On a cold Southern night in 2013 under a full moon, 20-year-old Heather Elvis parked her car at a boat ramp along the Intracoastal Waterway and was never seen again. The disappearance of the beautiful, vivacious hostess at a popular Myrtle Beach, South Carolina restaurant made international headlines and triggered a sweeping high-stakes investigation that exposed a twisted web of deception, betrayal, sexual … [Read more...]
A MURDER IN MY HOMETOWN by New York Times Bestselling Author Rebecca Morris
On a fall evening in Corvallis, Oregon in 1967, seventeen year old Dick Kitchel, a senior at the high school, disappeared after attending a party at the home of a couple in their twenties who often hosted gatherings and provided beer to a younger crowd. Dick was spoiling for a fight. He often had fights, but, surprisingly, he didn’t have enemies, or none that anyone knew of. Before his parents divorced, Dickie, as he was called in grade … [Read more...]
THE BEAST I LOVED’s Robert Davidson Warns “Don’t Believe The Con Man”
Domestic violence is all about power and the need to control, which comes from the monumental insecurity virtually all batterers suffer from. Like little children, they have a constant, nagging, inescapable fear of abandonment that they never outgrew like normal children do, and so carry around their warped perception of a fearful world that leads so reliably—and unfairly—to the abuse of their partners. Because most batterers have experienced … [Read more...]
New York Times Bestselling True Crime Author Rebecca Morris
I’m often asked how I began writing true crime books after a long career in broadcast and print journalism that took me from Portland, Ore. to New York City, and back to the Pacific Northwest. In 2007 I was free-lancing for The Seattle Times and spent time with Beverly Burr, the mother of an eight-and-a-half year old girl who had disappeared from her Tacoma home in 1961. Part of the article focused on an idea that had circulated for years – … [Read more...]
Robert Davidson Answers The Question “Why Didn’t She Just Leave?”
There are many issues regarding domestic violence, but the one that, to me, is most infuriating, most unfair, and most misunderstood is the most commonly asked question of all: “Why didn’t she just leave?” But that should not be the question. The question should be, “Why do men batter women?” And as a society, “How do we stop it?” That’s what we should be asking. Why don’t they leave? There are many issues involved, and very complicated ones … [Read more...]
Robert Davidson
Robert Davidson speaks nationally and has written numerous columns for various publications. In The Beast I Loved, originally published by Ballantine Books in 2000 under the title Fighting Back, now revised and updated with new material, he examines family dysfunction, the psychology of violence, and the resulting tragedy. He was the winner of New England’s venerable Seacoast Writers Association award for Best Nonfiction. He also wrote How … [Read more...]
THE BEAST I LOVED: A Battered Woman’s Desperate Struggle To Survive
Before abuse hot lines and safe houses were widespread, June Briand shot four bullets into her husband’s head and was sentenced to fifteen years to life. This is the shocking true story of survival—and the intense bond June shared with her pathologically violent husband, a monster who physically and sexually tortured, degraded and dominated her so relentlessly that she refused to believe he was dead even after she killed him. What kind of … [Read more...]
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BETTER OFF DEAD: A Sordid True Story of Sex, Sin and Murder From New York Times Bestselling Author Michael Fleeman
A frustrated, unhappy wife. Her much younger, attentive lover. A husband who degrades and ignores her. The stage is set for a love-triangle murder that shatters family illusions and lays bare a quiet family community's secret world of sex, sin and swinging. BETTER OFF DEAD, the latest true crime book from New York Times bestselling author Michael Fleeman, strips away the pleasant veneer of the Silver Lakes neighborhood in California's high … [Read more...]
Michael Withey, Author of “Summary Execution: The Seattle Assassinations of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes”
Hello, my name is Michael Withey and I’m a Seattle-based human rights lawyer and first-time author. Writing Summary Execution has long been my “bucket list” of one. I have dedicated my career to fighting for the “little guy” against powerful interests and to protecting constitutional rights, civil rights, and human rights. In June of 1981, I was a crusading young lawyer when my best friends Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo were murdered in a … [Read more...]
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