Ann Rule suing Seattle Weekly

So Ann Rule is suing one of our city's local alt weeklies over an article written by the fiance of one of the killers she wrote about. This is such an odd story. I read the book and the fiance's defensive article and come on! He's her FIANCE. What is he going to say? Hardly an objective opinion.

I will always love Ann Rule -- no one has mastered the tricky true-crime genre like she has. And that is one bloody awful caricature of her.

When writers collide

For a while, I was all but obsessed with Melanie Thernstrom's "The Dead Girl," the book she wrote about the murder of her high school best friend, Bibi Lee.

She also wrote "Halfway Heaven," about a murder at Harvard where a student from Africa murdered her roommate, from Vietnam, because she felt her moving away from her and desperately wanted a friend.

But I was floored to come across Thernstrom's name in this Beth Karas story, about plaigiarist Steven Glass, and to find her not only defending him, but having chosen him as godfather to her children. Reading it does give you a picture of Glass that you certainly don't get from the Hayden Christiansen portrayal in "Shattered Glass." His parents sound cold and horrible, though they do not speak to defend themselves in the article, so who knows?

New trial for Michael Peterson

People who know me know I was practically obsessed with the Michael Peterson murder trial for a while.  And holy cow -- he's now getting a new trial!
(Don't know what it is? Pick up one of these books, "Written in Blood" or "A Perfect Husband," or this fascinating documentary, which I really can't recommend highly enough.)

He's an author and very smart guy with a weird situation. He ended up taking in two girls, Margaret and Martha, when their mother died at the foot of a staircase years ago in German military housing. Then when he moved back to the States, his second wife, Kathleen, died in another staircase fall, and the amount of blood everywhere seemed to indicate she had been beaten.

And, of course, there were secrets. They lived in a mansion, but he didn't have any money -- his wife had a good but stressful job, however. And he was trolling gay military-themed escort sites -- one of the weirdest parts of the trial was when one of those hunks he contacted, who never quite got to meet him, testified about their emails. One belief was that Kathleen found the emails and confronted him, and then he killed her. And there are plenty of other oddities -- the similar death of Margaret and Martha's mother, his loopy first wife, his grown sons, one of whom planted a bomb at Duke, his war with the Durham N.C. authorities via his newspaper column, the fact that the prosecution tried to say a fireplace poker was the murder weapon and the defense produced an untouched, unbloodied poker near the end of the trial.

A French film crew covered the trial for a multi-part documentary called "The Staircase" which is unquestionably sympathetic to Peterson and they had unprecedented access. It's really fascinating if voyeuristic to watch him making dinner with his family in his home just days before the jury comes back, not knowing if he'll go to jail or not, and to watch the faces of his daughters (the birth daughters of the first woman to die on a staircase) as they cry when he's found guilty. (They don't believe he killed either of the women.) Kathleen, also had a daughter, and she does believe Peterson killed her mom, so the family ended up permanently split.

I'm wondering now if the French film crew, led by Jean-Xavier Lestrade, will come back for another go and a second documentary. Things are about to get interesting.

GONE

Aeryn Gillern is an American who was working in Vienna when one day in 2007, he just vanished. His frantic mother, once a NY police officer, did everything to try and find him, and the movie "GONE" chronicles her journey. I definitely want to see it. It airs on Discovery ID on Nov. 12 at 9 p.m.

RIP, Mr. Bender

I've always been fascinated by Frank Bender and the work he did, dating back of course to his sculpture that helped them catch John List. RIP, Mr. Bender. Thanks for using your talents for good.

DB Cooper (no relation)

Man, imagine if they finally solve the DB Cooper case...it's one of those mysteries I thought would never get solved. Then I'd like to see Jon Benet Ramsey, Jacob Wetterling, Jodi Huisentruitt, Anne Barber Dunlap and the Jeffrey McDonald "Fatal Vision" case all not just solved, but completely explained.

Mother of a monster

This is a couple of years old, but it's still an engrossing read.

Susan Klebold, mother of one of the Columbine killers, tells about finding out that her son had just passed into American legend as one of our most horrible murderers.

You get the feeling there's a lot of backstory that we don't know, but you do feel sorry for her, like she was clueless in many ways.

"We Need to Talk About Kevin," by Lionel Shriver, tackles a Columbine-like massacre from the perspective of the shooter's mother. It's a good read.

Lost boys of Houston

Stunning story about a serial killer in Texas that I've never heard of, who somehow got two teen boys to help him kill their peers. What the what?

Catching a rapist

Vanity Fair offers a very intriguing story of how a brutal serial rapist was tracked down, thanks to security cameras and one smart PI.

Possible new trial for West Memphis 3

True-crime readers will find this interesting: The West Memphis 3 could get a new trial.

I find it soooo creepy that there were bite marks on the victims and the stepfather of one boy HAD ALL HIS TEETH PULLED.

The two "Paradise Lost" documentaries are excellent. And "Devil's Knot" is a great book about the case.

The Keddie Murders

Why are The Keddie Murders not more famous? Chilling, especially the bit about finding part of the daughter's skull three years later, and the three boys untouched in the back bedroom.

Hi, it's Edna. Anything going on over there?

How can you read this article (from 1986) and not love author and former crime reporter Edna Buchanan, and want to read all her books?

Start with "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face."

In the still of the night

I'm a huge Ann Rule fan, and usually I know when she has a new hardcover (one case, as opposed to her paperback Case Files, which give shorter takes on many cases) coming out.

But I was waiting in the line to mail a package at my grocery store and spotted a new hardcover from Ann Rule, "In the Still of the Night." It's about the murder of Ronda Reynolds, and I'm pretty sure this actually was in one of her case files books as well -- I remember the bit where the chaplain came to her mother's house but had his information all mixed up, so the mom ignored him and went to the airport to pick up her daughter anyway -- and of course her daughter never arrived.

It's funny, I rarely read "real" books any more, I'm such a fan of Kindle for iPhone, but this one I felt like reading in paper format. Pretty good so far!

True crime gone by

Fascinating true-crime story dating back to 1906. It involves famed opera singer Enrico Caruso and the monkey house at the Central Park Zoo.

Via the always readable Longform.org.

Jacob's Hope

If this man didn't have anything to do with Jacob Wetterling's abduction, I really feel sorry for him, because it surely seems that everyone believes he did.

This was interesting -- I had not seen that the "person of interest" sat for any previous interviews. It also made me a little sick to my stomach that Patty Wetterling requested and got a private interview with him and flat-out asked him if he took Jacob, even couching it to ask if he was playing a prank that got out of hand.

I wonder if anything relating to Jacob's abduction will ever be learned in my lifetime. I asked John Walsh about this specifically a few years ago -- he said that they would have to find bones, because there was unlikely to be a deathbed confession in this case.

Jacob's hope

An interview with the Jacob Wetterling suspect airs tonight in the Twin Cities.

Jacob's hope

They've found "items of interest" in the dirt collected during the Jacob Wetterling case investigation.

Which is great, but seriously, if they couldn't find SOMETHING to look at in six truckloads of dirt, I'm floored. I don't have a lot of hope that it'll solve the case.

Jacob's Hope

Movement in the Jacob Wetterling case?

No case has stuck with me like this one. I once asked John Walsh about it. He told me he and the Wetterlings and everyone knew Jacob was likely killed the day he was abducted, and held out no hopes for a deathbed confession from the murderer. Oh, but I would like to see this solved, the family's minds finally put at peace.

Where's Jodi?

Every so often, a case gets under my skin and I really, really want to live to see it solved.

Jodi Huisentruitt has been declared dead, but is still missing. Where's Jodi?

Round up the unusual suspects

Discovery Channel is offering up a new true-crime show next month, "Unusual Suspects." Sounds fascinating. Yes, I still have that voyeuristic true-crime freak streak, why do you ask?