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 Anita Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Suddenly, George Hennard hurled his half-eaten burger across the room at the…Read More…
“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 of Iowa coed Mollie Tibbetts by a reported illegal Mexican immigrant. Tomorrow (or at least soon enough) the Right will be outraged that the Left…Read More…
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 Texas—in vain—not to execute Young, so before he lay on the gurney that would be his death bed, Young said he loved his victim’s family…Read More…
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 these stories can have a universal, positive, human impact to the greater society. Whether they reflect something in us that we should (and don’t want…Read More…
Pixcom, an international production company based in Montreal, has optioned our book MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH—co-authored with world-renowned medical examiner Dr. Vincent Di Maio—for a true-crime TV series, the company announced today. “Pixcom is growing its true crime offering, and we’re excited to partner with powerhouse talent like Dr. Vincent Di Maio and Ron…Read More…
“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 a reporter’s typed page. Since “XXX” was also Latin for the number 30, the end of a typewritten story came to be signified by “-30-”…Read More…
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, and murder at the Fremont Canyon Bridge near Casper WY among its favorite must-reads. Over the years, sensational court cases that scandalized a community might…Read More…
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 life. But in fact, it’s just déjà vu all over again. It’s cold comfort that the very debate is the same one that erupted within…Read More…
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, his demons, and even his birth have been inflated to metaphoric proportions. Legend colors his biography as vividly as any paint he ever applied to…Read More…
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 more famous in death than the Black Dahlia (as we know her now) ever dreamed in her brief life. Breathing, she was just another pretty face. In chunks on…Read More…
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 although I’m very excited to share this news with you now, I hope you’ll wait patiently until then! The better news is, I’m returning to…Read More…
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 than the hands covering their heads, hoping not to attract the killer’s attention. Paralyzed by fear. Waiting quietly to die. —from DELIVERED FROM EVIL (2011)…Read More…
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 the language of the newest translation of my 2016 book MORGUE A LIFE IN DEATH, with famed medical examiner Dr. Vincent Di Maio. O SEGREDO…Read More…
Excerpted from The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Los Angeles (2017, WildBluePress) Every generation has its bogeyman. Before 1969, maybe it was Adolf Hitler. After 2001, Osama bin Laden. But for those 30 or so years in between it was unquestionably an aspiring musician, deeply damaged outlaw, and hippie Svengali named Charles Manson. On…Read More…
Genene Jones, a Texas nurse who murdered a baby in the 1980s, got 90 years in prison for her cold-blooded crime. Prosecutors and cops suspected strongly she had done it before—likely several times—but they had put all their eggs in one tragic basket. Maybe a smart strategy … or maybe misguided. During Jones’ time…Read More…
Listen live at 2pm Pacific time on Saturday, June 10, by clicking here. Where better to kick off the new CRIME BUFF’S GUIDE™ TO OUTLAW LOS ANGELES than at the Los Angeles-based True Crime Uncensored radio show, hosted by the legendary Burl Barer. Los Angeles is where America’s dreams and nightmares got all tangled up. Sunny days dissolved…Read More…
Can you come out to play? Click here … if you dare. Buy it nowRead More…
We know almost nothing of him, except he was a gypsy photographer, drifting the dusty roads of the territories. Trooping wearily from one far-flung town to another, he’d likely stop his dark-room wagon outside of busy saloons, brothels, maybe even a hanging. He’d mount his big camera, unfurl his backdrops, and hope word spread before…Read More…
This morning, the Mystery Writers of America announced that MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH, by Dr. Vincent Di Maio and Ron Franscell, is among the nominees for its prestigious Edgar Awards as one of the five best true crimes of 2016. “It’s always a humbling moment when a life’s story is considered worthy of re-telling,” co-author…Read More…
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner So the would-be mass murderer at Ohio State University this week was apparently inspired by the hateful words of American-born cleric Anwar al Awlaki, al Qaeda’s most powerful recruiter before he was obliterated in a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011. A few years ago, I…Read More…
Where I grew up, you learned the smell of rain coming, and could damn near tell the exact day, maybe the exact moment, the seasons changed. Well, a dark season lies ahead. In 2009, in the earliest, scariest days of the Great Recession and the uncertainty of a new presidential administration, I predicted an uptick…Read More…
Some stories are about love, and some are about pain. But painful love stories like the star-crossed romance between Annie Beatrice McQuiston and Claude “Cowboy” Henry started long before they met in a whorehouse on a humid night in Depression-era Texas. EXCERPT Joe Calloway died naked in a Louisiana rice field, trembling with terror and…Read More…
Every crime writer has heard this little heckling voice, usually from the cheap seats, but sometimes from inside his own head. It isn’t always loud, but it’s often piercing. Tragically, today is the 43rd anniversary of a monstrous crime against two of my childhood friends in the small town where we grew up: Two young sisters were abducted…Read More…
Among the historic, infamous, and heartbreaking deaths we explore in the brand-new book MORGUE: A LIFE IN DEATH (St. Martin’s Press) is the presumed suicide of the troubled genius Vincent van Gogh. Presumed. When van Gogh’s latest biographers, Pulitzer-winning authors Steven Naifeh and the late Gregory White Smith, were perplexed by the evidence, they eventually…Read More…