Movie: Lizzie, about Lizzie Borden. With Chloe Sevigney and Kristen Stewart

I wasn't feeling great today, so I watched Lizzie, a movie I've wanted to see for awhile, on HBO Max. It's not supposed to be nonfiction, but it sticks close to the facts--except that it combines Uncle John with the town constable. This is unfair. The real Constable/Sheriff did a great job, actually, while the real Uncle John was indeed a shady character. As shady as he is in the movie, I don't know, but rather shady.

This movie tries to answer the Why more than the How. It shows that Lizzie did indeed commit the murders. It is very well directed and very well acted. If you have an interest in Lizzie Borden, it is well worth your time. If you don't, though, this may be a tough sell for you. It stretched the truth a little, but it really focuses on Lizzie Borden's possible lesbianism, and Bridget's, too, for that matter. I disagree with this approach for two reasons. A) though her lesbianism is possible, it isn't definitely proven in anything I've ever read--and this was the most heavily-covered crime of the 1890s, and it's still very popular. I'm not saying she wasn't gay. I'm just saying it isn't established fact. She did provably live with an actress from NH and NY for awhile at Maplecroft, but that doesn't mean she was heavily active as a gay woman. Had she been, someone would've proven it so. No one did, and no one has. And, B) Her possible lesbianism doesn't matter in terms of whether she committed the murders. She definitely and provably did, and her being gay actually didn't have anything to do with it. I'll come back to that.

The biggest difference of this movie, compared to other movies/shows/books, etc., is that Lizzie killed Abby while naked. John Douglas, in his book The Cases That Haunt Us, doubts that she did. (He mentions the movie, and the Elizabeth Montgomery flick.) He says No simply because Victorian women of a high class wouldn't do such a thing. I agree with almost everything Douglas has said about any crime or culprit in any of his books, but I disagree here. The problem with that logic is that it's the same thought the all-male jury had when they voted Lizzie not guilty. They simply couldn't believe a Victorian woman could commit these murders. They were very wrong. There was definitely a temporary insanity going on with Lizzie that day, and crazed people do things they wouldn't normally do, by definition. Now, this doesn't mean that she did kill Abby while naked, but it also doesn't mean she didn't. Being naked solves the problem of quickly washing in a basin (the house didn't have a tub or shower, or piping of any kind; Andrew was a miser in many ways), burning the clothes in the stove or fireplace, and re-dressing. Ultimately this doesn't matter; there's plenty of evidence that she killed Abby Borden. But the movie goes into Why, beyond the financial reasons.

The movie shows Bridget, the housekeeper, as a lover of Lizzie's, which is almost definitely false. It shows Bridget stripping naked to kill Andrew because he'd been sexually assaulting her. (And of failing to kill him, so Lizzie did, instead.) This is also not a proven thing, though it is a very commonly expressed option. It was common at the time for some wealthy men to assault the hired help. The movie also insinuates that he'd been doing the same to Lizzie beforehand. This has also never been proven, though it was not unheard of. In fact, it's a bit of an 1890s Victorian stereotype. But commonality isn't proof. John Douglas thinks it's possible that he did maybe assault Lizzie. I've read that in a few places, and that her kleptomania, the overkill, and other behaviors were indicative of that. But it's never been proven, and commonality isn't proof. I like to stick to the facts. And, again, I think the overkill could've been due solely to the proven fact that Andrew was leaving Abby almost everything in the will, and snubbing his daughters. This also explains why Abby was killed first, by an hour-and-a-half. His last existing will stated that in his demise, Abby got everything, but that if she deceased first, the money goes to his daughters. Which is what happened. Had he died first, the money immediately goes to Abby, and if she dies, even moments later, the money goes to her family--and Lizzie and Emma get nothing. That was reason enough for the overkill, IMO. Provably, before and after the murders, Lizzie cared a lot for her perceived social standing. An awful lot. For example, after the acquittal, she and her sister had millions. She could've gone anywhere in the world and started over. She could've lived in luxury anywhere. Changed her name. Become a new person. Been loved by new people. Instead, she returns to Fall River, buys Maplecroft and has that name engraved on the stairs and a gate--unusual for the time, even amongst the very rich--and lives on the hill, where she'd provably said a ton of times that she always wanted to be. It's just blocks from the modest house/murder scene. And the town ignored her. And she never left.

I'll backtrack for a second. It's almost definitely not true that Bridget and Lizzie were lovers for a few reasons. First, there were no secrets in that house, and nobody proved they were lovers. (Admittedly, it's also possible that nobody from law enforcement ever asked. Such questions were not asked--and the law enforcement did a good job here. Even though 90% of the city's police were at Rocky Point that day!) Second, Bridget would never have jeopardized her job like that. Plenty of evidence showed that she needed it badly, and that she liked working there. Which leads to, third, she and the two sisters have not been proven to actually get along. Lizzie and Emma called her Maggie, after the former housekeeper, and that may also have been a possibly-negative name for Irish help in general. Andrew and Emma called her by her actual name, and there's a ton of evidence that she really liked and respected Emma. And Bridget was not one who would lie well enough to get away with it. And she almost definitely wasn't in the house at all when either of them were murdered. I'll get back to that.

So, about the time of the murder, and the suspects. I've never read anywhere how incredibly convenient it was that Lizzie was the only one in the house at the time. If I were to write a book about all this--which I hope to hell I will--I would focus on how much Emma, Bridget and maybe (but probably not) Uncle John had to know about the murders in advance. I say this because a) Emma went to see friends in Fairhaven for a few days before the morning of the murders. Okay, she did this often, but it's still a coincidence that she and Bridget and Uncle John were all out of the house at the same time. But it's also been proven that Emma waited a few days to return when she was informed of the murders. There were three or four train trips between Fall River and Fairhaven before she finally took one. You get the call--yes, a phone call--that your father and step-mother have been murdered, and you...wait a few days to return? Seems like she wanted it all to blow over a bit, to get her bearings, to rehearse what she was going to say and do, doesn't it? And b) Bridget was washing windows and hanging up laundry the whole day. Sure, washing all the windows of the house is an all-day job, but she is coincidentally doing them on this day. And, she was violently ill that day, provably throwing up lots of times that day. Whether it was because of another failed all-family (or, accidentally, for Bridget) poisoning, or whether it was because Andrew was so cheap, he'd made everyone eat bad mutton stew for a few days (both have been proven; Lizzie went to three or four places that week to buy poison, which she said she needed to kill lice on capes and coats. Every store proprietor refused to sell it to her--because she'd bought some weeks before, and because you needed a prescription at the time to buy poison for any reason, and she never had one)--still, do you climb ladders and stand in the August heat all day if you're nauseous and throwing up all day? You do if you have to be out of the house and seen by others, right? Because she was seen by neighbors and by people on the busy street. The house was sandwiched between other homes and the busy street, and still is. And, c) Uncle John was again walking around town that day, as he had the previous few days he'd stayed over. He'd been doing small errands for Andrew, his brother, and he'd also just been hanging around town. But the day of the murders, when he approached the house, he was seen lingering outside for a few hours, eating pears from their tree, standing around the yard, talking to people. You see tons of townspeople, and the police and doctors, at your brother's house, where you've been a few days, and you don't break down, cry, yell, push past people to get inside, to see if everyone's all right? Seems just like Emma in Fairhaven, doesn't it? 

Emma and Bridget had a life-long falling out with Lizzie. Bridget, after she was brought back from the inquest and testifying, packed up, spent time with people in the city, and ultimately moved to Montana. (My novel starts there. Bridget had gotten deathly sick at some point, and told a loved one she had something about the case to confess. But she got better before she did, and apparently never again spoke of it.) Emma moved in with Bridget in Maplecroft for awhile. She left during the time Lizzie had tons of parties there for her actress lover--who also left her quickly. Emma moved to NH and lived in solitude, unmarried and without lovers or children, just as Lizzie did. They'd also had an earlier falling out while Lizzie was in prison awaiting trial, but reconciled before they split again.

So the movie doesn't show any of that. It focuses on the unnecessary (to evidence and to history), possible gayness of Lizzie and Bridget. Some nice touches in the movie include:

--using the same hatchet that Andrew had used on her favorite birds when she'd broken into his office and into Abby's room and stolen jewelry. The killing of the birds is a possibly apocryphal story that John Douglas didn't think actually happened. Andrew was said to be cheap, cold and cruel, but not necessarily a killer, of animals or otherwise. I agree, because I think he'd be too cheap to sacrifice eggs and meat later. Anyway, that same hatchet was then washed thoroughly by Lizzie, and then she used it to kill more birds, so that when it was found, the blood tested would just be the birds'. The movie shows her breaking off the wooden handle and burning that, to get rid of the fingerprints.

This is awesome stuff! It explains the real hatchet that was found and put into evidence as the murder weapon, minus the shaft. The labs did test it and it did have just birds' blood and hair on it. This did make the police look bad at the actual trial. This is great stuff, except--could Lizzie be as CSI aware as we are today? Could she have known to do that, knowing the police would find it, test it, and look bad, thereby making her look more innocent? I don't think so. I'm not saying she wasn't dumb or calculating; I'm saying nobody in 1893 would know to do this, for these reasons. But that's a nice irony, using the same hatchet as Andrew had to kill him, and then to hide her guilt by killing her favorite birds with it, as he is said to have done. But I don't think so. Could she have done this, in a fit of frenzy, just in case? Maybe. If so, she was lucky. But during the investigation and the trial, she had in fact been very lucky. Today, the labs would find microscopic particles of their blood on it. Or, the police just got unlucky and bagged the wrong hatchet. There had to be others. Or, maybe she just got rid of it somewhere entirely.

--after killing Andrew, in a moment of love and pity, she placed a pillow, and then his folded coat, beneath his very bloody head. This is great, too. There had never been a pillow beneath his head, just his folded jacket, and this has perplexed us for over a hundred years. Would a miser infamous for his cheapness fold his expensive coat like a pillow and take a nap on it, awkwardly, in a half-seated position, on the couch? Investigators say No, but the evidence shows that he did. He'd been whacked with the hatchet while his head was on the folded coat, close to the arm of the couch, while his feet were still on the floor, like he'd just passed out. This was very possibly the case, as he'd also been sick from his own ripe mutton stew (and maybe a little poison) and he'd just returned from overseeing a few of his businesses and property, on a very hot day. He could've just sat down, realized he was going to pass out, and folded his coat and half-lied down and passed out. It's plausible. But what this movie shows, that he was killed while simply sitting there, and in the process he'd fallen sideways with his feet still on the floor, and that Lizzie had lovingly placed the coat beneath his head afterwards--Man, that just fits his personality better, and it's just a helluva nice touch. Haven't you ever fallen asleep on an arm of a couch when you can't find a pillow? Have you put a coat or a backpack beneath your head moments before you passed out? I've done both. Behaviorists and profilers like John Douglas (and I'm an acolyte) would like that, too. He's shown a ton of times how when someone kills a loved one, they do something loving and personal--like but a blanket over the body, cover the face, fold the hands over the stomach, or in this case, give the father a pillow that he wouldn't have given himself.

Well, that's it! Thanks for reading my geek-out about Lizzie Borden and the case. Lizzie is currently streaming on HBOMax.

Book Review: The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz

Photo: The hardcover's cover, from Goodreads

Very, very good book, a bit of an improvement over Lagercrantz's previous in this series, which I didn't like as much. (To be fair, I really loved his first one, taking over for Larsson.) I'm not totally thrilled with the writing of the ending, though the ending itself was fine. But that's probably just my preference. The reader will have to judge for him/herself. I guess it depends on how you mind, or don't, how an author blatantly stops the progress of an action sequence to show characters talking about something important. It's done not to info-dump--though it may come across as that here--but to artificially create cliffhangers that keep the pages turning. That's a device that Nordic Noir takes to an extreme, and it's done here. I dealt with it, but didn't prefer it. Others may be more, or less, bothered.

For beginning novelists, which I still think I am, despite the many (over and over) I've written, take a look at the structure. The Prologue begins like any of the many police procedurals on TV: with the death of a character that starts the plot rolling. I'm really interested about this one because as I read, it became clear fast that this book could've started with any number of scenes, including the deaths during a blizzard on a mountainside, or maybe Salander's attempt on her sister. I think most authors would've started there, even in a prologue. That didn't happen here, because the main plot is that of the murder shown, which leads to Blomkvist's appearance, and not that of Salander's conflict with her sister, which ends up engulfing everyone at the end. It's also up to the reader as to which one he finds more intriguing, but it explains the split-screen writing at the end. This is strange, as the main characters essentially get ensnared in the subplot, and the minor characters end up resolving the main plot. Weird, but interesting, if you're into reading into writer's choices.

I gave this 4 stars, rather than 5, because of this oddity. It wasn't handled badly, just strangely. As for the book itself, there's a lot going on here, maybe too much, and I can't help but feel that the author could've held off the plot-string involving Salander's family, as it seems more tacked-on here. The main mystery is interesting enough, but I also understand why Lagercrantz did it: It ends the second trilogy's plot-string, as if maybe the series itself will end and he felt he had to wrap this up. Maybe he's got a different plot-string for another trilogy already outlined, ready to go. I don't know, but it seemed largely unnecessary, except that each of these books is "A Lisbeth Salander Novel" and not "A Mikael Blomkvist Novel" or anything else. She is the main plot, not whatever mystery is given to us. I get that, and I don't, and I can abide by it, and I don't like it, all at the same time.

The cooly distant tone and writing are staples of Nordic Noir, so I was good with them. A little more disconcerting is how Blomkvist--a writer for a successful news and politics magazine--is treated like a rockstar. Everyone knows who he is, and he's stopped on the street for autographs. I know the Nordic countries have much higher literacy and readership numbers than does the U.S., but this has always struck me as off in this series, in all six books. War correspondents and writers of great importance should be treated like rockstars, but they're not. Nobody knows them. I like to think of large crowds suddenly stopping James Ellroy on the street as he's hailing a cab, clamoring for his autograph, but that doesn't happen. Yet Blomkvist is mentioned by name and image on TV, and he's clearly a celebrity in his own Millennium universe, but more than anything else in this series, that's always been a head-scratcher to me. He's a pale, portly figure who woman trip over to sleep with, too, but...well, you get the idea. You're okay with all that, or you wouldn't be reading the 6th book in the series by now. But it's all an eye-roller for me, and I just had to say so.

Ultimately this one is well worth your money. Salander, despite it being her series, is hardly in it but for the beginning and for the end, and she doesn't say more than 20 words in the whole book, but you're used to that by now, too. Yet I'd be okay with giving her more to say and do in the next one. The last few sentences of this one hint that maybe the author thinks so, too. Read and enjoy. 

Book Review -- Mephisto Waltz by Frank Tallis

Review Mephisto Waltz. Disclaimer: this copy free from Pegasus Books

Another excellent entry into the historical / detective fiction series, this time set in Vienna in 1904. Think: Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware and his cop friend Milo Sturgis, except here it’s the time and place of Freud. The case: there’s a bomb-wielding anarchist on the loose, and nobody knows who he is, including the people who work with him. He goes by one name: Mephistopheles (hence the title; go to YouTube for the actual music), and he’s always hidden. The book starts with a three-member jury sentencing someone to death. His face is melted with acid, so you don’t know who. Other killings (one accidental) follow, and there’s a last-second cipher to figure out, and a bomb to stop.

That’s enough summary. The mystery is handled well, but in a way you may not be familiar with, and I mean that as a very good thing. There’s no CSI-like structure, or procedural. There’s an ME, of course, and he may remind you of one from TV’s procedurals, but that’s it. The coolest things about this book, and done well in the whole series, but really done well here, are:

      A)    you get a slice-of-life (of just under 300 pages) of what it would be like to live in 1904 Vienna, and it’s taken just as seriously—if not more so—than the murders. The crimes are part of this early-20^th Century world, before WWI and, in fact, in the time of early cars (Herr Porsche is a minor character, his car is a push-button, as many of the earliest ones were, and he drives a hybrid!), so these are treated as something that would be an everyday part of this world. No sensationalism; no guns. None of the tropes of the genre. They happen as they would happen in that world, and that world molds them. The world isn’t altered to enhance the crimes. The crimes enhance that world. You really feel like you’re there, tasting all that strudel. And--

B) It’s a treasure trove of cool things to look up, to learn about, to listen to on YouTube. This is the kind of thing that makes Dan Brown books so interesting: I buy those in their Illustrated Editions to see the paintings, to look at the sculptures, to learn about the locations (Good idea to Pegasus Books: Consider publishing Illustrated Editions of this series, going back to the first—and why not include a CD or a link to listen to the constantly-referenced music of the time?). And I do the same with Tallis’s series: I’ve listened on YouTube to all of the (very) many songs and music mentioned. They’re actually very good. (Favorite: “The Elf-King” from a few books ago.) I’ve looked up all the real-life personages (This one does a very good job of listing all of them at the end, and of offering quick bios and glimpses.), from Porsche to Freud, and all of the princes and princesses. So it’s not just a simple mystery and you’re done, a ton of books in a series so alike that they all bleed into each other and you couldn’t explain one to somebody (Are you listening, Kellerman?). This series is different, each one a stand-alone, distinct. Tallis publishes one every five to six years, and maybe for this reason.

And Mephisto Waltz even has a cool, gaslight-noir cover. It’s my first hardcover of the series—thanks to Pegasus Books. (That’s my disclosure. Again.) So grab this one. You may read it in one sitting, like I did. When you’re done, get the other six, and enjoy. And feel free to look up the music, the people, the art, and the inventions of that world.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski

Photo: hardcover from the book's Goodreads page

Oh. My. God.

There's really no other way to review it. What can you say? It's impossible for one little boy to have been through all this and to survive this, so I'm compelled to agree with the consensus that this is not autobiography, not even biography, and Kosinski was indeed a fraud for saying so.

But like most of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, so much of this could be true, especially (again like Frey's book) in character composite, that it feels true, rings true, and--understood as allegory--certainly reads true. No little boy could possibly be beaten this many times, so savagely, or have seen so much brutality and savagery, so many murders and rapes by every type of person...No little boy can live the life of a Hieronymous Bosch painting and survive it, physically or mentally.

And yet people did. As a mirror to the Holocaust, this rings remarkably and horrifyingly true. And people survived this brutal murder-and-rape life in the Middle Ages, too--Reading this was like reading Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, picked up and plopped into Eastern Europe, 1939-1945. Really, that's a good comparison: a lot of Bosch, a lot of the Holocaust and a lot of the brutal Middle Ages, all stirred together.

It doesn't matter to me who wrote this--and it's pretty clear, I guess, that Kosinski didn't. If he did, he wrote it in Polish and it was translated. It doesn't matter. It exists, and the writing is staggeringly uniform. There are maybe twelve lines of dialogue in all its pages. The sentences are simple and detached, with a smattering of social observance thrown in, especially when detailing the trains bringing the Holocaust's victims to the camps. Someone wrote it, and it's important that someone did. This is a book that serious readers should read--and don't feel guilty if you can't make your way through it all. It is brutal. But has someone lived like this? Yes. A great many, sadly. And a great many animals have lived like this, too.

It is as brutal a look at humanity as you will likely see. And it is not untrue in of itself, even if it was for Kosinski personally. It is unflinching and unsparing. It will make you grateful for your days, for your loved ones, for life itself. You will maybe be more empathetic. This book, like all great literature, could change your outlook of the world, of people. It may, it may not, but it could, and that's rare in literature, in movies, in any segment of real life. For this it should be read and reveled.

Comic Con 2016 -- Christian Slater

Some pics from Comic Con this November in Providence, RI.

Me and Christian Slater:

This was Christian Slater's first-ever Con of any kind. He's eligible for Mr. Robot, his current show, which I haven't seen, and from his guest role in a Star Trek movie. (If you know which one, you're much more of a fan than I, though I've seen all of the original films, and all of the rebooted Kirk films.)

But the majority of the talk at the panel was about Heathers, of course. For example, in this pic, where it looks like I'm in the picture I'm taking, but it's not me:

Slater was an extremely friendly guy when I met him for his picture and autograph. Not just faking it, as many of them do, and not sounding like he's uncomfortable or disgusted. He's aged well, partly perhaps because he seems like a very nice, laid-back guy. My better half also says it's because he married someone outside the business, which is also a possible reason. He seemed to be having a good time. Only time will tell if he's the same way after his 100th Comic Con, but he was cool here.

He said he got the cameo in that Star Trek movie because his mother was casting for the film, and someone had just dropped out of the role, and they were ready to shoot. He'd been on the lot shooting a show and a movie, and his mother asked if he had a moment. He was a fan of the show, so he agreed to the spot start.

He also received a lot of questions about Pump Up the Volume, which I suppose was a little ahead of its time. Message-wise, not high school. But we could sure use Harry now! I got a chance to comment to him about Murder in the First, a very overlooked movie, and one which I wished I'd had more of a chance to speak to him about. I got in line at the panel, but they ran out of time, so me and three others had to sit back down. But I brought the movie up to him in person, said I liked it, and he said, "Yes! Of course!" which he said to a great many things. But it was his first Comic Con, so he'll have to work on his instant responses. But at least it wasn't fake. As usual, an honest guy, no BS.

Coming soon: Michael Cudlitz, recently departed of The Walking Dead, at Comic Con.

Death and the Maiden -- A Very, Very Short Review

Photo: From the book's Goodreads page. Not my exact edition, but this one has the same number of pages, and the one on Goodreads that looked like mine had more pages. Weird. And I didn't want my stats to show that I've read more pages than I actually have. I take my Goodreads stats very seriously!

Very satisfying 6th--and perhaps final--Max Liebermann mystery, written by Frank Tallis. Published in 2012, and followed by okay horror novels in the last few years, all published as F.R. Tallis, for some reason, this is perhaps Liebermann's last go. If so, it's a shame, as this series is clearly Tallis's best writing, and is what he's known for--if he's known in the U.S. at all; he's more popular, I think, in Europe. At any rate, he said in an interview that he was worried of his characters and plots becoming stale, and that he'd become tired of the series. So be it, I suppose.

This one has all of the good stuff you expect in this series: the locales, the detail of 1903 Vienna; Freud; a beautiful woman murdered (though let the record show that literally every woman worthy of mention in the series has been beautiful, especially the murdered ones); Amelia, who has been underwritten and under-represented; and of course Rheinhardt. The extra touch of this one is the appearance of Gustav Mahler, famous composer and conductor, often referenced in the series but never seen. We see Clara again, too; I have begun to feel quite badly for her now. Not a bad person, and probably deservant of more happiness than she's allowed. Her reason for wanting to be with Liebermann again was a little depressing, as was the reason for her final departure. She'll end up with that soldier, and she'll never be wanting, but you get the feeling she'll never be happy, either.

The book ends on a note that rings true, though not one that will give closure to every reader. Like the characters, you have to sometimes shrug your shoulders in life and accept the path that lays before you. Stray from that path at your peril--or, at the peril of your family. See: No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. The movie lives up to the grueling realism of the book. Overall a very good book, but hopefully not the end to the series. Again, we'll have to shrug and move on if that's the case, but let's hope it's not.

The Killer of Little Shepherds -- A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science

Photo: The book, from the author's own webpage. Here is an overview of the book itself.

Outstanding book that gives you a real feel for the lives and time of those involved. Written in a newspaper-like fashion, with no author intrusion at all--rare for this genre--and with a distant tone that is just right, almost too-distant, but not quite. Cast of real characters include serial killer Joseph Vacher, the French investigators, lawyers and judges involved in the trial, and his eleven known victims--there may have been as many as 25-30 total. One of my favorite investigators, Alphonse Bertillon, is covered a little. He was a French criminologist, one of the world's first accepted criminal profilers, and he's the author of one of my favorite, true-life quotes: "One can see only what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind." Feast on that for awhile.

Vacher was a psychotic, narcissistic, borderline schizophrenic vagabond who killed ten little shepherd boys (and one or two girls) and one old lady. He sodomized and brutalized the bodies after death. What made him unique amongst killers of his type, besides for how long he got away with it, and the list of ineptness he festooned in others who associated with him, was that he was one if the first to declare himself not responsible for his crimes due to insanity. The prosecution disproved this by showing that his MO was so consistent that the perpetration of his crimes must have taken some thought, and forethought. They also showed that his talent for leaving the area quickly to avoid capture showed that he could rationalize--otherwise, why go to such consistent lengths to avoid capture?

The author concludes that his case is also unique because he was declared fit to stand trial (therefore, sane), and responsible for his crimes (so, not insane), and yet also clearly had at least one mental illness--paranoid schizophrenia, with a healthy persecution complex and fits of sexual mania. Therefore, it's possible that he was responsible for his crimes, yet also classifiably mentally ill. The author says he believes Vacher would also be found guilty today, just as he was in the late 1890s. But this reviewer is not quite so sure.

Photo: Joseph Vacher posing in prison after his capture in 1897. From the book, and this New York Times Review website for the book.  Vacher said that the hat symbolized his purity, and the keys, which he borrowed from a prison guard, symbolized the keys to heaven that he'd receive. Vachon believed he was protected by God and doing God's work. Just in case you were wondering

Certainly this case highlights the question of how much a mental illness can be said to make someone responsible, or not responsible, for his crimes. In today's heavily-diagnosed America (Donald Trump has been said lately to be harboring a potent textbook narcissistic disorder, and one wonders how fit he is to be President because of it. Look up the symptoms and I think you'll agree.), in which it seems that more people than ever may be diagnosed with a mental illness (and I mean that seriously and without judgment), this is a real question for our time. If a great many people are a classifiable something, how much does that make us culpable for our actions?

An interesting philosophical thought came up while I was reading. Another questions posed: If someone is guilty of murder (as Vacher was, and he was guillotined), and if that someone is responsible for his crime, yet is also suffering a mental illness that maybe helped instigate those crimes, can that person receive capital punishment? Again, where is the line drawn? Someone who is against capital punishment, as I am, would say No, no matter what the variables are. But those not against it, or even those on the fence, may use what I'll call the Rabid Lion Theory.

It goes loosely like this: If a lion is charging at you, obviously intent on killing you, don't you have the right to defend yourself and shoot it? If the answer is yes, what does it matter if it has rabies or not? You still have the right to kill it to defend yourself. But let's say it's foaming at the mouth and obviously has rabies. It's therefore, in a way, not responsible for its actions, as maybe it doesn't want to kill you, but the rabies is controlling it. (We can call this the Cujo Theory as well.) But even so, don't you have the right to defend yourself and kill it anyway, even if it's not responsible for its own actions?

Now, you're French society (or any society, including this one), and the rabid lion is Joseph Vacher (or any serial killer who has frequently escaped and who will obviously kill again). Don't you, as the society, have the right to defend yourself against the rabid killer, even if he's not responsible for his actions?

A real slippery slope, especially in these heavily-medicated times. And it's not going to get easier.

But I digress, a little. This book is more a history of really bad rural police work, really shoddy asylum practices, and a completely disorganized system of law if the murderer has the intelligence, good fortune, or whatever, to kill people in more than one jurisdiction. Surprisingly, this is still a big problem today (especially in these United States, and for a great number of reasons), but it was a catastrophic issue in the days before Interpol, before anyone thought to write down similarities of crimes committed across a large area over a number of years. Simply stated, nobody communicated well with each other, across provinces, just like today, where communication between departments, jurisdictions, states, and federal and regional agencies are slipshod and often testy.

This should sound very familiar for those who read about crime. Remember JonBenet? The local cops in Denver and the state and federal people were stepping on, over, and through each other immediately, screwing up the crime scene, the evidence, the witnesses, the testimonies, and every procedure and law, known and unknown to them, beyond repair. One of the guys in charge said the whole thing was botched beyond repair within a few hours of the reported crime.

And so it was with Vacher, until three guys started paying attention to some unsolved crimes, all of which involved the killing of young shepherd boys and girls, in the middle of rural nowhere, with the same MO (attack from behind, cut the throat, drag the body behind bushes or trees, sodomize and butcher the body quickly, change out of your clothes into clean clothes, and walk quickly away, often for a great many miles) and with the same descriptions of a vagabond seen in the area (short, bearded, scarred, gave off a dangerous vibe, couldn't talk correctly, and swelled foully because of yellow pus that drained from one ear). Sounds like something that anyone would put together, right? But with all the crimes happening all across very rural, nowhere France, before computers or phones, and with no system to keep track of such things, and no way to communicate?

So the history of forensics and crime is covered here, and it's all very informative and interesting.

The Murder Room

Photo: Book's cover, from my Goodreads page

For a writer like me (whatever that means), this is a great book, a source of story and book ideas for years to come.

It's also a great book for its content alone.  Capuzzo's writing took some getting used to, and I really didn't like how he sometimes jumped around, sometimes didn't (It reminded me of a recent time when I told someone that someone else we knew wasn't even predictable in her unpredictability), but the content is so compelling, and the cases so interesting, that you'll read on anyway, as I did.  The writing finally grounded itself about three-fourths of the way through, so that finally became a strength as well.

If you like this stuff--and I mean: investigations, tracking down killers, solving cases, profiling, cold cases, etc.--then this is a must-read.  If you don't, I don't know, because there's a lot of that here, even more than usual for books like this.  Much of it is grisly, and if you didn't have a healthy distrust of strangers before this, you will after this.  (Which is ironic, because the old adage is true in this book: 90% of all murder victims knew their killers well.)  If you can't handle the grisliness and sadness inherent in books like this, don't read this.  (The case of The Boy in the Box will especially haunt.)

The book, which is nonfiction, is about the Vidocq Society, a members-only group of the world's best investigators, morticians, detectives, profilers, crime scene analysts, and everyone else you can imagine associated with tracking down killers and serial killers.  (You need to read this if you don't know the difference between them.)  The group was started by three guys, all of them profiled (pardon the pun) here.

Frank Bender is (or, was, as he's died since publication) a bust-making artist of unparalleled excellence.  He could make a plaster bust of a face where one didn't exist.  He first specialized in time-lapse facial reconstruction.  What would a killer on the lam for 20 years look like since his last photo?  Bender made a cast of the guy's face, using a very old photo and a lot of whim, guessing, and innate talent, and the day after it was shown on America's Most Wanted, the guy was turned in.  Even more impressive: a skull is found with the face completely bashed in.  Using lots of research and a guess at what the partial sinus cavity would've looked like, and therefore the nose, etc., he made a bust that the murdered woman's mom saw and recognized immediately.  Fascinating.  He also had an open marriage and an insatiable drive and desire, not all of it artistic.  In essence, a whirlwind of energy you wish you had, used in ways you wish you could use it.  Bender was a very interesting, knowledgeable and, possibly, clairvoyant guy.  He said he could see and hear dead people in his dreams, and that he could feel the universe flow.  Read this book before you call that crazy.

Richard Walter is a profiler like no other.  Police departments take cold cases to him--and I mean, freezing, like over 50 years old--and he tells them where they went wrong, how they went wrong, and who the killer is.  The book makes it seem like he did this quicker than possible--he has to read case files over 1,000 pages long--but he soaks all the information in and somehow sees through all the wrong turns right away.  I've read a few myself, and I can't keep all the facts, wrong facts, suspects, wrongful suspects, theories, wrong theories, evidence, wrong evidence, and everything else straight in my head, or on paper.  He reads it, disects it, and tells you everything when he's done.  And he's always right.  BTW, the killer has over 90% of the time been questioned by police already, often several times.  Much of the time, the killer is who the police knows him (or, glaringly in this book, her) to be, but they can't prove it.  Often, Bender and Walter tell the police what they need to know so they, the police, can say it to the killer and get a confession.

William Fleisher put these guys together and started the group officially.  He's a well-respected investigator and a very well-liked and well-connected guy.  Elected the group's first president, he seems to be the glue that holds everything, and everybody, together.  He started the group with just these three guys, and now manages 82 (one for every year of its namesake's life) and hundreds of associate members.

As the society's website says, "The Vidocq Society is named for Eugène François Vidocq, the ground-breaking 19th century French detective who helped police by using the psychology of the criminal to solve "cold case" homicides. Vidocq was a former criminal himself, and used his knowledge of the criminal mind to look at murder from the psychological perspective of the perpetrator."  Bender was a former criminal as well.

Some of the many cases covered here are:

The Boy in the Box.  (Warning: This one is very depressing and disturbing.)

A robbery that was actually a planned murder.

A skull without a face.

A psychopathic murderess who worked as a waitress.

A guy who brings his case to the Society at their meeting, and is profiled as the murderer.

A young woman from Phoenix whose remains were found in Colorado.

Three cases over 50 years old.

There's so much going on in this book that it may need a second reading.  As engrossing as it was, I read some parts and I thought, "Yup, I can use that," several times.  So get past the scattered writing at first and you'll be taken for an interesting, chilly, intelligent, unbelievable, and--finally--well-written ride.

The Rule of Four

I really wanted to like this book, and in many ways I did.  But I still finished it somewhat disappointed, and--even worse--I felt that while I was reading it.

I think the problem is that this book tries to do too many things at once.  That is its selling point, its victory and its curse.  It screams "We're not just The Da Vinci Code!" and yet on some levels it is, with much better writing and characterization.

But it lacks Dan Brown's (albeit superficial) tension.  There are no cliffhangers.  There's really no suspense.  You don't really care who the villains are--and the characters don't seem to, either.  There's a nice relationship (in fact, the girl deserves better), but I didn't care, except that I felt bad for the girl.

But while I felt bad for her, I realized that it didn't matter, and for God's sake let's get on with it.

If you liked rich-school hijinks, a la 1983's Class (You remember, with Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Jacqueline Bissett and Cliff Robertson?), then you'll like the Princeton antics described here.

But I didn't care.  Just bring on the book, the mystery, the characters, the murders.

If you liked the almost-homoerotic tension between rich schoolboys, a la A Separate Peace, then you'll enjoy that part.  I hated A Separate Peace, and I hated that part of this book.  C'mon, bring on the book, the mystery, etc.

If you liked good writing, you'll like that part.  I do, and I did. But...Does the writing have to be that good for a book like this?  I guess you can have it both ways.  Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose and Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost come to mind. But...the sometimes great sentence seemed superfluous here.  While I was waiting for it to get back to the mystery, I often read a great sentence that shocked me out of the book.  I actually uttered "Wow" a few times, out loud.  But...

Surprisingly, this book was not quite the page-turner I'd heard about.  The word on the street was so high on this one, that maybe my expectations were unfair.  I don't know, but I'm confident that this book would have been much better with all of the Princeton kijinks taken out, as well as least half of the Separate Peace nonsense, and tighten up the mystery and the murders.

On that last point, another problem here is that you don't have time to wonder (or, to even care) who the murderer is.  I mean, there are only two options, and then one of them turns up dead.  Not much of a mystery, really.

The direction of the writing also doesn't let you think about it.  You just go along with it all and wait for it to be shown to you.  It gets buried behind the other stuff.

And so I have to say I liked it, but with reservations.  It ultimately disappointed me, but I acknowledge that it's well-written, though maybe I needed the more base of writings here.  It tries to be both The Name of the Rose and The Da Vinci Code, but somehow doesn't end up being either one--and doesn't even, somehow, fall between the two.

Police

Photo: An uncopyedited proof, the type given to early readers, or beta-readers.  And, considering the editing job done on this book (see comment below), it apparently remained uncopyedited.  From crimefictionlover.com.

Very, very, very disappointing follow-up to Nesbo's Phantom, a far superior book, even with the ridiculous passages from the rat's POV.  In equal parts boring and frustrating--but mostly frustrating--Police is a book that could've been, and should've been, much better. 

It fails because it's all over the place with its plot and story, and because it doesn't focus enough on its characters.  Nesbo said in an interview that he essentially wrote Phantom and Police as one book, and it shows.  At over 1,000 pages combined, it seems like Nesbo couldn't wait to finish with the ending, that even he became bored and frustrated with it.

How else to explain the inexplicable demise of a major recurring character?  How else to explain how the killer could've had the time to draw and quarter this well-liked character while on the run from everyone?  Could the killer really have chopped off her arms and legs and head in (seemingly) minutes?  Then stash them all in different bags and deposit them in the trash just in time for the trucks?

What?!?  And, by the way, didn't this character deserve so much better?  She's rarely considered for the rest of the book--though everyone was sure not to sit in her chair--and it's never explained why she was done away with when other characters were not, even when we were tricked into thinking they would be.

And that was another thing.  Way too many cheap tricks, like making us think a character's young daughter was in danger when her father calls her friend Emilie's house to inquire about her sleepover.  Turns out, she was at the sleepover after all--just at a different girl's house...another girl in the same class, also named Emilie!!!  Ugh...

Another time a character looks like she's about to get it, but it was just another character sneaking up on her.  She even says that, hey, you're not John Doe--but it turns out he was.  She just meant that he wasn't acting like himself.  Please...

Another time a very distraught father was acting strange at the scene of his daughter's death, just after a character in the previous section said that murders were committed by someone distraught about love, and at the death scene of those he loved.  Turns out, though, that this guy was actually just in grief about his daughter dying, one year to the day...Argh!

The real bad guy is a case of who cares.  The ones you wanted to be guilty--two REALLY bad guys--lose an eye and gets his face burnt off, apparently without too many aftereffects or problems.  They go out in public and live their lives as if nothing happened.  Must've been a great surgery for the guy who lost his eye, though the guy who did it was never a doctor or surgeon, or in any health-related field at all.

And who was that body in the hospital all that time?  Not who you think, but considering how Phantom ended, you couldn't be blamed for not knowing.  Turns out, a character from that book hadn't died after all!  How could the reader have known?  Well, you couldn't, but that's the way it is, anyway.

And where's the REALLY, REALLY bad guy everyone spends most of the book looking for?  Nobody ever says.  Wait for the sequel, I guess.  The only intriguing character is a very beautiful, and very unbalanced (Isn't that always the way?) young woman who does something very touching--and out of character--at the end.  You won't believe it, just like I didn't.

Very cheap.  Very lazy.

And really disappointing, because I like the series and I like the writer.  In fact, I was just thinking of incorporating a technique of his that he uses at the end of every book--what some writers have called his "set pieces," which they essentially are, in a play kind of way.  I now realize that these have to be exquisitely staged and described because a) they end every book; b) they're the resolution of the action / mystery / who-dun-it? / police procedural; and c) they're actually the climax, if you combine them with the next book, which I realize is how Nesbo actually writes these.  So they serve a ton of functions.

But, because of this, they have to be perfect.  Great when they are, as most of them have been.  Really bad when they're not.  And when you combine that with everything I've described above, and throw in a lousy editing job (this could've easily been a few hundred pages shorter), you have a real clunker.

And what he did to that recurring female character--chopped her up into many pieces, without mentioning how important she'd been to the series, or her now-orphaned young son--and throw in the fact that she was apparently alive during most of the chopping up...Indefensibly awful.

So bad I'm driven by it to work on my own book, and to treat my characters much better.  Bad things will still happen to them, but they won't be (or remain) unexplained.  And I'll treat them, as I hope I always have, with much more respect.

So frustrating because, again, Nesbo is a good writer, and though the tricks in this book are cheap, they work because you turn the pages.  You want to figure everything out.  You want to see what happens.  You want to see it all unravel.  And in that sense this book isn't awful, exactly, because I read its 550 hardcover pages in about 24 hours or so.

And I'll read the next one, too.

But...

Gone Girl

 Photo: Gone Girl's movie poster, from its Wikipedia site

I'd been looking forward to this one for a long time.  Gillian Flynn writes dark, edgy things, and I like reading dark, edgy things.  (I write those, too, especially my novels.)  And David Fincher directed it, and he's a very dark, edgy guy who makes very, very dark, edgy movies.

And Gone Girl did not disappoint.  It is very dark, very edgy, very well-acted and very well-directed.

What else can you ask for?

I haven't read the book, but being a cynic and pessimist, I was right there with the movie until about 90% of the way through.  If you're as much of a cynic as I am, not much of what actually happens here will surprise you, though how it's shown will impress you.  The horrific nature of some people, and of the media, and of the guy's neighbors, etc. will also not surprise you, though you may, like I did, be surprised at how well it's shown.

Neighbors will smile and wave, then want to shoot you, then smile and wave at you again.  Check.  (Though, seriously, my actual neighbors are wonderful.)

The media will crucify you, then show the truth--if you're lucky enough to be vindicated by it.  And then the media will put you in front of a camera and ask, "How are you feeling now that..."  Check.

Everyone in the known universe will use your image, and your tragedy, to make a buck for themselves.  This includes your in-laws, your family, your friends and neighbors.  Check.

The real purpose of this movie was to thrill and surprise, of course.  But, like the book, it is not satisfied to do just that.  It shoots arrows (and hits the targets) at the media, at the masses as herd mentality, and at the fickle nature of people in general--though I feel this has a particular target setting on the American media, and of the American masses.

And it succeeds at doing this as well.  I was reminded of this today while watching Meet the Press. (Cuz I'm super-exciting and super-awesome like that.)  The news guy kept asking questions like, "Is America ready for this Ebola outbreak?" though, of course, there has yet to be an Ebola outbreak in America.  Luckily, the guy from the CDC stood his ground, did not give in to this gambit that was tried on him at least three times, and maintained that--although there have been a few Americans currently in American hospitals with Ebola--the American victims contracted the virus in Africa.  As of this typing, they have not transmitted it to anyone else in America after they got here.

This Meet the Press guy, who knows better but who is clearly trying to make a name for himself (and who perhaps wants to marry his brand-new set), then asked if America has the resources to battle a flu epidemic and an Ebola epidemic.  The CDC guy reminded him again that there is not an Ebola epidemic in this country, but that, yes, America is ready for such an epidemic, if it hits.  He stressed that he didn't think one would, especially not as seen in Africa right now.  He did not, but probably should have, pointed out that the flu virus and the Ebola virus are, of course, two completely different things, and would therefore have two different responses.  One gives you a fever and a couple of days of aches and pains, while the other gives you a fever in the middle triple-digits, and then makes you bleed out of your pores and crash and burn, and it may also liquify your organs if left totally untreated.  So, yes, these are two completely different viruses, as different as, say, the common cold, which is a virus, and HIV / AIDS, which is also a virus.  Read the show's transcript here.  The Ebola part happens first, so you won't have to read the whole thing.

:::Slight digression:::  People need to now be aware of what viruses are.  And they need to learn this on their own, or from medical experts, and NOT---I REPEAT, NOT--from the media.  Because the media doesn't know, or really care, what it is.  My biggest fear now is that the masses will be herding in a panic to their nearest hospitals when they get any kind of cold, or flu, or sinus infection, or headache, or whatever, and this actually will exhaust the resources of our medical professionals so that they can't treat any take-care-of-it-now Ebola case that may come along.  And then--boom--contagion.  And spread.  It's like how people flood the 911 lines because their Big Macs are cold, and so the person calling because he's having a heart attack can't get through.  (Yes, this actually happens all the time.)

The Meet the Press guy was clearly trying to hit the panic button, purposely exaggerating and deliberately misreporting the news, and for what?  Ratings, of course.  And some popularity for himself.  Too many "news" channels and "news" programs these days.

But I digress.  Or do I?  Because that's what Gone Girl shows: the sensationalistic American (and worldwide?) media today.  It outrages and it misreports and it misleads, and does so purposely, for ratings.  But this wouldn't be possible if the American (worldwide?) masses didn't fall for it each and every damned time, like the mindless masses and herd mentality experts that we are.  Like, there were no WMDs in Iraq, and the mission has not, in fact, been accomplished.

Gone Girl shows all of this as well.  It may seem like it's digressing from its main plot of a marriage gone bad, or of a woman who may have been kidnapped and / or murdered, but stay the course, because it's all part of the same rollercoaster ride, with all its loops and turns.

Ben Affleck, who knows some things about media-gone-crazy, and Rosamund Pike (who I've very quietly loved since her James Bond film, and who turns in a career-defining performance here) excel in their roles.  They are brave casting choices, which Fincher excels at--see: Rooney Mara--but they are also good choices.  Affleck really has been through this all before, and in this movie, he looks it.  Rosamund Pike hasn't, but she does have the icy steel, the frozen beauty and intelligence, that her role desperately needs.  Tyler Perry out-Cochranes Johnny Cochrane, and Carrie Coon may steal the show as Affleck's sister, the one and only rock in his life.

So, yeah, go see this.  Even if you're married.  And, afterwards, you may want to think twice before you intentionally piss off your spouse.  (Not that anyone would actually do that.)

And you might want to question the American press and the rumor-mongerers as well.

Have you seen the movie or read the book (or both)?  What'd you think?

Phantom--Book Review

Photo: Jo Nesbo, from crimefictionlover.com.

This one took a little while to get going, but of course was well worth it.  Harry Hole is back from self-isolation in Hong Kong because the son of the love of his life has been accused of murder.  Helping Hole to hopefully set this boy free are his usual suspects, though they're mostly given short shrift here.  They pop up essentially to help out and then they disappear again.  I would've liked to have seen Beate some more, but I admit that there wasn't enough in the plot to place her there more often without making it look forced.  So...maybe later.

At any rate, the crime itself again isn't a mindbender.  An experienced reader will know who done it, though, again, the proof is hard to come by.  Watching Hole figuring it out and gathering it is why we read these.  But it shouldn't surprise you.  Also not much of a mystery to me was the identity of the old man who keeps showing up.  It probably won't be for you, either.  The italics portions struck me as unnecessary, but it was different for Nesbo, and so maybe that's what he was looking for.  It also provides a decent book-ending to it all, so okay.  I guess.

What will be a surprise, however, is the ending.  Rather infamous now, as this review comes a few years too late for the surprise ending, and since the tenth book, Police, has been out for awhile now.  If you haven't read this one, I won't spoil it for you, but...yeah, there's been a sequel, so...

And, yeah, I know I'm reading the Harry Hole books out of order.  I don't have them all, so bear with me.

The best part of these books, to me, is the honesty in which Nesbo writes them.  He doesn't shy away from the depressing, bottom-line truth of things.  The ending of Phantom is yet another, and perhaps the most glaring, example.  I had that part figured out because that is the way of these types of things, as Nesbo shows time and time again in this book.  It really couldn't have been anyone else, for any other reason, at the end.  Mattress Girl, in my soon-to-be-finished ms., can attest to that.  It is what it is.  Let's deal with the what-is before we try to make it the way we want it to be.

Innocent Men Set Free After 30 Years

Photo: from the AP article mentioned below: "In an an Aug. 12, 2014 photo, Henry McCollum sits on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C. He and his half brother Leon Brown have spent more than three decades in prison for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie in 1983."

I credited the caption from the article, but what I really wanted to write was:

For every overturned case due to newly-found DNA evidence that highlights a murder conviction based solely on bias--Doesn't this photo really say it all?

For the full report, read this article at this link.  Most of this entry is copied and pasted from this article, which states the facts much better than I could have.  Below the line is where I step in.

LUMBERTON, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina judge overturned the convictions Tuesday of two men who have served 30 years in prison for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl after another man's DNA was recently discovered on evidence in the case.

Superior Court Judge Douglass Sasser ordered the immediate release of Henry McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46. The half brothers were convicted in the 1983 slaying of Sabrina Buie in Robeson County.

Lawyers for the men petitioned for their release after DNA evidence from a cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene pointed to another man. That man, who lived close to the soybean field where the dead girl's body was found, is already serving a life sentence for a similar rape and murder that happened less than a month later.

Sasser ruled after a day-long evidence hearing during which Sharon Stellato, the associate director North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, testified about three interviews she had over the summer with the 74-year-old inmate now suspected of killing Buie. The Associated Press does not generally disclose the names of criminal suspects unless they are charged.

According to Stellato, the inmate said at first he didn't know Buie. But in later interviews, the man said the girl would come to his house and buy cigarettes for him, Stellato said.

The man also told them he saw the girl the night she went missing and gave her a coat and hat because it was raining, Stellato said. He told the commission that's why his DNA may have been at the scene.

Stellato also said the man repeatedly told her McCollum and Brown are innocent.

Still, he denied involvement in the killing, Stellato said. He told the commission that the girl was alive when she left his house and that he didn't see her again. He told the commission that he didn't leave the house because it was raining and he had to work the next day.

Stellato said weather records show it didn't rain the night Buie went missing or the next day.

Authorities said McCollum, who was 19 at the time, and Brown, who was 15, confessed to killing Buie.

Attorneys said both men have low IQs and their confessions were coerced after hours of questioning. There is no physical evidence connecting them to the crime.

Both were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. At a second trial, McCollum was again sent to death row, where he remains, while Brown was convicted of rape and sentenced to life.

The DNA from the cigarette butts doesn't match either of them, and fingerprints taken from a beer can at the scene aren't theirs either. The other man now suspected in Buie's killing was convicted of assaulting three other women over 30 years before his last conviction.

Lawyers for the two men said the new testing leaves no doubt about their clients' innocence.
Ken Rose, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham, has represented Henry McCollum for 20 years.

"It's terrifying that our justice system allowed two intellectually disabled children to go to prison for a crime they had nothing to do with, and then to suffer there for 30 years," Rose said. "Henry watched dozens of people be hauled away for execution. He would become so distraught he had to be put in isolation. It's impossible to put into words what these men have been through and how much they have lost."

_________

I have nothing but outrage to add to this, a pity since outrage doesn't come across well in a blog.  So I'll just reiterate one point: 

"There is no physical evidence connecting them to the crime."

However, despite this, "...[b]oth were initially given death sentences, which were overturned. At a second trial, McCollum was again sent to death row, where he remains..."

How do you give someone the death penalty--TWICE--for a conviction not based on any physical evidence at all, ever?  How does a mentally deficient man get the death penalty based on a confession he couldn't possibly have given willingly, in a case in which there's zero physical evidence against him?  And this wasn't in the bigoted first half of the 20th Century.  This was in 1983--just 31 years ago.

How many times do you think a black man with a very low IQ has been given the death penalty based solely on a "confession" and zero physical evidence?

Why doesn't somebody of national relevance order a review of every single case in which a black and /or mentally deficient (because of an extremely low IQ) man has been incarcerated due to convictions based on a "confession" and zero physical evidence?

A Visit to Lizzie Borden's House

Photo: Lizzie Borden's house--the murder house, not Maplecroft, where she later moved--at 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA as it looked in 1892.  From Lizzie Borden's Wikipedia page.
 

Photo: Lizzie Borden's actual books, in the Lizzie Borden house.  The 9th one from the left--the thick blue one, is titled When Ghost Meets Ghost.  This photo, and all the following photos, were taken by me in the Lizzie Borden house.  Please note: Out of respect for the proprietors of the Lizzie Borden House, I do not show any of the meatier (reads: gruesome, but better to draw in blog readers) pics that are available there (and on my phone's camera).  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a cool thing going on over there, and I don't want to rain on their parade, so you'll have to take the tour (just $15 per person for 50 minutes) to see the pics I speak of here, and in the blog below.  Many of the pics you'll see in this entry are ones I took at the Borden House, but are also popular pics of this case, and are commonly found online.


Recently (on Lizzie's birthday, July 19th, as it turned out; 1 in 365 chance there) I went to Lizzie Borden's house, just half an hour away from my own house, just to have a look-see.  I'm planning to write a novel (one of many planned; if I had world enough, and time) about the murder and trial, told from the POV of the maid, who moved away from the house on that fateful day, and died in Montana.

The house is now a bed and breakfast, and it gives tours through the day.  The tour guide (who seemed honestly surprised that our tour took about an hour) through the house was the daughter of the guy who now owns the place.  She did a great job, and clearly likes what she's doing.  How many high school seniors can say that they work at a (possibly) real haunted house (though for the record I didn't get any creepy vibes), and that they talk to people about a famous murder that, at the time, was called "The Crime of the Century" over 100 years before O.J.?  Well, she can.  (And she said a ghost pulled her earlobe there when she was a kid, and that other guests report strange things, including Abby Borden's ghost saying nice, motherly things).  She was very knowledgeable about her subject matter (though she may have fudged a little about the maid's infamous last words--that weren't; I'll explain later, at the end of this blog entry), very friendly and energetic, and very interested in Fall River in general.  She has a career as an actress or guide, but she said she was going to college to be a biologist.

I highly recommend the tour.  You can just show up like I did, and (because they were running late) go right on the tour without any waiting.  It's only $15 a person, and you can take all the pics and all the notes you want.  No film, though, I think.  But you can ask.  The address is 92 Second Street (GPS address is 230 Second Street) in Fall River, MA.  It's open from 11-3, seven days a week.  You can reserve a day and time as well.  Go to the official website: https://lizzie-borden.com/.  They have a nifty catchphrase on the page: "Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum: Where Everyone Is Treated Like Family."  Well, I hope not!

Anyway, it's a well-maintained place with some of the real house stuff, though most of the things in there now were time-accurate pieces bought at auctions, etc.  (But the couch Mr. Borden was murdered on, the one you see in all the online pics, is the exact one that is still in the house.  If you look at the pics [too gruesome to put here], you'll see why--Who could get all that stuff out in 1892?)  I think the step-mother's bed is the same, but I could be wrong.  Unfortunately, the real things fell into neglect, as Lizzie was jailed for a long time after the murder, and the sister and maid moved away, and everything just kind of went to hell.  After the acquittal, they took whatever they wanted with them (Lizzie went to Maplecroft, up the street, which actually looks creepier than the Lizzie Borden house does today) and the rest went into storage.  What happened to all that 1892 stuff after that is anybody's guess.

The Lizzie Borden House was bought by people, and then again, and again...the current owner has really spiffed the place up for his business (the place and tour aren't as business-y as the website is), and the house itself is really well-cared for.  The tour guide was very honest about the things in the house--but as a writer, I really just needed to see the house, to stage what happened in there in my mind.  For example, how else would I have known that there aren't any hallways in the place at all?  One door opens into a room, and then another does the same, and so on.  No hallways with rooms off of them; no privacy at all, one would think.  And, as the informative and energetic guide pointed out, if you compare some of Lizzie's testimony with the layout of the house, you can see that she was lying.  For example, she said that she was in the dining room, ironing, and didn't hear the step-mother or her father being murdered.  But if you stand in the room she said she'd been in, you could see this would not be possible.  It's amazing how close everything is in the house.

So, if you're in the area, go see the Lizzie Borden House.  I also went to see Maplecroft, where she moved later.  (Just a few minutes away, the house is nothing to be named.  Only Newport mansions were named back then, and this place is a far cry from that, and even more so today.  As I said, it looks like it would be more haunted than the murder house does.  It's possible that she was putting on airs.)  I also went to see the cemetery where all of the Bordens are buried; that's just up the street in a huge cemetery on the peninsula.  The cemetery's main road has small white arrows pointing to the exact spot the Bordens are interred so that nobody gets lost and / or defaces any other gravestones--like people have at poor Mercy Brown's grave.

Blogs will follow about the murder house, Maplecroft, Fall River, and the cemetery.  Until then, a few pics:

This is a picture of the Borden house and surrounding homes as they would've been in 1892.  Today, only the Borden house is left.  It's a busy street now--as it was then--but there are newer homes, businesses, apartment houses, a cathedral.  I know it's 122 years later, but it's still shocking how much things change.

This is the room where Andrew Borden was killed.  The actual couch he was killed on is to the left in this pic.  Here it is, closer up:

And here's the bed beside which Abby Borden was killed.  The famous picture of her kneeling beside the bed was taken after her body had been moved for the picture.  Initially, she'd been trying to get under the bed, her arms were outstretched, and her skirt had ridden up.  The first doctor on the scene moved her body to a more "lady-like" position.

There are some very gruesome pics indeed I could have shown here, but out of respect for the proprietors of the Borden House, not to mention of the dead, I won't do so here.  You'll have to go to the Borden House (again, which I highly recommend) to see them; or, if you're interested in this stuff, you've probably already seen the more hideous and infamous pics online.  The one above is a popular pic.  But at the House you can see a pic of what Abby's head--and the huge thick puddle of blood--looked like.  The House has a picture of a camera taking a picture from the other side of the bed, facing the mirror / dresser you can see in this photo, to the upper left.  Reflected in the mirror is an 1892 camera taking the picture--and it is very bloody and gory.  If you're into this kind of thing, you've probably seen the online pic of Andrew Borden's devastated face and skull, as he'd lay on that aforementioned couch, his head on his folded coat, which he used as a pillow.  Very creepy, because it's taken from a short distance, and there are shadows, yet you can still see the damage.  There's another one at the Lizzie Borden House that I hadn't seen: the autopsy shot of him lying on an 1892 gurney at the Borden home, just hours after he died.  (A second autopsy was done later, after his funeral, at the Oak Grove Cemetery where he, his wives and his daughters are now buried.)  This is one of the most gruesome I've ever seen, which is saying something.  Creepiest thing is that, although the face is almost completely obliterated, you can see hair and ears that look perfectly normal.

To give you a sanitized feel for it all, here are their fake--but historically accurate--skulls.  His on the left, hers on the right.  (Their real skulls were infamously separated from their bodies and used as visual aids at the trial--and then put back with their bodies, in the wrong places!)  Notice the damage done on his skull on the side, as that would be the side facing up while he was asleep on the couch, facing out.  Her damage was done on the back and right side, as she'd been facing away at the time of the first blows, and Lizzie was right-handed.  Supposedly Abby then turned to the side, either in stunned surprise, or because she was folding something on the bed, and that's why much of the damage is there as well.

Well, that's it for now.  More of this morbid stuff to come, including paragraphs and pics of Lizzie's murder house and her later abode, at Maplecroft, as well as of the people involved and of their final resting place.

Oh, yeah, the maid.  So it's in the 1940s now, and Bridget Sullivan, the maid, lives in Montana.  As the story goes, she gets really sick with pneumonia and thinks she's dying.  She sends word to a friend to come see her before she dies because she has something very important to say.  (Why she couldn't just call this person is a mystery, since by the 40s phones were commonplace.)  Anyway, this friend travels to Montana, but by the time the friend gets there, Bridget has recovered and doesn't say anything about the murder.  Then she dies four or five years later, never having said anything about what she was going to say when she was sick.

This is, by the way, where my planned novel starts.  Flashbacks, then it bookends with her getting better--and then dying, never having said whatever it was she thought it had been really important to say.

Or...did she say something after all?