Tag: true crime

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin

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The 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge directed me to read a book from a celebrity book club list, and I was like a deer in the headlights for a moment. I’m not much of a celebrity watcher at all, and honestly, the only time I hear about celebrity book clubs are when other people bring them up, so I had to go digging. I’ve read some of Oprah’s selections in the past, and I’ve heard people talking about Reese Witherspoon’s book club, but that’s still really all I know. The lists I looked at, nothing really jumped out at me, until… I spotted The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin (St. Martin’s Press, 2018). This was an Oprah selection, and I immediately knew that this was something I had to read. This is one of the most incredible, painful books I’ve ever read about the American “justice” system.

Anthony Ray Hinton was a Black man in Alabama who signed in at work in a warehouse, plenty of people around him. That mattered nothing to the police, who accused him of three murders (one of which was committed during this time Mr. Hinton was at work, the others just tacked on because they were similar), and a jury, who convicted him. Failed over and over again by his court-appointed lawyer and the experts who weren’t as expert as they should’ve been, Ray, as he’s known, is sentenced to death by electric chair. 

Appeal after appeal falls through, and at first, Ray’s anger nearly eats him alive. But then he begins to apply the life lessons his beloved mother taught him to living in such terrible isolation on Death Row, and this change in attitude helps him survive. And then his case was taken up by Bryan Stevenson, of Just Mercy, himself…

Despite Mr. Stevenson, whom I’m convinced has been sent here to do God’s work on earth, finding experts (actual ones, three of them!) to prove that the gun the police pulled out of Ray’s mother’s house couldn’t possibly have been used in the murders Ray was convicted of, it still takes twelve years for Ray to be set free. In all, he spends nearly THIRTY YEARS waiting to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, listening to his friends make their final walk down the hallway to be murdered by the guards in charge of the men’s everyday lives, smelling their burning flesh wafting on the air for hours after they’re put to death. If that doesn’t enrage you, I’m not sure what will.

This is an absolutely incredible, deeply enraging book. What the state of Alabama did to Mr. Hinton, how it destroyed his life and his family, with what seems like zero remorse, disgusts me to the very depths of my soul. That this is how poor Black men are treated in this country, even when their innocence is able to be proven, PROVEN, is utterly horrifying. Mr. Hinton’s experiences are shocking, but they’re not uncommon: one in every ten people sentenced to death in the United States is innocent. 

I’ll say that again.

One-tenth of the people murdered by the United States government are innocent of the crimes they were accused of.

That is a shocking statistic. If I weren’t already vehemently opposed to the death penalty before reading this, I would definitely be now. The fact that the state of Alabama stole thirty years of Mr. Hinton’s life without so much as an, “Oops, my bad,” and only doubled down, desperate to murder him even when stronger evidence from more qualified experts was presented that he couldn’t possibly have committed these murders, fills me with such rage that I desperately wish I were intelligent enough to become a lawyer and join Bryan Stevenson’s team. They deserve all the help they can get to do the noble work of saving lives from government-sanctioned murder.

This is an utterly incredible book, and I don’t think there was a single page I read that I didn’t want to scream or rage-vomit. I read books to learn about the world, to experience it through other people’s eyes, to feel. This book checks all three categories in spades. Five stars, and I truly hope Mr. Hinton is able to live a calm, quiet life of peace in the wake of such trauma.

Read more about Anthony Ray Hinton’s case at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative.

Visit Lara Love Hardin’s website here.

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nonfiction

Book Review: The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice by Benjamin Gilmer

Stephanie3 Comments

Another 2023 Popsugar Reading Challenge book checked off! A month or so ago, my friend Alexis posted on Facebook about The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice by Benjamin Gilmer (Ballantine Books, 2022). Alexis is one of the most intelligent people I know, and when it comes to nonfiction, she and I share similar tastes, so I checked out the Goodreads page for the book and immediately added it to my TBR. It fits the Popsugar category for a book recommended by a friend, so I was thrilled to dive into it, and it didn’t disappoint whatsoever.

Upon interviewing and later accepting a job at a rural North Carolina medical practice, Dr. Benjamin Gilmer was surprised to learn that the doctor who created the vacancy he would be filling was also named Dr. Gilmer (Vince Gilmer, to be exact), and that he was no longer in that position because he was imprisoned for murdering his father. At first, Benjamin was fairly terrified of this other Dr. Gilmer, who seemingly snapped, murdering his elderly father with Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, cutting off his fingers and discarding them in a pond outside the clinic, then returning to work and working alongside his co-workers as though nothing had happened. Who was this man? Would he ever get out and come after Benjamin for taking over his life?

But the more Benjamin Gilmer learns about this other Dr. Gilmer, the more intrigued he is. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. Dr. Gilmer had blamed his behavior on SSRI discontinuation syndrome when he represented himself in court, but the defense accused him of faking his symptoms. Benjamin Gilmer knows it’s got to be more than that, and with the help of colleagues, the mystery unfolds piece by piece until it becomes clear: prison isn’t where this other Dr. Gilmer needs to be. He desperately needs medical attention, and getting access to it will be a years-long struggle for not only him, but for Benjamin and an entire team of people across the country.

Holy COW, this book is a wild ride, and whatever you’re expecting, it’s likely something different. The book takes a turn about halfway through, and I just kind of sat back and went, “Whoooooaaaaaaaaa.” Benjamin Gilmer goes from panic mode to dedicated seeker of justice, and…it’s inspiring as much as the forces working against Vince Gilmer are infuriating. This is one of those books that will have you seeing red and determined to do whatever you can to burn our entire ‘justice’ system down and rebuild it from scratch. This is something that has needed to happen for decades – likely centuries, honestly – and The Other Dr. Gilmer is another large piece of evidence that what we call justice in this country is anything but just.

The Other Dr. Gilmer is an incredible read (and it’s becoming a movie!). It’s my first five-star read of 2023, and it’s one that will stick with me.

nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker

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A friend recommended Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker (Harper, 2013). I thought it sounded interesting, so onto my TBR it went. It wasn’t until I had my library copy in my hands that I went, “Wait…haven’t I read this author before?” And I had. I read his Hidden Valley Road last year and enjoyed it. Love it when this happens!

Imagine my surprise when I opened the book to find that one of its subjects came from the area I lived in in Connecticut for five years. Southeastern Connecticut is kind of an out-of-the-way place; there’s not much there, so you never hear much about it. But I was familiar with so many of the places in this book, so that definitely spoke to me.

Robert Kolker covers the stories of some of the victims of a suspected serial killer on Long Island, one who has never been identified or found. All the victims were escorts, leading to a lackadaisical attitude among law enforcement for finding their killers. Ten bodies were eventually discovered (including a toddler who, at least at the writing of this book, was never identified); law enforcement never seemed in much of a hurry to figure out who did this.

If anything, Lost Girls truly helped me understand the attitude among law enforcement toward sex workers. They aren’t people; if they get hurt, it’s their own fault; no one needs to waste time or resources on figuring out who killed them, since if anyone really cared about these women, they wouldn’t have been sex workers in the first place.

Except that’s not at all how any of this works. The families of these women are devastated. To this day, they’re still out in front of the press, pushing for answers, desperate for justice. These women were loved, cared for. They were HUMAN BEINGS who didn’t deserve their grisly fate – NO ONE DOES – and the fact that ten people were murdered and discarded and there’s still no answer and no push for answers, is unacceptable. What I truly learned from this book is how little society cares for sex workers, and that’s just depressing. That’s something that will stick with me, and I’ll challenge anyone I hear trying to push this attitude that women like these don’t matter.

Devastating story, one that I hope will have answers someday soon.

Visit Robert Kolker’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: True Identity: Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski

Stephanie2 Comments

A friend recommended True Identity: Cracking the Oldest Kidnapping Cold Case and Finding My Missing Twin by Paul Joseph Fronczak and Alex Tresniowski (Post Hill Press, 2022), and I thought it sounded fascinating, so onto my list it went. I didn’t realize it was the second book Mr. Fronczak has written about the mystery of his identity until I began reading it. It’s not necessary to read the first; I had no trouble understanding exactly what was going on throughout all of this, but if you’re interested, it’s there!

Paul Joseph Fronczak was kidnapped from a Chicago hospital at one day old. Over a year later, police in New Jersey contacted his family with news: we have a little boy, he looks like he could be yours, do you want to come see him? So the parents traveled out east and returned home with a little boy, whom they raised as their own (this was in the 60’s; DNA testing wouldn’t exist for years), but Paul always felt like he wasn’t *quite* part of the family, and he only learned about the kidnapping when he found a newspaper clipping when he was ten. His parents never spoke of it.

As an adult, DNA testing confirmed it: Paul was not the Fronczak baby who was kidnapped. So who was he? And where was the real Paul Joseph Fronczak? Through scrupulous detective work (his own and people he hired) and DNA testing, not only does Paul discover the real Paul Joseph Fronczak (though who kidnapped him and why remains a mystery), he also discovers his own identity and learns that he has…or had…a twin. Where she is remains unknown, but if you’re interested in true crime and the kind of work it takes to uncover these in-depth mysteries, you don’t want to miss this book.

True Identity is an absolute page-turner. Mr. Fronczak’s history, both the one he’s lived and the one he learns about, is complex, and I couldn’t wait to get back to this book every day to learn about what he would dig up next. I felt for him; no one in his life seemed to understand his need to learn about who he was and what happened so that he grew up with an entirely different family. I could see how his desperate need to know the truth of his past and his family might affect his time spent with his family, his finances, things like that, but these are basic life questions that most of us already have the answer to. It’s entirely understandable that someone who doesn’t have these answers would need to figure them out, and reading this, I felt like a lot of people could’ve given him a bigger break. There’s also a lot of secrets in this book. Biological family members that Mr. Fronczak interviewed were loathe to speak of something that happened over fifty years ago, reluctant to speak about people who died many, many years ago. Which just baffled me. Sorry, but if someone came to me with questions like that, I’m spilling the beans. (Sorry, fam. Don’t want your beans spilled, don’t have beans in the first place!)

Super fascinating book. Now that Paul Joseph Fronczak is on my radar, I look forward to following his case and am wishing him all the best on his search for his missing twin sister.

Visit Paul Joseph Fronczak’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes

Stephanie1 Comment

My long-time online parenting group (been with them twenty years now!) has a book group, and of course I’m one of the admins. Every Wednesday, we chat about what we’re currently reading, and a few months ago, someone mentioned that they were reading Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes (Celadon Books, 2022). My brain immediately perked up, and off I trotted to my library’s website. Sure enough, they had it, and just as I expected, it was checked out…and likely would be for a good long time. ‘No worries,’ I thought. ‘I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime.’ But on this last library trip, Unmasked was on the new books shelf. YOINK!

Paul Holes worked for various offices in Contra Costa County, California, solving both active and cold cases, some of them well-known. Jaycee Dugard was discovered on his watch; his work with DNA helped to finally identify the Golden State Killer after decades. He was good at his job, and having served in that role for twenty-seven years before retiring, he’s seen some terrible, awful things. And he’s here in this memoir to tell you all about them.

For the sensitive reader, there are a few stomach-turning moments where the descriptions get a little graphic, but for the most part, Mr. Holes keeps that part calm. It’s more the details of what happened that are tough to read. Children and young women, mainly, ripped from their families, often times without a trace. Horrible suffering for both the victim and their families and loved ones. Paul Holes was privy to all of it over his career, and the horrors took their toll on him as well. This brutally honest memoir shows not just the brutality of crime but what it costs those tasked with solving them.

What struck me most about this book was its honesty. Paul Holes pulls no punches when it comes to what a shitty father and husband he’s been, in large part because of the demands of his work (and this goes for both the PTSD it caused him and how his brain is naturally wired to get obsessive about his cases). He drank too much, he spent far too much time at work, he had a hard time letting go of work once he did return home. The crimes he worked also destroyed his first marriage and deeply damaged his second as well; they weren’t the sole cause, and maybe he would’ve been just as crummy of a husband and father if he’d been a dentist or accountant, but the horrors he dealt with every day at work definitely didn’t help. His honesty at just how awful he was, however, is refreshing.

This is a grisly peek into what goes on behind the scenes of all those true crime podcasts and documentaries that so many of us binge-watch. It’s more than DNA swabs and footprint casts; it’s maggots and rot and murders continuing to ruin families because there’s not enough usable evidence. It’s horror on every side, but if true crime is something that intrigues you, you’ll do yourself a favor by delving more into this behind-the-scenes story.

Follow Paul Holes on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by Jon Billman

Stephanie3 Comments

I have a horror-based fascination with the entire concept of missing people (I fully blame Soul Asylum’s music video for Runaway Train in the early 90’s; that video, which played on repeat throughout my teenage years, is seared into my brain). So when I was going through my emails and came across a Book Riot email that contained a review for The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by Jon Billman (Grand Central Publishing, 2020), my eyes flew open and I added it to my list immediately. I’m not much of an outdoorsy person or adventurer, but I’m also kind of fascinated by stories of outdoor adventures gone wrong, so I knew this book would be right up my alley, and it was.

A brief warning, however: this book talks a lot about death, and about unresolved loss, meaning, missing people whose cases are never solved, who simply vanish and their families never get any answers about what happened to them. It’s heavy, and devastatingly sad. Wait until you’re ready to carry their stories until you pick this book up.

Writer Jon Billman follows the case of Jacob Gray, a young man who went missing in Olympic National Park, to delve deeply into the subject of the people who go missing in the wilds of American (and some Canadian) national parks. What happens when someone is reported missing? If you’re expecting a massive search complete with teams of park employees and helicopter patrols, one that doesn’t rest until the missing person is found, you’re only partly correct – a small part. It really depends on where the person goes missing.

Mr. Billman follows Randy, Jacob’s father, in his determined search for his son up and down the west coast. Along the way, he interviews the people he meets who spend their time searching for the missing: volunteers, bloodhound owners, professional trackers, Bigfoot aficionados (no, really). He and Randy even meet up with a cult (the Twelve Tribes; I’ve run into this group in Nashville) in the hopes that Jacob, who was religious, had joined up with them. Mr. Billman’s quiet, compassionate observations, always lacking judgment, paint a moving tribute to the many families devastated by the disappearance of a loved one into the vast wilderness of public lands.

This book was fascinating. It’s one that I couldn’t wait to return to every night, to see where Jon Billman would follow Randy Gray next, to learn who he would talk to and the stories he would learn about. Who would be found? Who would be found alive? What happened that these people disappeared, and how did the families who never got answers cope? Mr. Billman didn’t just interview these people over coffee, either; he strapped on a backpack, laced up his hiking books, and followed them over rocky terrain and down steep slopes; he camped with them overnight in bear country and slogged in squishy socks through rain-soaked forests. He lived the life of someone desperately searching for a loved one, and that adds such a depth to this book.

The Cold Vanish will go on my list of one of the best books I read this year. It’s that good. Highly recommended.

Follow Jon Billman on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness by Jennifer Berry Hawes

Stephanie3 Comments

One of the many benefits of having bookish friends is when they make you aware of a book that you likely wouldn’t have picked up on your own. My friend Jennifer, who is a librarian extraordinaire at a university in Alabama, told my longtime parenting group’s book forum about an author visit she was hosting a while back: one Ms. Jennifer Berry Hawes, author of Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness (St. Martin’s Press, 2019). I remembered this tragedy well; the title of this book, however, made me a little nervous. I had avoided the book about the gunman who shot up an Amish school simply because of the religious pressure to forgive, which isn’t the way my religion works, and the very idea of being required to forgive even when you’re not ready for it made me uncomfortable. But my friend assured me it wasn’t that kind of book; that not everyone forgave the killer, and that it was a really incredibly story all around, so onto my list it went.

In 2015, Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, a traditionally Black church, hosted a Bible study one Wednesday evening in June. A young white man joined the Black churchgoers; this wasn’t unusual, and they welcomed him with open arms. And as the Bible study concluded, the young man pulled out a gun and murdered nine people.

The manhunt that followed was successful fairly quickly, but the mess he left behind at Mother Emanuel, as the church is known, stretched on and on. Almost the entire pastoral leadership had been murdered; husbands had lost wives, wives had lost husbands, parents had lost children. Grief amplifies what is already there, and some family relationships, already struggling, fractured further. The leadership that took over in the wake of the massacre seemed to have the wrong motivations, and financial hijinks made everyone suspicious. Longtime church members, include some who were present and survived the massacre, began to fall away from the church. Some of the survivors immediately forgave the gunman; others struggled with the concept, while still others were unsure how to ever move on with their lives without their loved ones.

This isn’t a pretty, wrapped-up-in-a-bow, everyone-holds-hands-and-sings story of a mass shooting. This is raw pain and anger, desperation, and grief. The survivors grapple with a lot of painful emotions surrounding the massacre- not only the losses of the their friends and family, but the losses of their trusted clergy, the loss of their perceived safety, the loss of trust in the team that stepped in to lead afterwards, the loss of love between family members, the anger they felt at the entire situation. Their pain and, at times, desperation, is palpable. Ms. Hawes conveys that excellently while still allowing the survivors the respect and dignity they deserve.

There is quite a lot of coverage of and about the killer in this book (I’m not using his name here); the depths of his soullessness are disturbing, so be prepared for that if you pick this book up. And there are plenty of parts that will bring you to tears, for many different reasons- depth of strength, grief, suffering, the community coming together, the senselessness of it all. There’s hope as well, but mostly, there’s pain, and a community that suffers deeply because of hatred. Grace Will Lead Us Home is an amazingly well-written book, one that I wish hadn’t had to be written at all.

Visit Jennifer Berry Hawes’s author page here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession by Sarah Weinman

Stephanie2 Comments

A few years ago, I read The Real Lolita: The Kidnaping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman, which only made sense thanks to my earlier reading of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It (the first book!) was a fascinating and compelling read, and it put Sarah Weinman on my radar. So when I learned about her new true crime anthology, Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession (Ecco, 2020), I slapped that bad boy onto my list.

I went into this anthology expecting the book to continue as it starts, with stories that recap true crime tales like a finely-tuned episode of Dateline (which I occasionally listen to as a podcast). The anthology starts out strong, only to get even better. Beyond delving into stories of murder and deception, this book also takes a hard look at the true crime genre as a whole. Whose stories are told- and whose aren’t, and why? What does it mean that we as a society are so fascinated by these real-life stories of terrible, violent death? What happens in the aftermath of these stories? And what does cleanup look like after someone picks up a gun?

This is a lot more than whodunnit, than a voyeuristic peek into blood-spattered rooms and chilled interrogation chambers. This is intriguing reporting that asks hard questions and demands that we ask ourselves hard questions. What are we getting out of this ethically dubious genre? Look harder at the aftermath of these crimes, at the broken families plagued by grief and the unknowns, at the hospitals struggling to keep up with the trauma victims and the survivors whose wounds stay with them long after the gun stops smoking and the knife is cleaned off. Think a little harder; examine what pulls you so strongly to this genre and why, and what you can take from it in order to make our society a more just place for everyone.

My goodness, this was incredible. There’s some powerful writing in this book, both in terms of narrative ability, and in terms of straight-up journalism that strikes all the right chords. There’s an article about a trauma surgeon tasked with repairing gunshot victims; you may be surprised at how not-linear their recoveries often are. A piece on the impact of the band Soul Train’s early 90’s video for their hit song ‘Runaway Train’ is deeply moving; I had actually read this article before but appreciated coming back to it, as the song and its accompanying videos (plural) of missing and exploited kids, still tugs at my heart. And a story of a murdered mother who turned out not to be who she said she was fascinated me- it’s near the beginning, and I bet it’ll pull you in as well.

If you enjoy the true crime genre, this is truly an anthology you cannot miss. I blew through the whole book in one afternoon and am sorry that there aren’t 23748324032 other volumes to accompany it. This was phenomenal.

Visit Sarah Weinman’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the Thirteen Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue by John Glatt

Stephanie5 Comments

Do you ever look back and wonder how you missed out on major news stories? I’m old enough to remember the Challenger explosion, but I have no memories of it. I’m not sure if that’s because my parents shielded me from the awfulness of it, or because it wasn’t much on their radar, but nope, I don’t remember it at all. The more recent story of the Turpin family is similar for me. I vaguely knew who they were- a mega-family who had at least some sort of Christian trappings who ended up abusing the kids terribly- but somehow the details of this story remained off my radar. But someone on a messageboard where I lurk suggested The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the Thirteen Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue by John Glatt (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), and I knew I needed to read it in order to fill in the gaps (I think things were so crazy politically at the time that all my attention was going to other things, and that’s how this one slipped by me. We can’t pay attention to everything…)

In early 2018, a 17 year-old girl, whose physical appearance made her appear closer to ten years of age, secretly dialed 911 to report that her parents were abusing her and her twelve siblings, several of whom had been chained to their beds for months. When the police arrived at the house, what they found was nearly beyond belief. Children from the ages of two to their late twenties who hadn’t bathed or changed clothing in over a year, in various stages of starvation, cachexia, and psychosocial dwarfism.  None of them had ever visited a dentist; doctor visits had rarely happened. Most of them displayed severe signs of abuse. None of the neighbors realized there were that many kids living in the house, because most of the children never left. The oldest had been pulled out of third grade in public school; they had all been ‘homeschooled’ since, but most of them had less than a first-grade education, even the adults (the daughter who had called 911 had even misspelled her own last name).

The kids were taken and hospitalized; the parents were sent to jail to await trial. The children, even the adults, were badly stunted in physical and social development; educationally, they were all years behind (with the exception of the two-year-old, who was, while still not perfect, in better shape than anyone else). The younger children eventually went to (I believe) a foster home; the adult children went to a secret home to begin focusing on all the things they needed to learn to function as adults, since none of them were even remotely able to care for themselves. The parents were eventually convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison; the children will be battling the effects of the torture their parents afflicted upon them forever (at least two of the girls are unlikely to be able to have children themselves, so extensive was the damage they’ve suffered).

If you followed the case as it unfolded, there probably isn’t anything new here, but if you’re like me and missed this, it’s a good primer as to what happened. I hadn’t really known any of the details, so it was a worthwhile (if horrifying) read. My heart broke over and over again for the damage these kids have suffered (I refer to them as kids, but the oldest is in her early 30’s by now; the youngest is maybe 5 or 6). Their parents stunted their entire lives; whatever they go on to do, it’ll be in spite of their parents, not because of them, and though they may heal, even in the best-case scenario, there will still be massive, massive scars. I’m so sad for all of them.

There are several fundamentalist mega-families on my radar (not the Duggars; we already know what a mess they’ve made…) that have exhibited strong Turpin-esque qualities. One has stated she’s not worried about her homeschooled kids obtaining ‘worldly knowledge;’ in a recent video the mom posted, her oldest kids (somewhere around 11 or 12) didn’t know what year it was or who the President was (both questions my seven-year-old answered immediately with no help). The other family’s kids are very obviously malnourished and the quality of their ‘homeschooling’ has looked pretty poor as well. (I’m a former homeschooling parent; even when I was actively homeschooling, I wished there were better oversight. If you’re doing what you need to be doing, a yearly check-in to make sure your kid is on track is no big deal, and I made my kiddo WORK. Better oversight would have prevented the Turpins from ruining their kids, and it would keep those other families I’m thinking of from inflicting potentially irreversible damage on their children. It’s incredibly difficult to become a functional adult when you were denied the skills it takes to be one throughout your entire childhood.)

The writing in this book isn’t anything special; it’s a really fast read, though a depressing one. You’ll be horrified and disgusted and heartbroken through the whole thing. I pray those kids are able to repair what their parents worked so hard to destroy, and to create beautiful, functional lives for themselves, and that this world makes a safe, patient space for all of them.

Visit John Glatt’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era

Stephanie1 Comment

I didn’t know that this would end up being such a timely read.

Civil rights are a cause that’s near and dear to my heart. Everyone deserves the full rights of citizenship in the country of their birth or the country they’ve adopted as their own, and the fact that America still hasn’t managed to get it together in this aspect and is actively trying to move backwards is a filthy stain on our collective soul. But there are people out there fighting to right these wrongs (Stacey Abrams, you are an absolute jewel!), and some of them write books about their experiences. When I heard about Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), I knew I had to read it. Bless my library for having a copy on their shelves.

During the 1960s, white supremacists decided that their right to feel special was more important than anyone’s civil rights or right to live, so instead of getting some therapy and examining why they felt that way, they decided that murder was the answer. Members of the Ku Klux Klan plotted, planned, and carried out the murders of white and black civil rights workers, along with everyday people- including children- who were just living their lives. And far, far too often, the perpetrators and the planners of these murders walked free, even when they bragged about what they’d done to everyone with functioning eardrums. Even when some of them were Christian clergy. Think about that.

Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist working for Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger, knew that there were plenty of wrongs that needed to be righted, so he set about unlocking the clues to the past. Interviewing family members of the victims, former and current KKK members, and anyone who had anything to do with these cases where justice wasn’t served, he began to help the state piece together legal cases against the alleged killers. It wasn’t easy; so many witnesses had already died, more were suffering from diseases of old age, and the ones who were still full of life made Mr. Mitchell acutely aware that his life was as expendable as those of their earlier victims. But with his well-honed journalist skills and a deep-seated sense of justice and integrity, with well-timed articles that brought crucial and long-buried information to light, Jerry Mitchell aided in the prosecution of some of the dirtiest murderers of the Civil Rights era.

This is really an incredible book. Mr. Mitchell’s dedication is deeply admirable, and his bravery is oftentimes both commendable and shocking. I can’t ever imagine a situation in which I would feel even remotely safe traveling to and going inside Byron de la Beckwith’s house (he was the man who murdered Medgar Evers), but Mr. Mitchell did. He repeatedly made contact with various people whose pasts were infuriating and frightening, who said disgusting things in his presence. Some of them had since reformed and expressed regret over their actions. Many had not, and yet Jerry Mitchell still persevered in order to get the information necessary to pen the articles that would change everything.

He’s quick to point out that he failed more times than he won, that there are still plenty of cold cases where justice was not served and where the families of the victims never received any kind of closure. But the cases he was instrumental in helping bring to court- the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder of the three civil rights workers portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning, the murder of the four little girls in the 16th Street church bombing, and the murder of civil rights worker Vernon Dahmer- were high-profile, and while individual cases don’t make up for the lack of justice overall, the conviction of these killers is deeply satisfying. Mr. Mitchell tells the story of his work in these cases in a fast-paced read that will keep you racing through the pages in order to learn the final verdicts of each case and how they were reached.

An excellent book, and so timely for today. May we all be Jerry Mitchells in our pursuit of justice, every single day.

Visit Jerry Mitchell’s organization, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting here.

Follow him on Twitter here.