Bill? Or Kevin? And Why?

 "Powerful... the complex plot and affecting characters--especially gritty  survivor Ellie and her basset hound Bump--make for some nail-bitingly tense thrills." 

                                                         --Publishers Weekly

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: What a fabulous night! The talented Joanna Schaffhausen launched her book THE VANISHING SEASON to applause and adulation at Brookline Booksmith—surrounded by family and friends and colleagues. 
Her book is getting absolute raves. Raves!  And she signed a special Jungle Red edition that we’re giving away today!

After  last night, Joanna has got to be  still floating.

But, like every good crime fiction author, she is fascinated by—the weird. The deeply weird.

(And hurray! She's giving a copy of THE VANISHING SEASON  to one lucky commenter!)

JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN: When crime writers look to real-life murder and mayhem for inspiration, we pounce on the deeply weird stories. Most murderers are identified quickly because it’s obvious who the culprit is. But every so often the police come up against a criminal with unusual cunning or creativity, the kind that gives you chills even as your jaw hangs open at the ingenuity involved. Here are just a few true-crime tales that initially baffled the police…including one that remains frustratingly unsolved.

Killer Competition: David Moffitt saw blood red when his girlfriend, Angie Ver Huel, dumped him in favor of a new love, Justin Michael. While normal people in this situation might play sad love songs and sob in their diaries, Moffitt chose a different path: he bided his time for months, working out a plan for murder. Shortly before Angie and Justin’s scheduled wedding, Moffit broke into the couple’s house and shot and killed Justin while he lay sleeping in bed. What made Moffitt diabolically clever was that he also framed another one of Angie’s ex-boyfriends for the crime. He forged a fake ID and bought the murder weapon under the other man’s name. He might have gotten away with it except for one small detail—in his haste to flee the scene the night of the murder, Moffitt crashed his car six miles from the victim’s house, tipping off police to his involvement.

Out for Blood: A young Canadian woman woke up in her doctor’s office with the distinct feeling she’d just been raped. The doctor had given her a sedative that made her memory hazy, but Candice had DNA in her underwear as proof of the crime. However, when the authorities drew blood from Dr. John Schneeberger’s arm, it did not match the sample from Candice and thus he went free. Refusing to believe the DNA results, Candice pursued him doggedly even as public opinion turned against her. Due to her persistence, the police retested Schneeberger a year later, and again, the DNA sample did not match. Only when he was eventually arrested for a second rape did the cops learn how fiendishly Schneeberger had outwitted the DNA test. He had stolen a patient’s blood, put it into a plastic tube, and surgically implanted the tube into his arm so that it resembled a vein. When the police tested Schneeberger’s DNA from his hair and saliva, they were a match to the DNA from Candice.

All in the Family. In this fascinating case, cops have narrowed the suspects to just two people, but they cannot winnow it any further. Diane Kyne was home one afternoon with just her husband, Bill, and her adult son, Kevin, when she was strangled to death. Both men called 911 to report the murder at roughly the same time, and each claimed the other one had killed Diane. The police arrived to find Bill and Kevin grappling on the lawn, accusing each other of Diane’s murder. Forensic investigation was unable to determine which one is telling the truth. The pair disliked each other intensely, so it seems unlikely they killed Diane together.

The son, Kevin, has a wicked temper. He had made threats in the past and has a record of domestic violence. Indeed, Diane had kicked Kevin out of the house before, but she always took him back. Rumor had it she was considering removing him again, possibly for good.  But it was Bill’s DNA, not Kevin’s, which was found on Diane’s neck. Bill also seemed to have the stronger motive for murdering Diane: he stood to collect $750,000 in insurance money after her death. 

More intriguingly, Bill had already collected $250,000 following the strange death of his first wife.  The police eventually arrested Kevin for Diane’s murder, and he was initially convicted and sentenced to life in prison. At a second trial, however, the jury ruled Kevin not guilty. Prosecutors are reluctant to retry the case a third time.

What do you think? Was it husband Bill or son Kevin? What’s the strangest true-crime tale you’ve ever heard?

HANK: And are you all as deeply devoted to MINDHUNTER as I am? Tonight they talked about discovering the “internal logic” of a killer. An entirely new concept in the 60’s. 

SO: Bill or Kevin? And why?

And a copy of the riveting THE VANISHING SEASON to one lucky commenter!

THE VANISHING SEASON

Ellery Hathaway was tortured by a serial killer when she was a teenager, but rescued before he could kill her. Fourteen years later, she has a new identity in sleepy town where a bike theft makes the newspapers. But locals have been disappearing, and Ellery has been receiving strange messages hinting that the culprit knows what happened to her, and that she might well be next on the list. Desperate, she contacts the one person she knows will believe her...the FBI man who rescued her from a killer’s closet all those years ago.

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Joanna Schaffhausen is a scientific editor who spends her days immersed in research on potential new therapies for cancer, addiction, and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. Previously, she worked as an editorial producer for ABC News, where she advised and wrote for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and daughter. The Vanishing Season is her first novel.

Great Mysteries of Our Time

INGRID THOFT

We’re all mystery lovers:  We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t!  Most of the mystery readers I meet also enjoy the puzzle of real life mysteries.  It’s not unusual to find kindred spirits at mystery conferences who also love Forty-Eight Hours and Dateline.  

Some mysteries will remain mysteries during my lifetime, and that's okay. But there are some questions to which I would love to get the answers. Here are some of them:

Amelia Earhart

What really happened to Amelia Earhart? Did she crash on an island and live for many years among the native population? Did her plane crash into the Pacific, the mystery of her disappearance far outlasting the length of her natural life? And did you know that she was married to George “G.P.” Putnam of the publishing house? The very house that publishes my books? Amelia was thirty-nine at the time of her disappearance. Can you imagine the things she would have accomplished had she lived?

D.B. Cooper
Living in the pacific northwest, I’ve found that D.B. Cooper has particularly captured the imaginations of local mystery fans.  On November 24, 1971, a man boarded a plane in Portland, OR, and during the flight to Seattle, WA, made a ransom demand.  The flight landed, refueled and took on board the requested $200,000 and four parachutes.  All the passengers with the exception of four members of the flight crew were released.  The flight took off again, and somewhere over the Washington/Oregon border, the hijacker jumped out of the plane with the money.

Fragments of the money were found in 1980, but otherwise, no remains or evidence have been discovered.  D.B. Cooper wasn’t actually the name of the hijacker who purchased his ticket using the alias “Dan Cooper.”  A man named Dan Cooper was cleared early on in the investigation, but a reporter misheard his name and from then on, the hijacker was known as D.B. Cooper.  Did he survive the jump out of the plane?  If so, where did he go?  If not, where’s the rest of the money?

Kryptos

This is a mystery that’s new to me and one that was made by design, literally.  Outside of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, there stands a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn.  There are four encrypted messages on the sculpture, three of which have been solved.  The fourth remains a mystery and a source of much speculation in the worldwide community of cryptographers. Kryptos is featured in Dan Brown’s novel “The Lost Symbol.”  This is a mystery that will perhaps be solved; Sanborn has given two clues to the "New York Times" to help puzzle fanatics solve the fourth message.

So what really happened to Jonbenét Ramsey, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman?  Is Jimmy Hoffa really buried under the west end zone in Giants' stadium?  Will Malaysia Airlines flight #370 ever be found?  

What about you? Which mysteries would you love to see solved in your lifetime?

The Truth about TRUTH BE TOLD

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  It’s “what we’re writing” week!  And I am deeply in the midst of (you heard it here first) WHAT YOU SEE, the next Jake and Jane novel.

I am also deeply into author-crazy.  TRUTH BE TOLD comes out October 7 (you may hear a bit more about that around these parts), and the author-crazy comes from knowing the reviews are about to start.  And I’ve just received advance notice of two of them…and I’ll reveal (!!!) below.

But first.  There’s a question that some authors loathe...but I love. And that is: where do your stories come from? Some authors answer with caustic throw-aways—Schenectady, says one very famous guy. The grocery, says another.

But I think “where do your stories come from” is fascinating. I recently heard Jacqueline Winspear talk about her new book, and she has an amazing book-birth story.  Hallie, too. And Susan.

And as for TRUTH BE TOLD, (And oh, did I tell you it it’s a Library Journal Editor's Pick? Whoo hoo!) I can tell you exactly where it came from.

It’s a puzzle of four parts.

The first? My husband is a criminal defense attorney. When we first met, I asked: Have you ever had a murder case where the defendant was convicted, but you still thought they were innocent?" His eyes softened a bit, and then he said: “Yes.”   The man was charged with murder in the death of a young woman—the prosecution said he had lured her to a forest, and tied her to a tree.  

The first time Jonathan represented the man, the case ended in a hung jury. The state brought the charges again, and again Jonathan represented him, and again, a hung jury.

The state brought the charges again, and the defendant—well, let’s just say he decided he wanted to handle the case his own way this time. Jonathan disagreed.  The man got a different lawyer. He was convicted, and is still in prison.

Jonathan told me he still, to this day, thinks the man is innocent.

Hmmm.  Idea.

Another puzzle piece? Another of Jonathan’s cases. A man in prison, incarcerated with a life sentence for shaking a baby to death, recently confessed to a cold-case murder. It’s very unlikely that he actually did it—so why would he confess? 

Hmmm. Idea.

Another puzzle piece.  We recently did a big story on abandoned homes in Boston. They are all places the banks have foreclosed on, where the owners have been evicted, and the houses are now empty. All are for sale.  Many of them are neglected, with broken windows and overgrown lawns. But some are in good shape.  While I was interviewing the head of Boston’s Inspectional Services Department about this, I began to wonder. What could be going on inside those forgotten empty houses?

Hmmmm.  Idea.

I also thought about the people who had been evicted from those homes. People who’d gotten mortgages from banks with lots of money, but who through some failure of their lives, some catastrophe or disaster, some wrong decision or bad luck had not been able to keep up the payments.  Wouldn’t there be something that could have ben done to prevent that? If a banker-type really cared about their customers, wouldn’t there be something that could be done to keep people out of foreclosure?

Hmmmm.  Idea.

And finally, I was sitting at the computer in my TV station office, writing a story, and thinking about why I do what I do as a reporter.  It’s making history, I decided. It’s creating the record of what happened in our lives, the comings and goings, that issues and the solutions, the documentation of how we live.  And people believe it, right? What’s on TV and in the newspapers becomes a resource by which all is remembered and relied on.

And then I thought—what if some reporter decided not to tell the truth? Not big discoverable lie, but simply—little things. A sound bite, a reaction, a quote.  Who would know? What difference might that make?  And what would happen when the truth was finally told?

Hmmm.  Idea.

And in the way we all do as authors, by spinning and polishing and twisting and turning, and shooting it full of a lot of adrenaline and a little romance, I got the key elements of TRUTH BE TOLD:

  
 A mortgage banker turned Robin Hood decides to manipulate bank records to keep people out of foreclosure, a murder victim is found in a foreclosed home, a man confesses to the unsolved Lilac Sunday murder, and a reporter makes stuff up.   

And when it all comes together in the end: TRUTH BE TOLD.

And now you know exactly where it came from.

Reviews? So far—so fabulous.  Publisher’s Weekly says:

"Smart, well-paced…Ryan cleverly ties the plot together, offers surprising but believable plot twists, and skillfully characterizes the supporting cast."

And whew, Kirkus says:

"Foreclosure fraud entwines with a 20-year-old murder case in the latest knotty, engrossing mystery-thriller by an award-winning Boston journalist...  Ryan seasons her mix with vivid Boston local color and caustic observations on new media—which one would expect from a journalist who's won even more awards for her TV reporting than she has for her mysteries. Ryland and Brogan are such a cute couple that you wonder how long it'll be before somebody makes a TV series out of them." 

And here’s a tiny bit from Chapter 2.

                                                        Chapter 2

          “Why would he confess if he didn’t do it?” Detective Jake Brogan peered through the smoky one-way glass at the guy slumped in the folding chair of Boston Police Department’s interrogation room E. What Jane would probably call “skeevy,” too-long hair scraggling over one ear; ratty jacket; black T-shirt; tired tan pants. Thin. Late thirties, at least, more like forty. How old would Gordon Thorley have been in 1994, when Carley Marie Schaefer was killed? Late teens, at most. Around the same age as Carley. “This guy Thorley just shows up here at HQ and insists he’s guilty? You ever seen that? Heard of that?”

 “Let’s get some lunch. Ask questions later.” DeLuca jammed his empty paper coffee cup into the overflowing metal trash bin in the hall outside the interrogation room. “Sherrey will get all we need, give us his intake notes after. Could be a bird in the hand.”

“Not exactly ‘in the hand,’” Jake said. “If he’s a whack job. There’s also that old ‘innocent till proven guilty’ thing.”

HANK: So, Reds and readers, do you like to know where a story came from? Or would you rather believe it’s all a product of the author’s imagination?

And pssst. I have an ARC of TRUTH BE TOLD for one commenter!