Woman's Powerful Courtroom Statement About Sister's Murder Shows Slow Justice Still Important To Families As I listened this afternoon to a weeping woman explain as best she could the impact the unsolved murder of her sister thirty-five years ago had on her and her family, I reflected once again on the fact that justice is not always about punishment. It is also about people such as that woman, and her family, having their day in court and … [Read more...]
A small Iowa sheriff’s office comes up big in Ferak’s new book, DIXIE’S LAST STAND
(Seated: Shelby County Sheriff Gene Cavenaugh, with chief deputy Mark Hervey ) Photo Courtesy of The Harlan Newspapers As I set out to produce this story as an original True-Crime Feature for WildBlue Press, there was no shortage of angles. Questions about self-defense, justification and mandatory sentencing laws. The crime was bizarre given the length of time that Scott Shanahan's body was left in his bedroom. A body in the bed. A … [Read more...]
BOGEYMAN’S Jackson covers another heartbreaking Cold Case
The idiom "got away with murder" has come to mean something other than its literal definition. Figuratively, it's used to describe someone who was allowed to do something that others would be criticized or punished for--such as "he gets away with murder just because he's so cute." But to a true crime writer, especially one who often delves into Cold Cases, the original definition takes back it's original meaning with all of its brutality, sorrow, … [Read more...]
VAMPIRE’S Sullivan Never Meant To Write About Bundy
Several days ago I wrote an article about real evidence, and how those personal items of murder can have an impact on the one holding and viewing such evidence. Mostly, the reaction will be positive, but there will be times when a sense of repulsion will surface based solely on what is confronting you. In the case of Richard Chase, there was one item that really turned me off. But most of it was interesting and contributed to my … [Read more...]
VAMPIRE Author Recounts Personal True Crime Story
“Follow that blood trail” I thought as I got out of my car. I was attempting to visit my brother in a downtown Louisville care facility (Ken had damaged his mind in the late 1960’s through the use of hallucinogenic drugs), but as soon as I pulled up to the curb of this three-story brick fortress-looking building, I spotted several small pools of blood, and a trail of blood leading inside. Being young and feeling invincible, I didn’t give it a … [Read more...]
VAMPIRE’s Kevin Sullivan Reviews The “Real Evidence”
As a writer of true crime, it’s all about the research. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a book or a three thousand word article it’s always about the official record. It begins and ends with the record. Of course, if you’re lucky, you’ll have living witnesses to interview, but even here everything gets filtered through the record. Not that the official record is infallible, mind you, because it’s not. But the better you know the case, the easier … [Read more...]
VAMPIRE Author Talks About “Why I Write True Crime”
Occasionally, folks will ask me why I write true crime. And without missing a beat, I always tell them that before I composed my first sentence describing the murder and mayhem that is such an ever-present reality on our planet, I’d been a student of these strange happenings for over three decades. You see, the first true crime book I ever read was Charles Franklin’s, The World’s Worst Murderers. It was 1965, I was ten years old, and I became … [Read more...]
Vampire: Kevin Sullivan discusses researching the Richard Chase murders
On December 2, my book, Vampire: The Richard Chase Murders was published by WildBlue Press. It’s a tale of terror, where the city of Sacramento, California was, for a very brief time, subjected to a series of diabolical murders and mutilations from the madman the world later came to know as the Vampire of Sacramento. Referring to him as “vampire” was not an attempt at drama, but was an apt description, seeing that Richard Chase loved drinking the … [Read more...]
DIXIE’S LAST STAND — Why Ferak chose this Iowa murder case
It was the third week of October in 2003. My first week at the Omaha World-Herald newspaper in Nebraska when a news alert came over the Associated Press wire from neighboring Iowa. A woman in a small-town was put in jail, accused of killing her husband. (More about DIXIE'S LAST STAND: Was It Murder or Self-Defense?) I grabbed my reporter's notebook. I hopped into one of the newspaper's many company cars with Rudy Smith, a long-time and … [Read more...]
Ron Franscell: Is true crime’s death exaggerated?
A few years ago, author Joe McGinniss, whose Fatal Vision is among a handful of acknowledged classics in true crime, pronounced the genre deader than Marley: “The last three books I’ve written have been about soccer, which nobody in America cares about; horse racing, which nobody in America cares about; and true crime, a genre that expired sometime last century . . .” If the genre is dead, it died fairly young. It hasn’t even been 50 years … [Read more...]
