Tag Archives: Murder

THE MANIAC MURDERS AT LOVERS LANE

You’d think you’d know all the best crime stories of your hometown, especially when you were a police officer there and spent most of your service on the Serious Crimes Section—being a murder cop. Specifically, true crime stories of this magnitude which turned out to be one of the most complex double homicide investigations in your city’s history. But, no, I’d never heard of this case until I was sitting in my barber’s chair the other day and Dave told me about the maniac murders at Lovers Lane.

Dave Lawrence is Nanaimo’s downtown barber. Dave runs a one-man show at That 50s Barber Shop on Victoria Crescent where multi-millionaires push past shopping cart vagrants to get the best haircut in town. Also to find out what’s going on in town because, if you want to know, Dave’s the go-to guy for knowing what’s going on around town.

Nanaimo, by the way, is a city of 100,000 on the southeast side of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It’s right across the water from the City of Vancouver which is one of the most exotic, erotic, and expensive places on our planet. Nanaimo is laid back in many ways, but it has an abnormally high per capita murder rate. And it’s been my home for the past thirty-four years.

I went into Dave’s shop last Saturday to get all four sides trimmed. We got talking, as we always do, and he goes, “Garry, you were a cop for a lot of years here in Nanaimo. Ever hear about the maniac murders at Lovers Lane?” I says, “No, Dave. You been smoking crack again like that guy who just tweaked by your window?” So Dave goes, “Seriously, dude. This really happened, and it’s the best true crime story I ever heard of.” Then Dave tells me about the maniac murders at Lovers Lane.

This true crime story doesn’t start with the cold-blooded executions of two young lovers. It starts fourteen years earlier on May 31, 1948, with a railroad washout near Kamloops in British Columbia’s interior. That spring, flooding was intense and the rushing water undermined a trestle pier holding up a bridge section where the Canadian National Railroad crossed the Thompson River. The bridge collapse took with it the telegraph lines connecting communications between western Canada and the east.

Losing a bridge section was one thing. Destroying communications was another. The only thing holding the main telegraph line from snapping under the weight of a sagging bridge was a small wooden bracket holding a glass insulator that the wire held fast to.

Leave it to railroader ingenuity. One sectionman got the idea to shoot the wire free. He borrowed the station agent’s .22 rifle, lay on the bank, and plinked away until he broke the bracket and saved the day. The rifle went back to the station agent’s house and was forgotten.

Until October 16, 1962. That’s when pretty nineteen-year-old Diane Phipps went on a date with her handsome boyfriend of six months, nineteen-year-old Leslie Dixon. That evening, the pair drove about downtown Nanaimo—then a city of around 20,000—stopping at the drive-in, gabbing with friends, and generally being young people in love. After dark, Diane and Leslie drove way out to Pipers Lagoon which the youths of Nanaimo called Lovers Lane. They parked and began to make out and were never seen alive again.

Pipers Lagoon is about eight miles from downtown Nanaimo. It’s in the Hammond Bay area which is now full of upscale homes but, thankfully, the city wisdom at the time foresaw the value of Pipers Lagoon and preserved it as parkland. It’s a strikingly beautiful spot, even though it has this history.

Diane Phipps and Leslie Dixon’s families became concerned—very concerned—when the two lovers didn’t come home by morning. Friends knew they’d likely gone to Lovers Lane, so that was the first place they searched. They found Leslie’s car. It was parked in the lane. He was slumped inside behind the wheel, dead, with two .22 bullets to the back of his head. Dianne was nowhere in sight.

This started the biggest criminal investigation in Nanaimo’s history. How I never heard about it, I don’t know, but Dave steered me to a website that documented the case as well as archives in the Vancouver Sun that covered the story. Here’s what happened.

Crime scene investigators found Leslie had been shot at close range. They surmised that the killer surprised the pair and shot him through an open driver’s side window, leaving his body in place. Leslie’s wallet with money was still in his pocket which indicated robbery was not a motive. There was no blood or evidence of Dianne being shot while sitting on the front passenger side seat, so the police officers surmised she’d been abducted at gunpoint.

The Nanaimo detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) called in extra resources. A large search of the surrounding area found no trace of anything connected with the crime, including Dianne Phipps. Officers went door to door and investigated the pair’s trail the previous evening. They were baffled and quickly involved the media, asking for public help.

At 2:00 p.m. on the day after Leslie Dixon was found murdered, a Nanaimo resident was rummaging through a rural garbage dump five miles south of Nanaimo in a semi-rural area called Harewood. He saw a pair of feet sticking out from under some old car parts. It was Dianne Phipps. She’d been shot once between the eyes and her head had been bashed-in with a rock. Her time of death was consistent with the early morning hours of October 17.

Dianne wasn’t sexually assaulted. She was fully clothed and her purse, containing money, was beside her. With robbery and sexual overtones ruled out, and no one in the couple’s entire history posing a threat, the RCMP suspected they had a murderous maniac on their hands.

More public appeals went out. Police got a call from a woman who lived on Harewood Road, not far from where Dianne’s body was found. She related that at 1:00 a.m. on the night of the murders she got a knock on her door. A very strange man was there and said his car was stuck in a nearby ditch. He asked if she would take her pickup and pull him out.

She did so. He posed no threat to her, but she found his actions so bizarre that she thought he’d done something else. Now hearing of Dianne’s body being found close to where she towed this stranger, she suspected the incidents were related.

The witness lady gave the police an excellent description of the man and his sedan. She did not get a name, nor did she record the license number. This suspect and vehicle information was widely broadcast and developed hundreds of tips.

Week by week and month by month, the police investigation team put their hearts into the case of the Lovers Lane murders. The City of Nanaimo posted a $5,000 reward which was equivalent to a year’s wages back then. More tips came in, but not the right ones.

The weather turned as cold as the case. Vancouver Island is normally Canada’s winter hot spot. It rarely freezes on the south island and only snows occasionally. The winter of 1962/1963 was far colder than normal. The local lakes froze to the point where people could walk on the ice which is what a young boy did on Long Lake which is in north Nanaimo miles away from Lovers Lane and the Harewood dump.

The boy saw something through the ice. It was a rifle—a rather unusual rifle. The boy called his father, and they smashed through the ice and retrieved a Winchester Model 63 semi-automatic .22 with serial number 41649A stamped on it.

The father was suspicious as to why someone would throw a valuable firearm in the lake. He took it to the police who sent it to the crime lab. This firearm found in Long Lake matched the .22 bullets taken from Dianne Phipps and Leslie Dixon at their autopsies. It was the murder weapon.

The police held back this information while they pursued other leads. They traced the .22 as being manufactured on October 5, 1940, and was sold by a Kamloops sporting goods store in 1942. However, back then in the Second World War years, purchaser records weren’t kept. The trail again grew cold.

On Saturday, April 18, 1964—almost a year and a half after the murder weapon was found—the Vancouver Sun ran a front-page story and, with police permission, released the holdback information on the unusual firearm along with its photo. This started the tips again.

The sectionman who shot the telegraph bracket and saved the communication day back in 1948 saw the rifle’s photo and strongly suspected it was the one he used that belonged to the station agent, one Robert Ralph Dillabough of Kamloops. There was a problem with that. Mr. Dillabough had died ten years earlier. However, his estate had recorded the rifle as an asset, including it having the serial number 41649A. It was the same piece, for sure.

Diligent detective work took place. Police tracked Dillabough’s estate through a law firm of Mr. D.T. Rogers of Kamloops. They recorded that the murderous .22 was sold at an auction in Kamloops on February 19, 1955. The auctioneer was named George Shelline who they found had been killed in an automobile accident a year earlier. Shelline’s estate had no records of who purchased this puzzling and deadly firearm. Once again, the case went cold.

Over time, the police followed over five thousand tips taking hundreds and hundreds of statements. They checked 60,000 vehicle registrations for the suspicious car that was towed from the ditch along Harewood Road and they checked over 2,000 firearms sales invoices. The RCMP got help from the FBI and from Scotland Yard and from Interpol. They amassed what was the largest murder file in the history of British Columbia and they got nowhere.

Not until the Vancouver Sun ran another front-page story, again displaying the .22’s photo. On August 7, 1965—pushing three years after Dianne and Leslie’s murders—a tipster who requested confidentiality came forward and fingered Ronald Eugene Ingram as the owner of Winchester Model 63 .22 with serial number 41649A.

Ronald Ingram was now living in North Vancouver and worked as a baker. The police learned that in October of 1962, Ingram had resided in Nanaimo along with his wife and three children where he co-owned the Parklane Bakery on Harewood Road. He moved from Nanaimo to North Vancouver shortly after the Lovers Lane murders occurred.

Ingram and his vehicle were dead ringers for the strange man who got his auto stuck on Harewood Road. The police seized his vehicle. Even though a lot of time had passed, they found dried bloodstains in it that matched Dianne Phipps’s blood type.

The police also got information that Ronald Ingram had used the now-notorious .22 to shoot rats in his bakery’s storeroom. Armed with a warrant and a chainsaw, the police recovered bullets from the storeroom wall that matched the .22’s unique firing signature and the ones that killed Dianne and Leslie.

They arrested Ronald Ingram and charged him with capital murder. To this point, no one in the legal circles ever heard of him. He had no criminal record and his name never surfaced in the intense investigation—until he was linked to the murder weapon.

The medical and psychiatric circles had certainly heard of Ronald Ingram, though. He had a lengthy history of mental illness including having maniacal episodes. Ingram confessed to murdering Dianne Phipps and Leslie Dixon, claiming he was in a maniacal state at the time. In one of the speediest trials I’ve ever heard of, Ingram was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was ordered locked up under the authority of Section 545 of the Canadian Criminal Code and held “until the pleasure of the Lieutenant Governor was known“.

Ronald Ingram was incarcerated at the maximum-security Forensic Psychiatric Institute at Riverview Hospital in the Greater Vancouver area. Over time, Ingram’s classification was lowered to medium-security and he was consecutively placed in a less restrictive psychiatric environments. In 1976—fourteen years after these truly horrific crimes by a homicidal maniac—Ronald Eugene Ingram simply walked out the front door of his mental hospital. He was never heard of again.

And that’s the true story Dave told me about the maniac murders at Lovers Lane.

THE BIG REASON WHY O.J. SIMPSON GOT OFF MURDER

They called it the trial of the century. I call it the travesty of all time. Either way you look at it, the O.J. Simpson murder case was exceptionally high profile. Millions of people around the world watched the eleven-month spectacle known as the O.J. trial. It had all the right TV elements—celebrity superstar, the Dream Team defense, allegations of corrupt cops, supposedly compromised witnesses and contaminated evidence, not to mention playing the race card from the bottom of the deck. It ended with O.J.’s acquittal when the jury nullified his indictment. Twenty-five years later, the big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder is now black and white.

Before examining the big reason why O.J. got off, it’s necessary to look at the overall picture—the preponderance of the evidence—and examine investigation and trial components to see what went wrong. It’s the combination of prosecution errors and defense counsel tactics that turned an open-and-shut homicide case into a three-ring media circus. Ultimately, this shameful chain of events caused jurors to reject convicting an absolutely 100% guilty man.

How I got onto this subject was recently reading (or trying to read) Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi. The 1996 book is subtitled The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. You might recall who Vincent Bugliosi is. He’s the power-prosecutor who put away the Charles Manson Family and wrote the book Helter Skelter.

Vincent Bugliosi had no part in the O.J. prosecution. He was commissioned to write a critical book. As a lawyer who prosecuted over a hundred murders in his career, and losing only one, Bugliosi earned the right to critique the O.J. trial. That he did with ferocity in Outrage.

I find Bugliosi’s writing style hard to read. He’s verbose and rambling, bombastic and sarcastic, not to mention arrogant and conceited. Give me a good Bob Woodward book any day, but I did make it through Outrage. I also went down a spiraling research tunnel that started with internet rabbit-holing, and I found more people with equally-great accreditations who had one more point to offer than Bugliosi’s five reasons why O.J. got off the murder charges.

I agree with all five of Vincent Bugliosi’s reasons. Just because I don’t particularly care for his script doesn’t mean he’s wrong on any point. I just think he missed another major point that led to the indictment’s nullification—and he failed to summarize his five points into the one big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder. Before I list Bugliosi’s five criticisms, the 6th point, and the overall #1 reason, let’s do a quick review of the case history.

The O.J. Simpson Case History

Orenthal James Simpson was a black National Football League superstar. He was also a movie star and product endorser for a major orange juice producer. Over the years, O.J. got the nickname “The Juice”.

O.J. married Nicole Brown, a white woman, in 1985. They were wealthy, had two children, and had a host of celebrity friends. They also had extreme marital challenges—many fights that ended in violence.

Looking back, Nicole Brown-Simpson was the classic victim of battered woman syndrome. The murder investigation identified sixty-two documented incidents where the Simpsons fought. They resulted in his threatening her life, her seeking protection in women’s shelters, and even the police intervening and arresting O.J.

Nicole filed for divorce in February 1992. She cited irreconcilable differences rather than repeated assaults and mental cruelty. Despite the divorce, O.J. kept stalking Nicole. She called a women’s shelter four days before her death, reporting continual harassment from O.J. and that a set of keys for her home were missing.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown-Simpson attended a dance rehearsal for her daughter in Santa Monica, California which is the Los Angeles suburb where they lived. O.J. was there as a legitimate father, and he attempted to reconcile with her. Nicole refused. She then went to dinner at a restaurant where Ron Goldman worked.

Ron Goldman and Nicole weren’t a romantic item. They were friends, and Nicole’s mother accidently left her eyeglasses at the restaurant when the dinner party left. Once Nicole got home, a phone call verified the glasses were left behind and Ron Goldman offered to drop them off at Nicole’s home when he got off work.

Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Nicole’s home. They were discovered by a neighbor at 12:10 a.m. on June 13, 1994. Autopsies indicated their times of death to be approximately 10:30 p.m. on June 12.

O.J. Simpson was an immediate suspect. The LAPD followed a trail of blood from Nicole’s home to O.J.’s estate—a five-minute drive away. O.J. was already gone. He’d taken a red-eye to Chicago and was in a hotel room when LAPD detectives phoned him to give him the notice that his ex-wife was dead.

O.J. Simpson flew home to Los Angeles. He consented to an interview with detectives in which he denied involvement in Nicole and Ron Goldman’s deaths. He could not offer a verifiable alibi for the murder time, and he gave a weak explanation for a recent cut on his left hand.

The LAPD investigative team identified enough physical evidence to tie O.J. Simpson to the murder scene, as well as tying the victim’s blood to his personal residence. The DA filed a two-count murder indictment against Orenthal James Simpson for the criminal deaths of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

The DA and O.J. Simpson’s lawyer worked out a surrender deal. But, instead of surrendering at the police station, O.J. Simpson pulled off the most famous slow-speed chase in the history of the world. Many millions watched on live TV as O.J. in a white Ford Bronco crawled along a LA freeway—O.J. in the back with a handgun to his head as his buddy drove slowly along with a mass of lights-flashing police cars right behind.

O.J. finally surrendered—without a violent incident. He went into custody while the police searched the Bronco. Besides O.J. leaving three letters which amounted to confessional suicide goodbyes, the police found $8,000 in cash, his US passport, a disguise with a hat and false whiskers, as well as a change of clothing and a .357 revolver. If there ever was evidence of a flight risk, this was it, and O.J. Simpson remained in custody for the next year and a half while his eleven-month farce trial played out.

I’m not going to go into the mass of evidence surfaced in the Brown-Goldman investigation and dealt with in the O.J. Simpson trial. That is far too complex for a blog post. Unfortunately, it was far too complex for the prosecution team to present, and far, far too complex for a jury to grasp—especially when the Dream Team defense did everything they could do to cloud the jurors’ vision.

In Outrage, Vincent Bugliosi identified five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder. I’m convinced he’s right. However, I’m convinced there’s one more significant reason why the jury nullified Simpson’s indictment. But we’ll start with Mr. Bugliosi’s points.

1. Media Crime and Pretrial Coverage Influenced the Jury

I have no doubt whatsoever the massive live-media coverage of the slow-speed, white Bronco chase embedded itself in the nation’s psyche. Especially Los Angelers where it hit close to home as they scurried to overpasses to watch the scene pass by. You just don’t forget something as crazy as this.

I know I didn’t. I watched the performance up in Canada, and I was a murder cop with eighteen years of experience when this nut-show went down. I’d certainly heard of O.J. Simpson from his NFL fame, and I kinda got a kick outa his spoofy character in the Naked Gun movie.

I can’t imagine the impression the chase, arrest, and the wait-up to the trial took on the Los Angeles jury pool. And I can’t imagine anyone able to serve on the jury not hearing of the pre-trial events. Or having a pre-formed opinion about O.J. Simpson, his domestic situation, and the Los Angeles justice system.

2. Venue Change From Santa Monica to Downtown LA

Bugliosi is livid about this in Outrage. He has a good right to be. This was a shady, shady deal. Bugliosi pins this on a political move by the LA County Da, Gil Garcetti, who Bugliosi greases as a political hack of the lowest form.

Bugliosi may be right, or he may be wrong, about DA Garcetti’s character. But the decision to venue change from the suburban crime scene jurisdiction of Santa Monica to the urban downtown core of the City of Angeles was a fatal move. The juror gene pool racial demographics of inner LA compared to outer SM are cheese to chalk. The juror perceptions are even further apart.

O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown-Simpson lived in upscale Santa Monica because that’s where their peers lived. O.J. was no more inner-city black than I am an Ivy League white. There’s a thing in jury common law that says a person has the right to be tried by peers in their local jurisdiction. (It might even be in the Constitution—yes, just checked.  Amendment 6 covers this for US citizens.) Putting the Simpson case into a downtown LA jury pool, rather than into a Santa Monica peer-pool—a lesser-educated and racially different peer-pool—entirely changed the social dynamics, and this seriously affected the jury panel’s psyche.

3. The Judge Lance Ito Factor

Who can forget the totally-out-of-his league O.J. Simpson trial judge by the name of Lance Ito? This guy had no more business running a major murder trial than I do performing in Carnegie Hall. Man, what a travesty of justice, and he was sitting on the bench through the entire process.

Bugliosi dismisses Lance Ito as a star-struck buffoon—someone who was unfit for Night Court (if anyone remembers the old comedy sit-com where the judge was actually the one with street smarts) or to replace Judge Judy. Good Lord, during the trial Judge Lance Ito would accept fan gifts and invite celebrities back into his chambers.

Bugliosi finds many faults in Lance Ito—justifiably found faults. But the biggest fault he finds in Ito—and a fatal fault for the trial—was Ito allowing the Dream Team defense to gut Detective Mark Fuhrman and drag his entrails through the trial muck as a racist goon who surreptitiously planted false evidence to frame The Juice. This lack of judicial ethics and irresponsible legal jurisprudence did enormous damage to the jurors’ impartial mindset.

4. Horrible Prosecutor Performance

Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden led the O.J. Simpson prosecution. Bugliosi criticizes Clark, a white woman, as being far beyond her experience and competency in handling the OJ case. He suggests that Darden, being a black man, was only there to serve as a token colored man.

I don’t want to pull the race card regarding the black and white prosecution pair as the dream team did, but I think both Marcia Clark and Chris Darden weren’t up for the job. In Bugliosi’s opinion, and mine, Clark and Darden blew it. Big time. Especially in clearly explaining the physical evidence like DNA in the bloodstains so the common juror could understand and accept the reality of how the murders happened and who caused them.

Bugliosi lists dozens of f-ups the prosecutors pulled. They didn’t establish O.J.’s motive by fully exposing the battered woman syndrome. They failed to disclose O.J.’s desperation to avoid capture during the Bronco chase. The jury never heard of the guilt-admission notes and the disguise, let alone of O.J. Simpson’s incriminating statements made to friends and the police. All around, Bugliosi paints a portrait of a weary and beaten pair of prosecutors who just wished the pain would stop.

5. The Prosecutors’ Final Submission

Bugliosi leads his reader through a maze of evidence. He sets the scene for prosecution failure from the onset, and it gets worse as the story unfolds. I kept reading, even though I wished he’d just shut up and tell the goddamn story as Stephen King so wisely advises in his tutorial to writers.

Clark and Darden played right into the race card trap the Dream Team ingeniously set for them. By ingeniously, I don’t mean it was truthfully, morally, or ethically right. It was the defense strategy right from the start, and the prosecution was blind to it.

The prosecution summary—the summation to the jury—agreed that Mark Fuhrman, the racism whipping boy, was a racist, however, that should not detract from the factual evidence showing O.J. was guilty. Jonnie Cochran, of the Dream Team, blew it out of the water by saying Fuhrman was, “A genocidal racist, a perjurer, America’s worst nightmare, and the personification of evil who single-handedly planted all of the evidence in an attempt to frame Simpson for the murders based purely on his dislike of interracial couples.”

Judge Lance Ito let ‘er slide.

——

I completely agree with Vincent Bugliosi’s five points about why O.J. Simpson got away with murder. But I think there’s one more. It’s a major point which, in the culmination of the Bugliosi Five, supports the big reason—the root cause—of why OG Simpson got off murder.

It’s not just the showmanship of the media lead-up with the slow-speed chase. It’s not just the celebrity hype. It’s not just the venue change. It’s not just the Ito factor. It’s not just poor prosecutor performance. And it’s not just the piss-poor summation.

It’s something much deeper that was at work during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Racism.

O.J. Simpson was ethnically black. Throughout his professional life, though, O.J. Simpson was essentially white. He worked with white people. He socialized with white people. He married a white woman. And his Dream Team was essentially white—exception being Johnnie Cochran.

O.J. Simpson’s jury was essentially black. There were nine black jurors, two white jurors, and one Hispanic juror on the panel. They were sequestered for 265 days and, if you know of the Stockholm Syndrome, you can imagine the long-term influence that confinement had on the jurors.

After eleven months of sole interaction, the O.J. Simpson jurors returned a not guilty verdict on all counts after less than four hours of deliberation. Their minds were made up, and there was little discussion. Unanimously, the O.J. Simpson jury nullified the indictment charging O.J. with murdering Nicole and Ron.

Null? Nullify? Nullified? Nullification? I’ve used variances of nullification throughout this piece. In my opinion, nullification by the jury is the big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder.

Null is a legal term. You’ve heard of a contract being “null and void”. Nullify means rejecting the deal and putting an end to it. For jury trials, Merriman Webster dictionary says it means, “Acquitting a defendant in disregard to the judge’s instructions or contrary to the jury’s finding of fact.”

In the O.J. Simpson indictment, where he stood charged with intentionally murdering Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman, the evidence was overwhelming that O.J. was 100% guilty. A blind half-wit would conclude that upon impartially hearing the evidence. However, the O.J. Simpson trial jurors unanimously disregarded the facts, and their duty to find the facts and decide to ignore the facts. Their impartial judgment was seriously compromised by the well-played defense race card.

There was a recent undercurrent to the O.J. jury decision, or their decision to nullify the indictment. Rodney King. You might remember the Rodney King trial from 1983 where white police officers were acquitted for beating King, a black man. King’s jury held ten whites, one Latino, and one Asian. Two years later, a reverse racial mixture acquitted or nullified the indictment of O. J. Simpson.

Nullification is an old legal concept. It’s been around for centuries and refers to cases—criminal and civil—where juries side with an accused person (or corporation) and let them off no matter how strong their wrongdoing evidence is. Here’s a definition of jury nullification from Cornell Law School:

Jury Nullification — A jury’s knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the jury’s sense of justice, morality, or fairness. 

Jury nullification is a discretionary act and is not a legally sanctioned function of the jury. It is considered to be inconsistent with the jury’s duty to return a verdict based solely on the law and the facts of the case. The jury does not have a right to nullification, and counsel is not permitted to present the concept of jury nullification to the jury. However, jury verdicts of acquittal are unassailable even where the verdict is inconsistent with the weight of the evidence and instruction of the law.

At its core, nullification occurs when a trial jury reaches an anti-fact-based verdict when they disagree with the law or they disagree that the state should be prosecuting the accused. Indictment nullification also happens when the collective jury wants to make a social statement such as racial inequality or persecution.

There’s nothing to stop a jury from nullifying an indictment. Once it’s in the jury’s hands, and inside the deliberation room, it’s theirs to do what they see fit. They hold no currency. They have no account.

O.J. was black. He murdered two whites. The jury was powerfully black. The system was predominantly white. The big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder was because of jury nullification due to racism.

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.