Review of Death of an Angel (Mass Market Paperback)

This book manages to rise above the dizzying plethora of paperback murder stories that seem to be inundating the literary market recently, primarily because of Davis's skill as a writer and the frankly fascinating and very sad story that he tells. Although I have certain reservations with Davis's style, I still must take my hat off to him and commend him for what he has accomplished in this book. It's the rare crime writer who can keep the reader's interest going through the often interminable police investigation that follows murder and the resulting courtroom scenes, but Davis skillfully manages this rare feat and keeps the suspense level high until the bitter end. He's also able to keep an often complex and intricate story moving briskly along and never does the narrative lose its inherently compelling qualities. You'll be hard put to find a more repugnant murderer than Christopher Hightower and your heart will break as you read how he cold-bloodedly wipes out an entire family for his own sociopathic ends. My only complaint with the book is that Mr. Davis makes little attempt to explain how a Christopher Hightower comes to be the warped, malignant mockery of a human being that he ultimately became, relying instead on superficial platitudes about the nature of good and evil and shallow moralizing. Perhaps this is unfair to Mr. Davis, expecting him to make sense of a dilemma that continues to perplex and plague civilized society. It's all well and good to speculate about the banality of evil and the perhaps intrinsic malevolence that resides in the human character but it brings us no closer to understanding what it is that causes one person to undergo the psychic and spiritual metamorphosis, the repellent transformation and disintegration of soul, that renders them capable of causing such a harrowing and haunting tragedy as the Brendel murders. How can a man from such a relatively normal background as Hightower's seems to have been become so callously capable of nearly unimaginable barbarity? Does such hideous evil emerge fully-formed from a vacuum? These are questions we need to ask ourselves as our murder rate continues to rise and become ever more appalling, and our civility as a race continues to diminish. Mr. Davis doesn't answer these questions (it's doubtful that anyone can) but it's imperative that we address them.

Product Description
When prosperous lawyer Ernest Brendel mysteriously disappeared, along with his wife Alice, and their 8-year-old daughter Emily, friends in the close-knit Rhode Island neighborhood worried that family had been kidnapped. It would be agonizing months in a massive FBI search before they would know the heartbreaking truth.

The shaken community began to lose hope that the family would ever be found alive. Their worst fears were confirmed when heavy rains from a tropical storm uncovered Alice and Ernest Brendel's badly decomposed bodies--shot with a giant crossbow, strangled, and buried in the quiet woods of the town. Lying under her mother's corpse was little Emily's lifeless body, now a silent witness to her killer's shocking identity.

Like a hand pointing from the grave, the evidence led authorities to one of Ernest Brendel's closest and most trusted friends. What Ernest couldn't have known was that Christopher Hightower--a Sunday school teacher and respected member of the community--was a psychotic liar obsessed with greed, jealousy, and murderous revenge.


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Review of Rope: The Twisted Life and Crimes of Harvey Glatman (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read a number of true crime books in the past. None of them has dealt with a character as strange as Harvey Glatman, a mousy little guy from New York who came to California to meet girls, and wound up tying them up and strangling them. It's a curious, strange story, and it'd be interesting if it weren't for Newton's obsession with getting every last fact before the reader.

The book includes a summary of each of the killings. Glatman essentially kidnapped the women, tied them up, photographed them, raped them, then strangled them, abandoning the bodies in the desert to the south or east of L.A. He was caught when his fourth victim fought back, and managed to get his gun away from him, running away right into the arms of a Highway Patrol officer getting off work. All of the facts of the crimes as far as the author can discern them, Glatman's trial (he pled guilty and requested execution as soon as possible) and subsequent execution, and even the disposition of the victim's personal effects, are covered in detail. It's fascinating for the most part, if a bit much.

The problem comes in the author's decision to go beyond that. He spends a chapter not only going over the killer's early life in New York, but briefly surveying the history of Jews in New York City (Glatman was Jewish and from N.Y.C.). The author seems obsessed with displaying a command of the study of serial killers which would no doubt be interesting in a survey of them. Unfortunately, given that the book is supposedly about Glatman, it's mostly distracting. To make things worse, the killings themselves are described in detail, mostly reconstructed from the interrogations the police did after Glatman was arrested. Several chapters later, the interrogations are repeated almost word for word, so that you go over the same material again. It's a bit much.

Lastly, remember that I said Glatman took photographs? They were apparently destroyed after his conviction (some of them were nude) but a newspaper in Denver got some of the milder ones and published them, and Newton reprints them. They're nothing compared with modern pornography: women bound wearing clothes, with frightened expressions on their faces. The idea that the fear is real, though, is a bit unsettling, and some may be squeamish about this.

All in all this is a solid true crime book, if a bit heavy on the detail and extraneous material.

Product Description

JOURNEY TO THE KILLING GROUND

It was an age of innocence -- an era of carhops, poodle skirts, and hula hoops. It was also a time of terror. In 1958, a man named Harvey Glatman sped along the Santa Ana freeway out of L.A., headed to the desert with his "date" huddled in the passenger seat beside him. In his pockets Harvey had a gun and a length of rope. Drunk on power, arousal, and rage, Harvey also had a plan. And beneath the desert stars, by the light of the moon, he carried out his ordeal of unimaginable cruelty -- using his body, a camera, and his rope....

Months later, after one of his inhuman attacks went awry, Harvey's torture killings were described to a shocked and silent California courtroom. For decades, these infamous deeds would inspire television and movie plots. But until now, there has been no definitive account of the forces that drove one of America's most legendary serial killers. And never before has it been explained why, for Harvey Glatman, his crimes weren't about killing, raping, and torturing at all -- they were all about the rope.

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Review of Mom Said Kill (Pinnacle True Crime) (Paperback)

I have been criticized for writing what appears to be book reports and spoiling murder mysteries. Unfortunately, the true crime books are all about real people and the truth is out there regarding the circumstances of their crimes. The title says a lot about the Barbara Opel case who is also a prime candidate for the worst mother in the world regarding the Jerry Heineman case in Everett, Washington. Burl Barer is an excellent true crime reporter who prefers to write about crimes that don't always get much media attention. Maybe because this group of characters would be more appropriate on the Jerry Springer Show than anywhere else.
Barbara Opel is quite a manipulator, con-artist, and quie frightening to her own children. Her case is one on par with Diane Downs easily involving a murder for rich scheme which backfired so badly that it is almost laughable except for the victims involved.
Barbara Opel robbed her children of a lot more than just a normal, stable childhood and loving environment. She brought them into this world to use them in her own schemes for quick money no matter who it hurts.
After all, she allowed her thirteen year old daughter, Heather, to have sex in her own home with a seventeen year old boy who she recruited for her crime.
This case reminds me of the Gertrude Baniszewski case in Indiana where she used the neighborhood kids to torture her young boarder. Fortunately, Barbara Opel was never bright enough to carry out the scheme herself but used her own children which should have been taken away by the state children's services long before they were harmed not only physically, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually by their own mother.
I recommend reading this true crime book because most of the books out there are repetitive and redundant with the same stories that you are actually comparing which writer is better at grasping the whole story.
Burl Barer doesn't write about those cases but writes about the familiar environment of Washington state.

Product Description
When Jerry Heimann's son arrived at his father's home in Everett, Washington, he found his grandmother, an Alzheimer's patient, alone in the house, starving and dehydrated. His father was missing. The furniture was gone. Within hours, police realised that Jerry's live-in housekeeper, Barbara Opel, had robbed him and fled. But where was Jerry?The next morning, Opel's 11-year-old son led police to Jerry's body. Soon, stunned detectives were getting confessions from a rage tag group of teens and pre-teens. At Barbara Opel's command, they had set upon Jerry Heimann with knives, fists, and baseball bats - and battered him to death.From 13-year-old Heather, who frantically stabbed Jerry after having sex with her boyfriend, to 7-year-old Tiffany, who helped clean up the blood, this is the horrifying true story of how a mother turned her children and their friends into stone cold killers - and then rewarded them for their crime...

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Review of Mother's Day (Hardcover)

I read this book years and years ago. It's still one of my favorite true crime books. I can't believe the horror the kids had to go through just to live in Teressa's twisted world and the scars it left on her children into adulthood. Upon reading it, I had nightmares for a while. This is the only book that has had that much of an impact on me, I still find it amazing. The author, I think, does a fantastic job with detailing scenery, dialogue, etc. It's a wonderful book. Too bad it's true...

Product Description
A MODERN MURDEROUS MEDEA...
In June of l985, while her teenage sons held their half-sister down, Theresa Cross beat her l9-year-old daughter Sheila unconscious and then stuffed her into a 2' X 2' storage locker. After three days, the knocking, kicking, and cries stopped. Theresa and her sons dumped the girl's body in the desolate High Sierras....
The summer before, Theresa had dug a bullet out of her daughter Suesan's chest with a paring knife. When Suesan failed to recover (without benefit of doctors or hospital), Theresa and her two sons drove the delirious girl to the mountains , doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire....
For nearly nine years, Theresa Cross Knorr got away with murder, until her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Graves, finally found a cop who believed the incredible story of her two murdered sisters.
That story is all here, the shocking life of a woman whose violence, jealousy, rage, and domination led to a brutally heinous crime of ruthless ferocity.


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