MYSTERY OF THE WEEK
MYSTERIES: A WALK ON THE DARK SIDEThis week I read "The Weatherman" by Steve Thayer. "The Weatherman" is a mystery that features a strong sense of place (Minneapolis) and three complicated, well-drawn characters. The plot has a serial killer who kills during notable weather events. It is quite violent, and presents some disturbing images.
Readers who enjoy this type of mystery may also like "Flood" by Andrew Vachss. This is the author's first book featuring Burke, the ex-con detective, with no first name who was abandoned as a child. He operates on the shady side of the law. The underworld of New York is the setting, and no maggot is left unturned. The title character, Flood, is a young woman who hires Burke to track down a pedophile. This is a similarly dark and disturbing story, with an atmospheric setting--although the seamy surroundings are no match for the Twin Cities. Burke is an intricate character, and reveals little about himself willingly. Most of Vachss's books deal with child molesters, so they are not for the squeamish.
Another suggestion is "Coffin Dancer" by Jeffery Deaver. Quadriplegic criminologist Lincoln Rhyme must track down a hired killer within 48 hours. Rhyme is a complex character and since he can't move, all the action is in his mind. There is excellent plotting from Deaver, and psychological tension by the bucketful. The Rhyme series is a good choice for a reader who wants characters that are more than superficial adjuncts to the plot, evil bad guys, and lots of suspense. Set in New York City.
For nonfiction, try "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. In this groundbreaking work by Capote, he recreates the brutal murder of a Kansas farm family by two strangers in 1959. He interviewed those involved with the investigation, capture, trial, and eventual execution of the killers. The insight into the minds of the killers, and the re-telling of the crime in a manner that is more literary than crime reporting, should hold readers in a darkly fascinating grip.
Another nonfiction choice is "The Stranger Beside Me" by Ann Rule. The author met Ted Bundy in 1971 when they worked together on a suicide hot line at a Seattle crisis center. When he was suspected of the serial killings of young women, she found it hard to believe that this charming, charismatic young man was a sadistic murderer. Though a grim story, Rule does not dwell on the gruesome--instead continuing in a journalistic style, following Bundy to his death by electrocution in a Florida prison in 1989. The persona of Bundy, and the details of his crime--and how he eluded capture--draws readers in.
Other suggestions: "Winter Prey" by John Sandford; "Kiss the Girls" by James Patterson; "Dead Man Walking: an Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions" by Helen Prejean; and "The Devil's Right Hand Man: the True Story of Serial Killer Robert Charles Browne" by Stephen Michaud.
1 comment:
You wrongly combined two seperate titles for Helen Prejean's reference.
Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account Of The Death Penalty In The United States
and
The Death Of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
a review of both, below:
" . . .makes you realize the Dead Man Walking truly belongs on the shelf in the library in the Fiction category."
Victim Survivors, Dead Man Walking
"Being devout Catholics, 'the norm' would be to look to the church for support and healing. Again, this need for spiritual stability was stolen by Sister Prejean."
Victim Survivors, Dead Man Walking
From: I. Dead Family Walking: The Bourque Family Story of Dead Man Walking , by D. D. deVinci, Goldlamp Publishing, 2006
"On November 5, 1977, the Bourque's teenage daughter, Loretta, was found murdered in a trash pile near the city of New Iberia, Louisiana lying side by side near her boyfriend–with three well-placed bullet holes behind each head. "
www.deadfamilywalking.com/
contact T.J. Edler, 337-967-0840, cajunmixes@bellsouth.net
Sister Helen Prejean and the Death Penalty
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters, contact info below
II. The Victims of Dead Man Walking
by Michael L. Varnado, Daniel P. Smi
comment -- A very different story than that written by Sister Helen Prejean. Detective Varnado was the investigating officer in the murder of Faith Hathaway. 2003
III. Death Of Truth: Sister Prejean's book The Death Of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.
For some years, there has existed a consistent pattern, from death penalty opponents, to declare certain death row inmates to be actually innocent. Those claims have, consistently, been 70-83% in error. ("ALL INNOCENCE ISSUES -- THE DEATH PENALTY")
Keep that in mind with "Death of Innocents".
Readers should be very careful, as they have no way of knowing if any of the fact issues in either of the two cases, as presented by Sister Prejean, are true. Readers would have to conduct their own thorough, independent examination to make that determination. You can start here.
Four articles
(a) "FOR GOOD REASON, JOE O'DELL IS ON DEATH ROW"
scholar(DOT)lib.vt.edu/VA-news/VA-Pilot/issues/1995/vp950728/07210224.htm
quote: "The DNA report commissioned by O'Dell and his lawyers actually corroborates O'Dell's guilt. There is a three-probe DNA match indicating that the bloodstains on O'Dell's clothing is indeed consistent with the victim Helen Schartner's DNA as well as her blood type and enzyme factors." "There is certainly no truth to O'Dell's accusation that evidence was suppressed or witnesses intimidated by the prosecution."
(b) "Sabine district attorney disputes author's claims in book"
www(DOT)shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050124/NEWS01/501240328/1060
quote: "I don't know whether she is deliberately trying to mislead the public or if she's being mislead by others. But she's wrong,"
District Atty. Burkett, dburkett(AT)cp-tel.net
(c) Book Review: "Sister Prejean's Lack of Credibility: Review of "The Death of Innocents", by Thomas M. McKenna (New Oxford Review, 12/05). http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1205-mckenna
"The book is moreover riddled with factual errors and misrepresentations."
"Williams had confessed to repeatedly stabbing his victim, Sonya Knippers."
"This DNA test was performed by an independent lab in Dallas, which concluded that there was a one in nearly four billion chance that the blood could have been someone's other than Williams's."
" . . . despite repeated claims that (Prejean) cares about crime victims, implies that the victim's husband was a more likely suspect but was overlooked because the authorities wanted to convict a black man."
" . . . a Federal District Court . . . stated that 'the evidence against Williams was overwhelming.' " "The same court also did "not find any evidence of racial bias specific to this case."
"(Prejean's) broad brush strokes paint individual jurors, prosecutors, and judges with the term "racist" with no facts, no evidence, and, in most cases, without so much as having spoken with the people she accuses."
"Sr. Prejean also claims that Dobie Williams was mentally retarded. But the same federal judge who thought he deserved a new sentencing hearing also upheld the finding of the state Sanity Commission report on Williams, which concluded that he had a "low-average I.Q.," and did not suffer from schizophrenia or other major affective disorders. Indeed, Williams's own expert at trial concluded that Williams's intelligence fell within the "normal" range. Prejean mentions none of these facts."
"In addition to lying to the police about how he came to have blood on his clothes, the best evidence of O'Dell's guilt was that Schartner's (the rape/murder victim's) blood was on his jacket. Testing showed that only three of every thousand people share the same blood characteristics as Schartner. Also, a cellmate of O'Dell's testified that O'Dell told him he killed Schartner because she would not have sex with him."
"After the trial, LifeCodes, a DNA lab that O'Dell himself praised as having "an impeccable reputation," tested the blood on O'Dell's jacket -- and found that it was a genetic match to Schartner. When the results were not to his liking, O'Dell, and of course Sr. Prejean, attacked the reliability of the lab O'Dell had earlier praised. Again, as with Williams's conviction, the federal court reviewing the case characterized the evidence against O'Dell as 'vast' and
'overwhelming.' "
Sr. Prejean again sees nefarious forces at work. Not racism this time, for O'Dell was white. Rather, she charges that the prosecutors were motivated to convict by desire for advancement and judgeships. Yet she never contacted the prosecutors to interview them or anyone who might substantiate such a charge.
"(Prejean) omits the most damning portion of (O'Dell's criminal) record: an abduction charge in Florida where O'Dell struck the victim on the head with a gun and told her that he was going to rape her. This very similar crime helped the jury conclude that O'Dell would be a future threat to society. It supports the other evidence of his guilt and thus undermines Prejean's claim of innocence."
"There is thus a moral equivalence for Prejean between the family of an innocent victim and the newfound girlfriend of a convicted rapist and murderer."
"This curious definition of "the victims" suggests that her concern for "victims" seems to be more window-dressing for her cause than true concern."
(d) Hardly The Death Of Innocents: Sister Prejean tells it like it wasn't -- Joseph O'Dell
by Anonymous, at author's request
In lionizing convicted murderer Joseph O'Dell as being an innocent man railroaded to his 1997 execution by Virginia prosecutors, Sister Helen Prejean presents a skewed summary of the case to bolster her anti-death penalty agenda. While she is a gifted speaker, she is out of her element when it comes to "telling it as it was" in these cases.
Prejean got to walk with O'Dell into the death chamber at Greensville Correctional Center on July 22, 1997. However, she wasn't in Virginia Beach some 12 years earlier when he committed the crime for which he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. That is where the real demon was evident, not the sweet talking condemned con-man that she met behind bars. O'Dell was, in the words of then Virginia Beach Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Albert Alberi (case prosecutor), one of the most savage, dangerous criminals he had encountered in a two decade career.
Indeed,O'Dell had spent most of his adult life incarcerated for various crimes since the age of 13 in the mid-1950's. At the time of the Schartner murder in Virginia, O'Dell had been recently paroled from Florida where he had been serving a 99 year sentence for a 1976 Jacksonville abduction that almost ended in a murder of the female victim (had not police arrived) in the back of his car.
The circumstances of that crime were almost identical to those surrounding Schartner's murder. The victim of the Florida case even showed up in Virginia to testify at the trial. Scarcely a mention of this case is made in the Prejean book.
Briefly, let me outline some of the facts about the case: Victim Helen Schartner's blood was found on the passenger seat of Joseph O'Dell's vehicle. Tire tracks matching those on O'Dell's vehicle were found at the scene where Miss Schartner's body was found. The tire tread design on O'Dell's vehicle wheels were so unique, an expert in tire design couldn't match them in a manual of thousands of other tire treads. The seminal fluids found on the victim's body matched those of Mr. O'Dell and pubic hairs of the victim were found on the floor of his car.
The claims that O'Dell was "denied" his opportunity to present new DNA evidence on appeals were frivolous. In fact, he had every opportunity to come forward with this evidence, but his lawyers refused to reveal to the court the full findings of the tests which they had arranged to be done on a shirt with blood stains, which O'Dell's counsel claimed might show did not have the blood marks from the defendant or the victim.
Manipulative defense lawyer tactics were overlooked by Prejean in her narrative. O'Dell was far from a victim of poor counsel. As matter of fact, the city of Virginia Beach and state government gave O'Dell an estimated $100,000 for his defense team at trial. This unprecedented amount nearly bankrupted the entire indigent defense fund for the state. He had great lawyers, expert forensic investigators and every point at the trial was contested two to five times.
There was no "rush to justice" in this case.
O'Dell's alibi for the night of Schartner's murder was that he had gotten thrown out of the bar where he encountered Schartner following a brawl. However, none of the several dozen individuals supported his contention - there weren't any fights that night. Rather, several saw Miss Schartner getting into O'Dell's car on what would be her last ride.
But Prejean would want us to believe the claims of felon Joseph O'Dell. He had three trips to the United States Supreme Court and the "procedural error" which Prejean claims ultimately doomed him was the result of simple ignorance of basic appeals rules by his lawyers.
Nothing in the record ever suggested that Joseph O'Dell, two time killer and rapist, was anything but guilty of the murder of Helen Schartner.
Justice was properly served.
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