#ann rule

[tragically-torie]

Currently reading

[paigefturner]

[spacesapphist]

my favorite nonfiction books of 2021 (as of september)

(inspired by @hungryfictions)

[abbydjonesoffaerie]

After reading Small Sacrifices, which mentioned Downs and Woodfield maintained a correspondence, I've had this on my reading list. It's crazy all the things Woodfield managed to do without getting caught, the number of assaults and robberies and murders. Thankfully, law enforcement did finally apprehend him. The majority of the book covers his crimes and his eventual capture, while his court cases only take up the last few chapters. It's scary how easily he misled so many women. This type of thing should put us in our guard.

I also found the observation that our justice system tends to allow a lot of crime for a small cost on the part of the criminal. After the first few convictions the rest of the courts in three states elected not to charge Woodfield. It was too expensive and they feared that one slip up would have him back on the streets. I get that, but that means he never faced prosecution for those crimes. For good or ill, that's how it works.

Overall, I thought Rule handled the sexual nature of his crimes well, never indulging in them, always reporting the facts with no embellishment, but his crimes were all sexual in nature, so keep that in mind. As always Rule does a great job honoring the victims of these crimes. That's what I like about her writing.

[astrognossienne]

“Lazy people tend not to take chances, but express themselves by tearing down other’s work.”

-Ann Rule

[anhed-nia]

One mental exercise I'm putting myself through--while I'm stuck inside with nothing to exercise but my mental meat--is, reading texts written by, or on behalf of people who are now historically known to have lied. (Or who a headshrinker could more generously describe as functionally delusional) I'm starting with the three earliest books on the Amityville Horror. Before I dove into Jay Anson's elaboration on the folklore created by George and Kathleen Lutz, and the probably-incredibly-sleazy coattail riding book by quack psychic Hans Holzer (on which the fabulously disgusting AMITYVILLE 2 is based), I thought I should read the book about the DeFeo murders perpetuated at the iconic Ocean Avenue home before it was haunted by the "horror". High Hopes was written by prosecutor Gerard Sullivan, and though I expected this to be the truest of the "true" stories, it presents its own evidence of extreme bias.

Let me say first that I'm a bit of a crime buff, and that means I have to be hypervigilant about copaganda. For instance, I'm gaga for Ann Rule, who was not only an ex-cop--I thought I read that she was the first female officer in Seattle?--but she described the cops that figured into her reportage with a kind of intensely seductive poetry, transforming them into something like heroes of the old west. It's incredibly convincing, and I have to remind myself that Rule was from a whole family of cops with a very particular perspective, one that many people would find troublesome--including myself.

So anyway, though I was champing at the bit to read this courtside account of Ron DeFeo Jr's inexplicable annihilation of his family, Sullivan quickly indicted himself as someone I probably shouldn't trust. The first red flag came in the from of an odd tendency to break down other people into cop-lovers and cop-haters. Ok, so those might be considered facts... But then, he tries to acquit himself of bias against the defendants he tries, by insisting that he is only able to commit to prosecuting someone if he feels in his bones that they are truly guilty. His "proof"? He once contributed to the acquittal of a cop who had been accused of sodomizing two 14 year old girls. He doesn't say what his suspicions about the case were, or why he thinks the young girls would have told this gruesome lie. He does say that the cop was cast in a bad light by his personal porno consumption, though he is not able to go so far as to call that the sole piece of evidence in the case. It's unclear how it all even came to trial. But he protected a cop from a rape charge, and that's meant to be evidence of his dogged and unbiased devotion to the law. Can't wait to read the rest of this whopper!

[queenofnightshades]

My top reads of 2020

[darklingichor]

Every Breath You Take by Ann Rule

Most of what I read tends to be fairly light. There's enough real going on that I don't need it as reading material. However, a good portion of my tv watching can be nicely summed up by this comic by Sarah Andersen:

I watch a lot of stuff like FBI Files and Cold Case Files. I don't often read true crime, but every now and again, the mood strikes, or there is a case I want to learn more about.

This time, the mood struck and Ann Rule has been a good bet in the past.

This book follows the major players in the case of  Sheila Bellush who was murdered by someone hired by her obsessive Ex-husband.

I didn't like this one as much as I have other Ann Rule books. More time seemed to be spent on the main conspiritor, Allen Blackthorne, than the victim. I mean, there is usually narritive split between the murderer(s) and how they ended up as warped as they are and the victims, but in this one it seemed like we spent a lot of time looking at Allen and his dickhead father. There was a time I actually lost track of Sheila entirely in the line of women that Allen's father married and left and Allen abused. Not that those women do not deserve a voice, it's just that at times, it felt like just a list of names and Sheila was buried a little.

You might like this if you really love true crime and/or Ann Rule. I recommend The Want-Ad Killer over this one.