Tag Archives: True Crime

DR. DEATH—THE KILLER SURGEON

Dr. Death sounds like a horror story title. In the case of Christopher Daniel Duntsch, it’s a true horror story. Christopher Duntsch was an American doctor and specialized as a spinal surgeon—a deadly spinal surgeon—who killed three of his patients and maimed 31 others during a two-year span. Today, Duntsch is serving a life imprisonment term in a Texas prison, and he’s now the subject of an NBC Peacock netstreaming series featuring some big-name, A-List actors like Alex Baldwin, Christian Slater, and Kelsey Grammer. The series is rightly titled “Dr. Death.”

The story of this psychopath with a scalpel is shocking. But what’s equally shocking is how the “medical system” allowed this monstrous medical menace to operate on completely innocent and critically ill people. It was no secret in medical circles that Duntsch was a clear and present danger to patients. In fact, it was peers within the system who nicknamed him Dr. Death, but few did anything about it.

The Dr. Death tragic story is that of major systemic failure. It’s a common theme in true crime stories, and there’s nothing truer than the tragic damage done by Christopher Duntsch to unwitting patients. It’s a story of incompetence. It’s a story of cover-ups. And it’s a story of corporate greed within the medical business community.

To understand how Christopher Duntsch turned into Dr. Death, it’s necessary to know his background. Let’s first look at Duntsch’s upbringing and his training before examining the carnage created by turning Dr. Death—The Killer Surgeon—loose in the hospital O.R.

Christopher Duntsch was born in 1971 in Montana. He was raised in Memphis, Tennessee in a stable, middle-class, evangelical Christian home. Duntsch was an average student and sports player. However, Duntsch was driven in his football interest and, despite his lack of natural ability, he trained far harder than other players and made the college team when he enrolled at Colorado State University. One of his teammates later said, “Chris lacked talent but he worked harder than the rest of us.”

Duntsch carried this drive back to Memphis when he was accepted into medical school at Memphis State University. He completed the ambitious MD-PhD program then entered the neurosurgery residency program at the University of Tennessee. Following graduation as a doctor at U of T, Duntsch completed a spine fellowship at the Semmes-Murphy clinic in Memphis.

A later investigation determined Duntsch only juniored in around 100 minimal-invasive surgeries when the typical neurosurgeon completes 1,000 during their residency and before they’re considered competent to lead a surgery. Cracks were obvious during Duntsch’s training time which was plagued with drug use and a suspension period served in a rehab facility. One colleague later testified that Duntsch regularly used LSD and cocaine at night and then go to work performing spinal operations in the morning.

During his university years, Christopher Duntsch married Wendy Renee Young with whom he had two children. Duntsch also racked up a half-million in debt and a drug dependency. Then he formulated a fraudulent curriculum vitae. In a 12-page, single-spaced document, Christopher Duntsch looked eminently qualified as a neurosurgeon. One, of many, false claims was  stating he’d graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious doctorate in microbiology.

One of the reasons Duntsch focused on neurosurgery was its lucrative salary of approximately $600,000 per year. It’s also why so many medical facilities conveniently overlooked his background checks—neurosurgery was their most lucrative (ie profitable) division. Neurosurgeons were in short supply and corporate greed ultimately trumped patient safety while Christopher Duntsch preyed on poor people propped up by pools of money. A later investigation determined the average cost of a US spinal surgery exceeded $75,000 with much of that being profit for the hospital.

Duntsch’s first solo surgical employment was at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Plano, Texas. This was in 2011. He was under the watchful eye of a very experienced neurosurgeon, Dr. Randall Kirby, who was immediately suspicious of Duntsch’s surgical ability despite Duntsch’s boasting and alleged credentials. Dr. Kirby later testified that, “Dr. Duntsch had no business in the operating room, and he could not wield a scalpel.”

After five majorly botched operations, the hospital allowed Duntsch to resign rather than be fired. The later investigation learned the Baylor hospital administration feared Duntsch would win a wrongful dismissal lawsuit if forcibly dismissed that could cost the institution millions of dollars. This deal was devastating to future Duntsch patients at other facilities because the hospital could not report Dr. Duntsch to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) which kept easy-access records of flagged problematic physicians.

Christopher Duntsch escaped what should have been mandatory NPDB registry for malpractice situations like:

  • Operating on the wrong part of the back leaving Kenneth Fennell in permanent chronic pain with debilitated mobility.
  • Cutting an unnecessary ligament in Lee Passmore as well as leaving stainless screws in incorrect positions and stripping the threads so they could not be removed.
  • Leaving bone fragments in Barry Morguloff that worked their way into his spinal cord leaving him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.
  • Causing Jerry Summers to suffer so much blood loss that he died from an infection from excessive transfusions.
  • Severing a major artery in Kelli Martin and causing her to bleed to death without adding blood during her surgery.

It was no secret at Baylor that Christopher Duntsch was dangerous. Many even wondered about his sanity. But that didn’t stop his medical career.

Dallas Medical Center hired Dr. Dirtsch as a temporary neurosurgeon in 2012. Almost immediately, hospital staff questioned Duntsch’s qualifications and suspected him of being under drug influence while operating. Some of Duntsch’s catastrophes in Dallas were:

  • Severing Floella Brown’s vertebral artery and allowing her to bleed to death without medical intervention.
  • Maiming a senior, Mary Efurd, and causing her excruciating pain—rated as ten-plus on a 1-10 scale.

Longtime neurosurgeon, Dr. Robert Henderson, performed a salvage surgery on Mary Efurd. Henderson realized what an awful job Duntsch did, and he began investigating Duntsch’s history which was now following him around. Dr. Henderson contacted Dr. Kirby of Plano. The two pacted to do their own investigation and put a stop to Dr. Death.

Because Duntsch was a temporary employee, he was immediately dismissed after these two incidents. And because Duntsch was a temporary employee, Dallas Medical Center was not required to report Dr. Duntsch to the NPDB. They didn’t, and Duntsch moved on to two more Texas medical facilities, the South Hampton Community Hospital in Dallas and the Legacy Surgery Center in Frisco.

By 2013, Christopher Duntsch’s behavior was getting bizarre. He caused a string of devastating surgeries and, thankfully, no one else died. However, many folks suffered significant and long-lasting trauma. University General Hospital in Dallas was Duntsch’s last operation. Here, he severed Jeff Glidewell’s esophagus and the neighboring artery. To stop the bleeding, Duntsch stuffed a surgical sponge down Glidewell’s throat and sewed him up with the sponge still inside. The poor man nearly choked before others intervened and removed it.

On June 26, 2013, the Texas Medical Board suspended Christopher Duntsch’s practitioner license. This was after appeals by Dr. Kirby and Dr. Henderson who told the board Duntsch was a sociopath and a clear and present danger to the citizens of Texas. The board slowly investigated with most of its members not believing that any medical doctor could be this bad and incompetent. They found out otherwise and revoked Duntsch’s license on December 6, 2013.

Meanwhile, Kirby and Henderson lobbied the Dallas DA to file charges against Duntsch. This investigation lumbered along at a tree’s pace. Duntsch then left town. He moved to Denver, declared bankruptcy for over $1 million in debt, got arrested for DUI and shoplifting, and was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation.

Private lawsuits began against some of the medical facilities that allowed Duntsch to operate. Finally, in July 2015, the DA filed six felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, five counts of aggravated assault causing bodily harm, and one count of injuring an elderly person—Mary Efurd. Murder charges weren’t laid as the DA felt the state couldn’t prove Duntch’s clear intent to kill anyone. This was despite a piece of evidence turned over by Duntsch’s now ex-wife—an email to her from him stating, “I am ready to leave the love and kindness and goodness and patience that I mix with everything else that I am and become a cold-blooded killer.”

After a 15-day trial, a Texas jury found Christopher Duntsch guilty on all counts. The Appeals Court upheld Duntsch’s sentence of life imprisonment. Currently, he’s held in Huntsville and won’t be eligible to apply for parole until 2045 when he’ll be 74 years old.

Duntsch’s conviction was precedent-setting. It was the first time in United States history that a medical practitioner was convicted of criminally harming their patients. In Duntsch’s defense, his lawyer told the jury, “The only way this happens is that the entire system failed the patients.”

Primum non nocere is a Latin phrase that means “First, do no harm”. This is med-school 101 along with taking the Hippocratic Oath. The oath is as old as the ancient Greeks and the modern version goes:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

  • I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
  • I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
  • I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
  • I will not be ashamed to say “I know not”, nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
  • I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
  • I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
  • I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
  • I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
  • If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

Christopher Duntsch—Dr. Death, The Killer Surgeon—had blatant disdain for primum non nocere. He took a scalpel to his Hippocratic Oath.

NEW CRIME BOOK – *AT THE CABIN* by GARRY RODGERS

Crime pays. That’s what I’ve learned as I publish Book 8 in my based-on-true-crime series — At The Cabin. This follows In The Attic (which was #1 on Amazon’s Crime Thriller Bestselling list), Under The Ground, From The Shadows, Beside The Road, On The Floor, Between The Bikers, and Beyond The Limits. 4 more are planned in this series, but they’ve suddenly braked while I explore an intriguing opportunity with the film industry — a net-streaming project titled City Of Danger. In the mean time, here’s the product description / blurb / jacket copy for At The Cabin.

——

What monstrous savage viciously attacked Bea Bonnell—inflicting fractures, burns, and excruciating torture on her? And why did he do it? Bea was seventy-four years old, for God’s sake, when this true crime story occurred.

Beatrice Bonnell and her husband, Stan Bonnell, spend their winters at the cabin they own on De Courcy Island in the mild southwest coast of British Columbia. Their De Courcy cabin is far south of their second home near Atlin, an equally small place in the cold goldfields of northern Canada’s Yukon Territory. And it’s always safe and secure at the De Courcy cabin—until a masked and armed stranger arrives with a depraved demand and the brutal intent of getting back something extremely valuable. Bea resists, and the barbaric beast works Bea over—breaking her fingers and ribs, repeatedly singeing her side with a red-hot knife, then setting the cabin on fire with Bea blindfolded and hogtied inside.

Is there a link between the two cabins—Atlin and De Courcy—bringing on this atrocious assault and putting Bea Bonnell into a life-threatening state where she’ll succumb to horrific wounds? That’s the complex case facing the Serious Crimes Section. Their intricate investigation takes detectives from the wintery waters of the Pacific Northwest to the snow-packed roads of the Klondike where they prove two fundamentals found in solving all crimes. One: Occam’s razor—when faced with two hypotheses, the simpler one is always correct. Two: The stranger the circumstances, the closer the answer is to home.

At The Cabin is Book 8 in the Based-On-True-Crime Series by Garry Rodgers, a retired homicide detective with a second career as a coroner—now reincarnated into an international bestselling crime writer. Get At The Cabin in eBook format at Amazon, Kobo, and Nook.

Here are the First Two Chapters of At The Cabin

WARNING!

At The Cabin is based on a true crime story. Explicit descriptions of the crime scenes, factual dialogue, real forensic procedures, and actual police investigation, interview and interrogation techniques are portrayed. Some names, times, and locations have been changed for privacy concerns and commercial purposes.

Chapter One — Thursday, March 11th – 8:35 a.m.

“She’s lucky she’s still alive.” The detective from our Green Timbers Serious Crimes Section stopped. She swallowed. She was on the other end of my phone, calling from the Burn Unit at Vancouver General Hospital. “I’ve never seen such injuries… deliberate injuries. The viciousness of this attack is fu… appalling! Sheer cruelty and excruciating torture.”

“What’s the lady’s name again?” I had my notebook open, pen in hand, and a dark roast on my workstation desk.

“Beatrice Bonnell. She goes by Bea.” The Vancouver detective paused. She swallowed again. “Bea’s seventy-four years old, for God’s sake. This assault is just… excuse the language… fucking abhorrent!”

“Where did you say this happened?” I heard her say the place when she called to report one of the most despicable and savage offenses I’d ever investigate.

“At the cabin they own. It’s on De Courcy Island. Our map indicates it’s in your territory. Nanaimo Regional District.”

——

De Courcy Island was in my policing area. De Courcy was one of many chunks of rocky land jutting from the Pacific Ocean off the southeast side of Vancouver Island in British Columbia at Canada’s west coast. Officially, this water-bound and tree-filled region was known as the Southern Gulf Islands in the Salish Sea. Unofficially, the area was the “Big Island” and a bunch of little ones—over a hundred of them, depending on how you classified islands.

I was at my desk at the Nanaimo Serious Crimes Section when my colleague from Vancouver phoned. She’d been notified by hospital authorities when Bea Bonnell arrived by Helijet ambulance the previous evening. Because Bea’s attacked occurred outside the City of Vancouver, investigation responsibility fell to the local area holding jurisdiction for the spot.

That spot, on De Courcy, was just south of Nanaimo, which is a small city of 100,000 on the Big Island. Nanaimo was a hub of activity being straight across from Vancouver proper which was one of the most exotic, erotic, and expensive paces on the planet. Nanaimo also had an active crime rate exceeding Vancouver’s when measured on a per capita base. And the crime against Bea Bonnell rated at the top of atrocities one human being can inflict upon another.

——

“Give me what you got so far.” I was ready to write more besides Bea Bonnell and At The Cabin.

“I don’t know much, to be honest.” The detective’s voice was overtight, like a wound watch spring read to snap. “She was admitted here at eight-forty p.m. last night. Airlifted from Nanaimo to VGH, and they put her directly in the burn unit. It’s questionable if she’ll make it. She’s in critical condition suffering not only from multiple third-degree burns but also from fractured ribs and broken fingers. Whoever did this really worked her over.”

“Any suspects or motive?”

“No suspects by name. Just a lone male. Unknown male. Masked male armed with a handgun. Robbery on the surface, but I think there’s more going on here that’s not being told.”

“Like what?”

“It’s just the vibe I’m getting. What I’m told, and this is third-hand, is that the victim was alone at the cabin she and her husband Stanley Bonnell have on De Courcy Island. He goes by Stan. Stan Bonnell. Little older than her. Seventy-six.”

“Stan and Bea Bonnell? Seventy-four and seventy-six? When did the attack happen?”

“Yesterday afternoon. The best I can get is that it was after one p.m. when Stan left Bea alone at the cabin while he went to town. Nanaimo. They live at an isolated spot on De Courcy and have to take a boat off and on. Do you know the place? De Courcy, I mean. Not necessarily the cabin itself.”

“Yup. I’ve been in Nanaimo over thirty years, and I’m a boater. I’m familiar with De Courcy’s location and coastline but not the island by land. It’s like a lot of these small Gulf Islands. Sparsely populated and private.”

“Right. I Googled it. I also have GPS coordinates for the cabin location.”

“What else do you have?” I asked this as I wrote the GPS numbers in my book. “What was this guy after?”

“Well, this is where I’m having trouble. Bea is sedated so she can’t talk. The only one she’s told is Stan and he’s… I don’t know how to put it… vague. Not… I can’t say evasive. Maybe a touch of dementia, or maybe just the stress of this whole thing.”

“I can understand the stress. What’s the extent of Bea’s injuries?”

“Most of her fingers and some of her ribs are broken. Then she has a series of thirteen individual burns along her left side. Directly on her skin from her hip up to her mid-chest area. They look like what she says happened. First, he tied her hands behind her back. Then he broke or dislocated her thumbs and fingers and he threw her on the floor and began kicking her in the ribs. Then it got worse. He heated up a knife on the stove and began burning her again and again along the side until he got frustrated and left but not before setting the cabin on fire with her hog-tied with a pillowcase over her head.”

“Hog-tied? Pillowcase? Set the cabin on fire with her in it?” I’d never heard anything like it. “How the fuck did she survive?”

“She must be one tough old bird.” The detective was tenser now than when she’d started talking. “This is what I got from Stan and the medical staff he talked to. Stan left Bea alone at the cabin while he took his boat and left De Courcy to get something. He was gone four hours and got back just before dark. He found Bea lying on the ground outside the cabin door. She was still bound and hooded. She was in terrible pain and nearly delirious as well as hypothermic.

“I can’t imagine. It was so cold and wet here yesterday.”

“The best I know of what Bea told Stan, and this is hearsay, is that after Stan left, this masked man showed up at the cabin holding a handgun and threatened to kill her, Bea, if she didn’t give him what he wanted. Bea refused, so the guy wrapped her hands behind her back and took a pillowcase, I don’t know, from the bed maybe, and pulled it over her head. He told her he was going to work her over till she gave in. She told him she didn’t have anything to give him. Then he started bending and snapping her fingers, put the boots to her ribs, and then went into the burning.”

“This is just fuckin’ sick.”

“No better word to describe it.” The detective’s voice was like someone had turned her volume down.

“Then he set the cabin on fire? How’d she get out of being hooded and hog-tied?”

“I’m not that clear about this. The cabin didn’t burn down. He, the bad guy, told her since she didn’t give up what he wanted, she could die in there. So he took a bunch of papers and placed them around the stove. They caught fire and he left, closing the door behind him. Bea could see flames through the pillowcase, so she wiggled her way to the stove and managed to knock a pot of water off the top and that drenched the papers.”

“Wow!”

“Then she wormed her way to the door, forced it open, and rolled outside. Bea lay there on the wet and cold ground until Stan got back. Oh! And her feet, ankles, were tied too.”

“Just wow!”

“Like I first said, she’s fucking lucky to still be alive.”

“What’s her medical prognosis?”

“Not good. She’s in critical condition. They’re afraid she’s going to develop complications and pass away. The severity of her injuries and her age are so stacked against her.”

“What was this guy after? Like, to go to this extent, there must be something extremely valuable he wanted.”

“This is where I’m having a hard time.” The detective took a long pause. She quietly said, “I don’t think Stan is being truthful with me.”

Chapter Two — Thursday, March 11th – 9:40 a.m.

I sat in Leaky Lewis’s office. Harry was with me. We talked about the report I’d received on Bea and Stan Bonnell from the Green Timbers detective.

Leaky was in charge of support services in our police department. His real name was Jim Lewis, and he got the nickname because of a chronic condition. Leaky suffered from urinary incontinence which made him well suited to occupy the corner office equipped with a private washroom.

Our Nanaimo force had a complement of around 140 regular police officers with an additional sixty civilians working in various roles. The backbone of any police force is the uniform or patrol officers who handle front-line complaints and emergencies. I spent very little time in uniform as I quickly realized where the backbone ends up so I made a play for criminal investigations. Now, I had well over thirty years of detective experience and was a leading candidate to be put out to pasture—cop-speak for retirement.

The support services Leaky commanded included our Serious Crimes Section. We had three teams of two detectives, each of whom were mandated to solve violent offenses against people. Mostly, we did murder cases but serious assaults like the one on Bea Bonnell fell into our hands, especially since Bea’s prognosis wasn’t good. This had every shadow of a murder file developing as the time passed and clues came to light.

Besides our overworked Serious Crime Section, Leaky looked after our Forensic Identification Section, which was the CSI department, Drug Squad, Criminal Intelligence, Commercial Crime, Street Crew, Property Crimes, and one poor prick plagued with frauds and bad plastic.

Harry was my detective partner. Her real name was Sheryl Henderson. Sheryl was a large lady with large hair and an even larger personality. She got the name Harry after the Bigfoot or Sasquatch in the movie Harry and the Hendersons.

——

“I think Stan’s hiding something.” Harry was the first to speak. She’d listened in to the phone call with the Vancouver detective. “I don’t buy Stan’s statement. Like, some armed and masked stranger shows up while he’s away and does this to his wife and Stan doesn’t know what the guy was after? Give me a fucking break.”

Harry was never one to suppress her opinion. She was usually right, but tact and diplomacy weren’t strong character traits with Harry. Still, I loved her as my partner of three years, and I knew the number one strength holding Harry together—her loyalty.

We played the audio-recorded statement the detective took from Stan Bonnell and shipped to us as an email attachment.

——

“Please state your full name and address, Mister Bonnell.”

“Right. I’m Stanley Edgar Bonnell. That’s Bonnell with two n’s and two l’s. I go by Stan. Stan Bonnell. We have two places. That’s me ’n Bea, my wife. Beatrice June Bonnell. The winter we spend down at the cabin on De Courcy Island. Summers, me ’n Bea are up at the cabin at Surprise Lake ’bout twenty miles due east of Atlin. Atlin, if you know where it is, is in the northwest corner of British Columbia. Closest big town or trading center up there is Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. We come down to De Courcy in November when things start to freeze up in the north, and we head back up in late April when things start to thaw out again and the frost is gone enough so we can work the ground.”

“Very well. Please tell me what happened at the cabin on De Courcy Island that led to you and your wife Bea to be here at Vancouver General Hospital where we’re recording your statement today.”

“Right. So I don’t know exactly what happened at the cabin ’cause I wasn’t there when it happened. I can only go by what Bea managed to tell me, and what I saw musta gone on. I was away in town. At Nanaimo. I left just after noon to conduct business and get supplies and I took the boat we moor at De Courcy at Gunderson’s dock. Bea was fine and everything was good when I left. However, when I come back approaching dark, I arrived to find a hell of a mess. Here was poor Bea all wrapped up on the ground outside the door and she was terrified and in terrible pain from her injuries. I pulls up in the truck. We got an old truck we use to get around on the island as the cabin is not down by the dock. It’s a bit inland. Anyway, I sees Bea on the ground with her hands tied behind her and her feet cinched at the ankles and this soaking wet cloth hood over her head and I says, ‘Land’s sakes woman. What have you gone and done to yourself?’ And she says the best she can ’cause she’s now terribly cold and shaking and really in pain, ‘He tried to rob me and he smashed-up my hands and my ribs and burnt me all over with a hot knife.’ And I says, ‘Who? Who done this?’ I untied her. Actually, I cut the rope off her hands and feet, ankles, and I yanked the hood off and I got her up and into the truck where what we got left of a heater was on. Bea says, ‘I don’t know who done this. I got no idea at all. You got to get me to the hospital.’ She was in bad shape. Real bad shape and the medical folks here don’t know if she’s gonna make it. Gonna pull through.”

“Did she describe her attacker?”

“Masked man with a gun. Handgun. That’s all she said. She got no idea who done this.”

“Did your wife say what he wanted? What he was after that made him do this?”

“She didn’t get into that much detail. She also told me he tried to set fire to the cabin with her in there. I looked and I saw where the papers on the floor were burnt and where she kicked the hot water pot over to douse them out.”

‘She was able to give you this detail, but not the reason the masked man with the gun came to your cabin and did these horrific acts to her?”

“Nope. I mean yes. Yes, Bea said what happened. As in who it was and what he did to her. She didn’t exactly go into all what was said. Like I said, Bea was in awful pain and terribly cold. All she wanted, and all I could think of, was getting her warmed up and to a place where her injuries could be treated. I took her by boat to Nanaimo where an ambulance met us at the dock. Seeing how bad she was, they flew her straight over here to the burn ward.”

“Excuse me for a sec. You said Bea knew who it was. She knew who it was that attacked her?”

“No. No. She knew it was a masked man with a gun who done this. A loner. She didn’t know who the guy was as in his identity. I got no clue who done this.”

“Do you know why he attacked Bea? What exactly he was after?”

“He might have been after something. Something real valuable enough to go to this stretch.”

“Stan, this is an extremely vicious attack. Whoever is behind this must have been desperate for something. What’s your suspicion?”

“I can’t really say.”

Chapter Three — Thursday, March 11th – 9:55 a.m.

“He can’t really say.” Harry scoffed. She clicked her pen. “Bullshit.”

——

Get At The Cabin on Amazon, Kobo, or Nook.

A PRETTY EVIL TALK WITH AUTHOR SUE COLETTA

Every once in a while, two crime writers click. That’s what happened four or five years ago when I met Sue Coletta online. Since then, we’ve been the best of buddies even though Sue lives with her husband in New Hampshire and I live with my wife in British Columbia. Before you get any funny ideas there’s hanky-panky going on through the internet, be aware that our spouses fully endorse our partnership and they share our off-colored jokes. Bob and Rita also approve of the criminal deviancy we write about on a daily basis.

No. Hang on a sec… they approve of our writing, not the deviant criminals.

I say partnership because Sue and I constantly help each other out. We’ve collaborated on writing guides, we’ve co-helped others with their work, we’ve cross-blogged many times, and Sue was instrumental in getting me onboard the Kill Zone team as a regular contributor. We also encourage each other in new ventures, and I’m so happy to say that Sue was recently approached by a major U.S. publisher to research and write a true crime book about historic female serial killers in New England.

Sue’s new release is about to come out. Globe Pequot, a division of publishing giant Rowman & Littlefield, is putting Pretty Evil New England on the shelves real soon. I’ll let Sue tell you about it and, if you stick through to the end of this post and leave a comment, you’re automatically entered into a Globe Pequot contest to win a print version of Pretty Evil.

Here’s a conversation that only gets worse…

Hey, Sue. Welcome back to the DyingWords shack. You’re a sucker for punishment. Mind if I prod you with a few questions?

Haha. Guess I am! Hey, would you mind dimming that bright light a bit? I’m sweating like a horse in last place. While we’re on the subject, are the restraints necessary? I know you’re passionate about DyingWords, but the rope’s starting to dig into my wrists.

Restraint is an old tradition around DyingWords. Sort of a right-of-passage for guests. Tells us… What’ve you been up to with your new book baby, Pretty Evil New England: True Stories of Violent Vixens and Murderous Matriarchs?

Pretty Evil New England tells the stories of five female serial killers who used New England as their hunting ground. For those who aren’t familiar with the area, New England encompasses the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. The reason I chose these specific female serial killers was because, during their reign of terror, they murdered at least one victim in all six states. Not separately but combined. Also, these “ladies” murdered a total of 100 victims, and that’s only the ones we know about.

Perhaps I should share the description to give your readers a feel for the book.

For four centuries, New England has been a cradle of crime and murder—from the Salem witch trials to the modern-day mafia. Nineteenth century New England was the hunting ground of five female serial killers: Jane Toppan, Lydia Sherman, Nellie Webb, Harriet E. Nason, and Sara Jane Robinson.

Female killers are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Angels of Death, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories of these women are much more complex.

In Pretty Evil New England, true crime author Sue Coletta tells the story of these five women, from broken childhoods to first brushes with the death, and she examines the overwhelming urges that propelled these women to take the lives of a combined total of more than one-hundred innocent victims.

The murders, investigations, trials, and ultimate verdicts will stun and surprise readers as they live vicariously through the killers and the would-be victims that lived to tell their stories.

Fascinating! I think this is your first toe in the true crime water. How’d this come about?

I’ve written plenty of true crime stories on my blog, but not an entire book. This project challenged my storytelling skills to not only portray accurate points in history but to show readers how and why these women stole the lives of so many innocent victims. I accomplished my goal by slipping into the killers’ skin and showing the world through their eyes, as well as other key figures in the cases, including the dogged investigators who caught them.

How’d this project come about? I got lucky. *kidding* But seriously, things like this don’t happen every day. Here’s the scoop…

The stars aligned, angels sang, and the gates of heaven opened wide. That’s how it felt, anyway. In May of 2019, a woman on Twitter asked if I could follow her back so she could message me in private, but I didn’t respond right away. After a flood of recruiting cam girls all vying for me to join them, I’d become overly suspicious of strangers who asked to PM me. But once I read her bio — specifically the words “acquisitions editor” — my interest piqued. When I followed her back, I apologized for the delay in responding. In my defense, I was also working on final edits for RACKED, Grafton County Series, Book 4, at the time. Within minutes, she asked if she could email me instead.

After sending my email address, I still didn’t give the quick exchange much thought. But then my curiosity got the better of me and I engaged in a little online stalking research and discovered she worked at Globe Pequot, a publisher in Connecticut.

Still, I couldn’t quiet the voices in my head. What could this offer be about? Why me? Is this for real?

Due to past experiences it’s fair to say I was more leery than excited at that point. When the email dropped into my inbox moments later, I read it about a dozen times to search for clues of how the offer might be a cruel prank or something even more nefarious, like some hacker’s idea of a good time, a hacker who went through the motions of creating a fake Twitter profile for the sole purpose of tricking some poor schmuck like me.

If you’re thinking, wow, Sue’s skeptical and suspicious, you’re not wrong. Writers are the targets of numerous scams. If we don’t protect ourselves, who will?

Anyway… The signature line read “Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.,” and the proverbial lightbulb went off. Globe Pequot is the trade division of Rowman & Littlefield, one of the largest publishers of nonfiction and America’s leading book distributor. Both Globe Pequot and Rowman & Littlefield have been in business since 1949 and are highly regarded in the publishing industry.

In the email said she ran across my blog post Female Serial Killers — Unmasked during her initial research for a book idea. She also checked out my books, other articles on my blog, and social media presence before contacting me. Within a month we’d hashed out contract terms and I had a new project. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now, you’ve been a crime writer for quite a while now. You’re no newbie when it comes to penning murder stories… especially serial killer tales. How’ve you found the change or transition from crime fiction to true crime?

True crime is a lot more work. For example, if the cast of “characters” didn’t say something in real life, I can’t put words in their mouths to benefit my story. Every piece of dialogue, action, clothes, décor, setting, etc., must mirror real life. For a fiction writer, it’s easy to let my mind reimagine the scene. But with true crime, I can’t. A funny thing happened while writing, though. I developed a fondness for accuracy. To write a compelling storyline while maintaining a factual narrative wasn’t easy, but I welcomed the challenge. Still do.

I had a chance to read an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of Pretty Evil New England. Thank you very much, by the way, and it’s extremely well written. I’m blown away by the detail. You have precise legal documentation, forensic procedures, and entire evidentiary transcripts from events happening in the 1800s. How in the world did you pull this off?

My background as a thriller writer helped a lot. 😊 When the opportunity was first presented to me, I knew I didn’t want to write a dry history book. What fun is that? So, I structured Pretty Evil New England like a thriller. Weaving in historical documentation without slowing the pace took time, patience, and a lot of swearing. By the way, when you said prod with questions… this was not what I had in mind.

Builds character. Now, about women serial killers. Are they a rarity… or is it rare they get identified and caught?

They’re not as rare as you might think. Females make up 20% of all murderers. But, and this is huge, most female killers don’t stop at one victim. To put it into perspective, even though females only make up 20% of all killers, they represent a larger percentage of serial murders than of any other type of homicide in the U.S.

You deal with five main female serial killers in Pretty Evil New England. Did you come across more but couldn’t include them in your book?

While researching I found enough female serial killers to write about them for years.

Yikes! You did an amazing amount of research in putting Pretty Evil New England together. Give us some of the highlights.

Thanks! Maybe you can ease up on the pressure while I share some of my research trips

No, but go ahead anyway.

In the state archives I found old diaries spanning 50 years. These diaries were written by a close friend and neighbor of the New Hampshire victims and killer. The handwriting took me forever to decipher, but once I did the additions of diary entries added a cool touch to the overall storyline.

One of my coolest discoveries was an entire floor in the old house where several victims lived and died, a floor untouched by time, perfectly preserved in 1881. I laid my fingers on the same ivory keys of the piano that the victims and killer did. I sat on their sofa, admired their belongings, and perused their stunning mahogany and glass bookcases filled with priceless first editions. Surrounded by history, Bob and I were overcome by emotion. We could only stare — wide-eyed — taking it all in. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I was literally walking through the pages of my book.

Another research trip took me to a Potter’s field in Taunton, Massachusetts. It’s heartbreaking to view the graves of people who died, their bodies unclaimed by family, with nothing more than a number to mark their existence.

Then I drove to Cape Cod (6 hours round trip) and to Harvard University (4 hours round trip), which was also an amazing experience. One of the top physicians of late 1800s to early 1900s kept a scrapbook there, which is why I went. That trip also created a cool parallel between my life and my book. My mom went to Harvard, so it was the first time I got to experience a brief moment from her past. She died when I was a teenager. Like many folks who experience loss, I long for any brief glimpses of her life.

Touching. In all seriousness, Sue, that’s touching. You used some striking quotes about female serial killers that other authors over time produced. How about sharing some?

Thanks. I thought they were a cool feature. Here are the first three…

According to FBI behaviorists, the best way to survive a male serial killer’s attack is to let him get to know you on a personal level. By humanizing yourself, you’ll ruin his fantasy of you as a victim. This won’t work with a female serial killer. They already know you. — Federal Bureau of Investigation

It’s about the pleasure of the kill—the sense of power she gets—the buzz. Taking property is just a warm snack in the feast control—a little further satisfaction, a tingling in the killer’s tummy. — Peter Vronsky, author of Female Serial Killers

Although most female serial killers murder for money or other profit, some do it for the attention and sympathy they receive following the death of someone they cared for. — Psychology Today

Poison – The weapon of women. Is this an M.O. (modus operandi) unique to women killers… serial or otherwise? I don’t recall a case of a man using toxins in a murder.

Men use poison, too, but it’s not nearly as lethal as poison in a woman’s hand. One exception could be The Teacup Poisoner. In 1961, at age 14, an Englishman named Graham Young began testing different poisons on his family, eventually murdering his stepmother. He also poisoned his father, sister, and best friend. After confessing the following year, the court sentenced him to 9 years in a hospital for the criminally insane. At which time doctors released him as “cured,” even though he poisoned a fellow inmate and promised to murder one person for every year of incarceration. This led to two murders, two attempted murders, and 70 other poisonings over the next year. He received four life sentences for his crimes.

Two other quick examples: In 2008, David Steeves, a Long Island man, murdered his estranged wife with cyanide. In 2013, William Cain, a Kentucky man, plead guilty to adding “just a little rat poison” to his wife’s coffee.

Women prefer poison for various reasons.

  • Easy to obtain.
  • No muss, no fuss. A light sprinkle is all it takes.
  • No blood to clean up afterward.
  • They don’t need to hide the body.
  • The patients languish while they care for them.

Death by poison is not an easy way to go. Victim suffering pleases the female serial killers. Unlike men, women don’t keep trophies. Murder is their ultimate reward. If you think men are vicious, then you’ve never pushed a woman to the point of wanting to kill you. LOL

I had a woman try to kill me.

I sense a story here.

She hatchet-threw a mill bastard metal file at my head. The handle-less point jammed into the wall two inches from my left ear. Then I whacked her with my police-issued flashlight. Hey – I’m amazed by the toxicology sophistication used back then to identify poison. Give us the Cliffs Notes version of how arsenic works on the human body and how the forensic scientists back then identified arsenic poisoning.

Wasn’t that fascinating? I don’t mean nearly getting a metal-working tool imbedded in your brain. The toxicology… it blew my mind, too. Many of the toxicology tests are still used today.

Death by arsenic is a not a fun experience. In most cases, symptoms appear within the hour. The first sign is an acrid sensation in the throat, followed by nausea which grows more and more unbearable by the moment. Vomiting sets in and continues long after the stomach empties. The victim dry heaves until they’re throwing up fluid streaked with blood. The mouth parches, the tongue thickly coated as the throat constricts with an inextinguishable thirst. Anything he or she drinks only makes the vomiting worse. Uncontrollable diarrhea, often bloody, complete with racking abdominal pains. Some victims experience burning from mouth to anus. The eyes grow hollow. Swelling of lips, eyes, and under the chin can occur, and the skin is cold and clammy. Breathing labors, extremities ice cold, the heartbeat weak, and binding cramps in the muscles of the legs. Depending on the amount of arsenic administered, these symptoms last from a few hours to several days or weeks.

I should add, not all of the serial killers in this book used arsenic. Some were more creative.

How chemists detected poison back then? No matter how many times you hit me with the cattle prod, I refuse to give away all my secrets. Read the book. 😉

I didn’t hit you with the cattle prod. I zapped you. There’s a difference. Okay, I don’t want to give any details away about what happened to the pretty evil killers in your book, but I have a curiosity. When it came to trial, convictions, and sentencing… do you think these killers were treated lighter because they were women?

Hmm, without ruining the ending, I can say a couple of the juries might’ve gone easy on them, but in those cases, factors beyond gender were also at play. The others, no. Two in particular suffered fates worse than death.

I’m going to put you on a hot-spot. Do you think women are smarter than men when it comes to serial killing?

Absolutely. Ouch! Easy with electricity jolts. Okay, okay, I’ll explain…

On average a male serial killer’s reign lasts about four years. Female serial killers? Eight to ten years. And some last thirty years without detection. Imagine how many weren’t caught? Statistically speaking, women are simply better at serial killing than men. 😊

By definition, what is a serial killer? Just a sec… you shouldn’t be smoking. Gotta turn this down.

Whoah… smoking… no… that’s better. Today’s FBI definition is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.” It used to be three or more with “a cooling off period,” but they’ve updated the definition since then.

By population percentage, are serial killers on the rise? Are they increasing in proportional numbers? Or, have they always been part of societies?

They’ve always been part of society, and that includes female serial killers. I don’t know if I’d say the numbers are increasing, necessarily. It may appear that way because law enforcement has better tools to identify serial clusters now. Though the numbers do boggle the mind. In May 2019, I wrote a post entitled How Many Serial Murderers Stalk Your Streets, which offers eye-opening statistics for each state within the U.S. as well as an overall count for numerous other countries, including Canada.

Any idea many serial killers are active in the United States alone today?

Last time I checked the database (2019) we had 1,948 active serial killers in the United States. The good news is, after age 30, your chances of being murdered by a serial killer drastically reduces.

I’m well past 30. Okay. Let’s get off this gruesome topic and talk about me for a while. J… K… Let’s talk about Sue Coletta. What’s your background? How’d you get your writer chops? Where’re you at today? And what does tomorrow bring once Pretty Evil New England tops the charts?

My background is in law (paralegal). I also owned & operated two hair salons. During that time, I wrote about a dozen children’s books. Not for publication, just for friends’ kids to enjoy. It wasn’t till 2012 that we moved north, and I tried my hand at crime writing. How did I get my start? I chose the traditional publishing path, so querying, rejection, and finally scoring my first contract. I continue to write thrillers in my two series, Grafton County Series and Mayhem Series. I’m also working on Book 1 of a new true crime series, which is out on submission. This time around, rather than feature multiple female serial killers, I’ve focused on one ruthless woman whose crimes shocked even me.

Nasty. One curiosity. In Pretty Evil New England, you end with an interesting notation that death certificate procedure changed following the cases in the book. Can you elaborate on this?

Back in the day, attending physicians didn’t need to be present to issue a death certificate. In some cases, the doctor hadn’t examined his patient in weeks or months. Polite New England society didn’t browbeat the patient’s kin to dig for the truth. Instead, they relied on the family’s firsthand accounts to fill in the blanks.

The murderous acts of the five female serial killers depicted in Pretty Evil New England shook the foundation of medical and legal communities far and wide. These “ladies’” crimes led to death certification reform and a ban on arsenic in embalming fluid.

Last call. Where and when can DyingWords followers get a copy of Pretty Evil New England — True Stories of Violent Vixens and Murderous Matriarchs?

The “official” release is November 1, 2020, but readers can preorder at the following links and the books will be delivered by that date.

Amazon (all countries, Kindle & paperback)
Barnes & Noble (NOOK & paperback)
Books-A-Million (ebook & paperback)
IndieBound (paperback)
BookShop (paperback)
Globe Pequot
Rowman & Littlefield

Now, untie me! I’ll stick around for DyingWords readers as long as you keep that prod-thing to yourself.

——

Sue Coletta is no longer tied up and prodded for answers. She’s now available on the comment board. And… Sue has a free print copy of Pretty Evil waiting for one lucky person who writes “Gimme The Book” in the comment box. Thanks, Sue. You’re a sport!

Write “Gimme The Book” in the comments and win a FREE copy of Pretty Evil New England!

Sue Coletta (right) and Garry Rodgers (left) are crime writers from opposite sides of the North American continent. Sue is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Kill Zone, and International Thriller Writers, She’s also an award-winning crime writer. Sue Coletta writes two serial killer thriller series, Grafton County Series (Tirgearr Publishing) and Mayhem Series (Tirgearr Publishing), with a Mayhem Series crossover novella in Susan Stoker’s World (Aces Press) and another in Elle James’ World (Twisted Page Press). Sue also writes true crime for Globe Pequot, trade division of Rowman & Littlefield Group, Inc. PRETTY EVIL NEW ENGLAND hits bookstores Nov. 1, 2020. Here’s Sue’s Youtube trailer for Pretty Evil.