are some truly great books on the list, compiled from various Goodreads features like reviews, lists, and ratings from 90 million members. Ninety million readers can’t be wrong, can they? In this case, sort of. The meaty […]

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Pick me, Ted: Bundy expert explores a perverse love

I recently visited a Facebook group where true-crime fans gather to chit-chat about the latest foul play. The group’s members are mostly women because, well, women are overwhelmingly the most voracious readers of true crime (some surveys have found as much as 75% of the TC market is female). There’s no question about their earnest […]

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10 Photos of Dead Criminals (with a Charlie Manson bonus)

Back in the 19th century, when photography was young, post-mortem images of dead loved ones was fashionable as a way to remember the deceased. But it also became a way to calm the citizenry’s fears about outlaws, highwaymen, and brigands of all kinds when news of their deaths came. They wanted proof. The truest kind […]

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Berkley-Penguin will publish ‘ShadowMan’

There are a few moments in a book’s life that are special for authors. One is when a box of finished books arrives on the front porch. Another is when you see somebody reading your book on a plane or in a park. And then there’s the moment when you know your next book is […]

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