More Fanciful Than Fiction

RHYS on True Crime Tuesday. We mystery writers are sometimes accused of writing things that are hard to believe when we try to create clever, complicated murders. We are told that in real life crimes are simple and brutal and lack the cleverness that has made every mystery novel since Sherlock Holmes such fun to read and figure out.

Then low and behold comes a crime on the news that rivals anything we can dream up--a serial killer who targets women with the same first and last initials. Now to me that belongs in the realm of fiction. What man would take the trouble to search out females with the same initials? What a lot of work to find a woman of suitable age, easy to kill and with the same first and last initials.
But apparently it's true. Here is the report on the case:

A Nevada man's arrest in a string of cold-case deaths in California has authorities investigating whether he's connected to other unsolved killings across the country, including the "Double Initial Murders" of three girls in upstate New York in the early 1970s.

Joseph Naso of Reno, Nev., was being held on suspicion of murder Tuesday in the deaths of four women whose bodies were found across Northern California from 1977 to 1994

Like the victims in the "Double Initial" case, all four California women had matching initials for their first and last names: Carmen Colon, Roxene Roggasch, Pamela Parsons and Tracy Tafoya.

In another startling similarity, one of the New York victims also was named Carmen Colon.

Those revelations prompted New York state police to investigate whether more than just coincidence connects Naso, 77, to the "Double Initial Murders," in which one 10-year-old and two 11-year-old girls were abducted, raped and strangled in the Rochester area, in one of the region's most baffling unsolved crimes.

Meanwhile, a separate task force is looking into whether any other cold cases in the U.S. can be linked to Naso, a professional photographer who often traveled the country for work and may have killed in other states, Nevada law enforcement officials said at a news conference Tuesday.

Naso was arrested in South Lake Tahoe late Monday after being released from El Dorado County Jail, where he was serving time on an unrelated probation violation. Authorities said he was on probation for a 2009 grocery store theft in California when a random search of his Reno, Nev., home in April 2010 turned up guns and ammunition.

The search also uncovered evidence that helped link him to the Northern California killings, said Nevada authorities, who soon after launched a task force to look into cold cases possibly connected to Naso.

"We think there are others out there we haven't discovered yet," Chris Perry, acting director of the Nevada Department of Public Safety, told reporters Tuesday. "Typically when you are talking about a person who has killed more than once, this doesn't stop."

You'll note that this man was only discovered by accident, after an arrest for a parole violation. Our detectives would have found him more swiftly. And don't accuse us again of creating fanciful crimes!

Are You a Hoarder?

RHYS: Later this week I'll be interviewing Mary Jane Maffini, who writes about a professional organizer, so I'm painfully aware of the clutter in my own life. My office looks--well--lived in. Our house looks equally well lived-in. Our children have made threats along the lines of "don't you dare die and leave us with all this stuff."

The problem is that we're both hoarders. I'm not as bad as John, who keeps every letter he wrote to the local water board and even the programs from a track meet during his prep school days. But I do keep a copy of everything I've ever written, boxes of my kids' art work from kindergarten on, my college thesis, German and French literature I'll never read again, plus boxes of photos that never found their way into albums, even old vinyl LPs.

I come from a family who never saved anything. My mother threw away anything that was no longer useful. I still lament my lovely doll house she gave away one Christmas (It was to a family who had just lost their father, so I couldn't say anything,but she didn't ask me first). My parents would change their furniture when the whim took them. They even changed houses more frequently than most sane people. So things meant nothing to them.

But they do to me. When I've been lying awake at night, I worry over what items to save first in a fire. I have a big project to put all of my favorite family photos onto DVDs and to store them somewhere safe. But I confess I do feel overwhelmed by a plethora of possessions. One of the reasons I like going to our condo in Arizona is that it's simple and contains no unnecessary stuff. Other folk our age are downsizing. I know we should be thinking of it too, but I can't see it happening in the near future. And my linen closet actually looked like this after my new cleaning lady got at it!

So which of our Jungle Reds are fellow hoarders? Who are our neat freaks?

I'm hoping Mary Jane will give me some tips on how to throw stuff away.

JULIA: I'm not neat - far from it! - but I'm ruthless about tossing unused items. I suspect it's the legacy of growing up as an army brat, always moving. If it hadn't been played with/worn/looked at in the past year, out it went. Ross, on the other hand--don't get me started. If not for me, he'd be living like those eccentrics you read about, barricaded in with towers of newspapers.

DEB: One of the problems is that everyone's idea of too much stuff is relative. I think Rick has too much stuff--he wonders why on earth anyone needs four sets of china and all those BOOKS . . . But I find that too much clutter (at least by my standards) drives me crazy, and as I work at home, I find it distracting. I'm having a stay-at-home year, and one of my goals is to purge some of the junk and organize those closets!!!!!! It just makes me feel better and function better if I can find things, and if I can keep things clean and neat.

I'm very interested in hearing how a professional organizer deals with the emotional issues involved in helping people downsize.

JAN: I'm a binge and purge girl. I have a hard time throwing stuff away, and it collects, but then I go on a tear and will throw it all away whether it needs to go or not. But Deb, you are so right, It's much easier to throw my husband's useless junk away then my own junk which never seems quite as useless.

HANK: Oh, heavens, yes. Deb, can you please come over? I have...clothes. Yeesh. I've given away lots, but I could use someone tough. And my press clippings, of course, must have. And books. Got to go. GOT TO! We called in a person to go into our basement..he had a big big dumpster and everything just went into that. It was terrific. Nothing better than getting rid of stuff--it's so empowering.

When Jonathan and I merged households, I got rid of LOTS of his clothes. That was easy. I called it his "southwestern collection." You don't wanna know.

I have a rule that I can't buy any new clothes unless I get rid of three things I have. That kind of works.

ROBERTA: His southwestern collection--that totally cracks me up Hank!

JULIA: Pictures! Pictures!

ROBERTA: John had a dreadful polyester warm-up suit that he wore to play tennis a couple of times a week. I overlooked it while we dated, but then it got the heave-ho. Of course then he tried to throw out my aqua sweatpants--not so fast Mister!

RHYS: And my John still has bush jackets that he wore in Indonesia. He used to show up at the kids' swim meets and embarrass the heck out of them!

HALLIE: My husband has clothes he wore in junior high. Really. I have a particularly effective hissy fit where I declare that I will not will not will not end up married to the male equivalent of a bag lady. Sometimes I cry. If I get het up enough it usually works and a few things go out. Or moved around so I'll think they went.

I am so not a hoarder. One set of china... er, stoneware. All I collect are feathers found on hikes and Chinese fortunes.

RHYS: I'm afraid I collect things too: rocks, shells, antique paperweights, dolls from around the world, and John inherited his parents lovely antique things--Chinese plates, English swords..you name it,we've got it. And they are lovely but I've no idea what will happen to them when we die.

ROSEMARY: Husband's stuff is much more annoying than mine. And this from a woman who probably owns 100 tablecloths, 40 vases, 5 sets of china, gardening magazines from 10 years ago and more cookie cutters and tartlet pans than Martha Stewart. And bowls of shells and coral. But I'm not a hoarder. I love them all.
And I do try to donate or throw away something every time I bring something new into the house.

Jonathan as a cowboy? I don't see it. But then Bruce had a jacket he referred to as his Italian jacket - I thought it made him look like a sportcaster from the 70s. I was so happy when we said ciao to that one.

JULIA: Ross had a disco outfit when we met in the early eighties. He had also saved all his wide-collared shirts. Sadly, they somehow got lost when we moved him from Washington, DC to Maine. These things do happen.

ROSEMARY: Let me ask a question ...uh...how many sets of sheets do people have?

HANK: Ro, I love you, I really do. And I ain't answering that one. Although I,too, would be interested to hear from others.

JULIA: Two per bed. Our house is almost 200 years old, and closet space is very limited. We can store a ton up in the attic our out in the barn, but that doesn't help when it comes to bedding, does it?

RHYS: No, not into sheets. Just enough to change every bed. How about shoes, Hank dearest? Or black suits? How many black suits does one person need?
And now let's hear from you? What is essential in your life that would be called hoarding to others? Come on fess up now!

On the Late Great American Road Trip

Because Blogger problems interrupted Thursday's terrific post by Ellen Byerrum, I've reposted it today.

JAN: I met Ellen Byerrum at the wonderful Festival of Mystery (MysteryLovers Bookshop) in Oakmont, PA, where I think the seating was alphabetical. On another "road trip" we had dinner in the LAX airport. (at least I think that was the airport.) She is as a former Washington, D.C., news reporter, and a playwright, and she also holds a Virginia private investigator's registration. Her Crime of Fashion mysteries star Lacey Smithsonian, is a reluctant fashion reporter in Washington D.C., "The City Fashion Forgot." The latest in the series, Shot Through Velvet, won a starred review by Publisher's Weekly.

Today, Ellen has agreed to talk a little about road trips -- and the one that brought her inspiration in her new book.

The Late Great American Road Trip

by Ellen Byerrum

With the price of gasoline soaring out of sight, I fear that the Great American Road Trip may be endangered. It makes me nostalgic, even as I hit the highway to Pittsburgh for a mystery gig. I have no guilt, but I wonder how many more road trips lie ahead, or are even possible in the future. But the summer is close at hand and the road calls to me.

The road trip has long been celebrated by writers. Walt Whitman was one of the earliest Americans to wax glowingly of the open road. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer took their version of a road trip—on a raft. Jack Kerouac kept journals from his road trips which were compressed into On the Road, that valentine to the Beat Generation and the open highway. Simon and Garfunkel sang about hitting the road by bus in “America.”

Now, a road trip is not the hateful daily commute on streets designed by a committee of deranged monkeys. A road trip must be taken beyond the Beltway, out of the city, far from the overwhelming traffic. And I-95, the Devil’s Highway, doesn’t even count in this equation.

On one road trip I discovered a town I’ll call “Black Martin,” where I toured the last velvet factory in Virginia during its last week in operation. Black Martin, Virginia, was the kind of small town, far off the main drag, that you might never notice. The town had an air of past glory that mirrored the past-its-prime factory where a hundred workers had just lost their jobs. It was there that I learned how velvet was woven and cut and dyed. No other fabric is so luxurious, or compels you to touch it and sink your fingers into its deep soft nap the way velvet does. Velvet is the fabric of royalty, of wealth, of Christmas dresses, of evening gowns, of tufted sofas, and even of theater curtains. Velvet lines jewelry boxes, earring cards, and also—coffins. The dying factory and the town inspired me to write my most recent Crime of Fashion mystery, Shot Through Velvet, in which my reporter heroine Lacey Smithsonian witnesses the demise of a velvet factory and the discovery of a dead body in a dye vat. All she wanted was an interview and a road trip. She got much more. But road trips are like that. They bring you surprises that often linger long after you’ve parked the car back in your own driveway,

The desire for a road trip can strike at any time, most often when you’re working. On deadline. You just want to jump out of your office and into a car and drive. I remember clearly that itchy feeling grabbing me one day when I was working as a reporter, covering hearings in Washington, D.C., at the Labor Department on an OSHA ergonomics regulation. I was risking a hind-end sprain from sitting on their non-ergonomic chairs and a mind sprain from listening to business attorneys who were turning intellectual cartwheels trying to prove there were no such things as work-related musculoskeletal disorders. At lunchtime, I escaped a few blocks away to the National Building Museum, where there was a mesmerizing exhibit on the American Road Trip.

The exhibit began with an old commercial (from the era when Dinah Shore roamed the earth) exhorting you to “see the USA in a Chevrolet.” There were maps and photos and the full-size interior of a funky old motel room. My mind was pumping the words, Road Trip, Road Trip, Road Trip. Needless to say, I was fantasizing about hotwiring the nearest car and hitting the highway, getting as far away as I could get from the OSHA hearings. Sadly, my skill set does not extend to hotwiring cars. I returned to the hearing with only one thing on my mind, and it wasn’t ergonomics. I dreamed of escape! In a car! The open road, my foot on the accelerator, my troubles squashed flat beneath the wheels, and the wind in my hair. When the opportunity for travel comes, I don’t take it for granted. I seize the moment, and the wheel.

The miles go by with the radio on. I sing along to the music; my husband doesn’t mind.

The miles go by, and my thoughts are quiet, story ideas rumbling around in the back of my mind, complete with plots, characters, action and new settings, perhaps near the hot springs I just passed.

The miles go by and I wonder what people do in these small towns. Who lives in that house? What do they do out here? What about that abandoned house? Where does that side road go?

The miles go by, and with each green mile I feel a deeper satisfaction, a deeper sense of quiet, a deeper exhale.

The miles go by. If you see me on the road, be sure to wave.

To learn more about Ellen or check out her books, go to her Website at http://www.ellenbyerrum.com.