Wicked Wednesday - Paul Keller

Since my upcoming book - Dying Embers - has a serial killer who uses fire to commit her murders, I thought I'd take some time to talk about the man who is currently known for setting the most fires in U.S. history - Paul Kenneth Keller.

During a six-month stretch in 1992-1993, a series of arsons cropped up in Washington State.  They weren't limited to a key geographical area.  They weren't kept to a certain type of home or business.  They were crimes of opportunity and there didn't seem to be any end to them.

Until one witness - who wasn't all that certain of what she'd seen - underwent hypnosis.  During her calm and relaxed state, she was able to recall enough details of the suspect for a sketch artist to come up with a reasonable facsimile of the arsonist. 

And when a man saw the sketch, he feared the worst - that the drawing was his son, Paul Keller.

Since his son worked for him at his advertising business, he went back over the logs of Paul's outside sales work.  Sure enough, Paul had been in the towns where the fires occurred around the times when they occurred.  Then the father went over the profile of the suspect, and sure enough, Paul met the key characteristics of this psycho.

When authorities captured Paul Keller, he denied everything - until the officers complimented him on his work.  Then he opened up and told them everything.  I watched some videotape of his confession where they'd taken him to some of the crime scenes, and he seemed proud of himself for the fires he'd set.

He admitted to 76 fires.  In one of those fires - at a retirement home - three people died.

Paul Keller was convicted of the arsons and the murders.  He'll be up for parole in the year 2079.  They interviewed him in prison, and he seemed to know what he did was wrong, but he almost reminded me of the David Donald Sutherland character in Backdraft - totally without remorse and with a certain amount of glee behind his eyes.

One site I read while doing research for this post called all his other fires 'victimless crimes' because no one died, but he did around $20 million in property damage.  Personally, I don't see that as victimless.

Have you seen Backdraft?  It's a pretty awesome movie, plus it has Kurt Russell.  :le sigh:  And Sutherland plays a particularly creeptastic firebug.  :shudder:  And just to make it clear, my villain - Emma - isn't a firebug, per se.  She uses fire, but she isn't drawn to the flames.  It's just a convenient and horrific way to put an end to all her old flames.  Consider it her idea of poetic justice.  ;o)

No Relation

As I get approach the release date of my first leap into self-publishing, it occurred to me that I should perhaps clarify a particular point.

I am not Brandon Sanderson using initials to hide my identity.  In fact, he's a dude and I'm not.  Well, actually, I don't know anything about Brandon Sanderson.  I assume he's a dude and not a gal hiding her identity.  (Writing gals have to do that from time to time, you know.  Take George Eliot, for example.)

As far as I know, there's no relation to Mr. Sanderson either.  For one, Sanderson is my married name.  For another, I've done the genealogy for Hubs and unless there's a connection way back and Brandon is a shoot off another branch, he's not in the tree I created.

I haven't even read anything by Mr. Sanderson.  I've heard he's really good, but I just haven't made the time to add him to my TBR pile.  (Sorry, dude.  I'll try to rectify that eventually.)

I'm also not a relation to the indie author, Cedar Sanderson - even though we follow each other's blogs now (not here - at The Writing Spectacle.) 

I thought briefly about using a pseudonym to distance myself from the fame of Mr. Sanderson.  But he writes mainly MG or YA fantasy, I think, and my one foray into that genre sits half-finished for the foreseeable future, so there's little danger of confusing readers there.  Besides, I'm proud of my last name.  Hubs and I chose each other, and I am proud to wear his surname. 

I do use my initials, though.  It was a choice I made years ago - before I even began writing seriously.  And unlike some of my fellow female writers, it doesn't have much to do with my gender.  It has more to do with maintaining some amount of anonymity.  You see, I used to do quite a few letters to the editor - especially after 9-11.  There are a lot of scary people in the world, and I didn't want them locating me easily.  So, B.E. Meissner was born.  After I got married, I just changed the surname. 

Besides, my first name never seemed to have the right flavor for the books I was writing.  Beth doesn't write suspense, she writes kid's books or cookbooks or helpful marriage guides.  B.E. writes grit. 

Heh. I'm over that for the most part now, so all the Beth's of the world need not hammer me for my narrow-mindedness. In fact, as I get ready to publish in other genres, I will be using Beth Sanderson instead of B.E. Sanderson to differentiate my work for my readers.  If the cover says B.E., it's a suspense or mystery.  If the cover says Beth, it's my urban fantasy.  And when I eventually put my dystopian works out there, I'll choose a different name to associate with those. 

So anyway, I just wanted to say I am who I am, and I'm no relation to pretty much any other mainstream writer out there.  And if you have stumbled by here looking for Brandon or Cedar or any other writerly Sanderson in the world, sorry you missed them.  I hope you'll stay, though, and check out my books, too.  =o)

True Crime Friday - This Just In

Yesterday, police in San Francisco responded to a report of a supposedly suspicious package left on the sidewalk.  Okay, I'm not sure what exactly was suspicious about a suitcase left next to the garbage, but that's the world we live in.  (I left a suitcase next to my garbage before we moved because it was broken and covered in cat hair.)

Anyway, when responders opened the suitcase, it was filled with people parts.

A search of the nearby area found more body parts.

Medical examiners determined they were all human, but they're unclear whether the parts all belong to one person.  They aren't releasing further details of race, age or gender at this time.

Since this is 'just in', there really aren't many more details.  I did find it interesting that while every other news source reported the pertinent facts, USA Today felt the need to add to the headline that the discovery was 'near' the headquarters of Twitter (although it was nearer to a pharmacy than Twitter, so I don't know what that means), and they juxtaposed themselves by saying not only that it was in an 'up and coming area' but also that it was a troubled area with lots of homeless people. 

This is why I try to read multiple sources - because you never know who's putting a slant on something and whether that slant is actually germane to the news.

Anyway, if you live in the San Francisco area and saw someone pulling a large, I assume heavy, suitcase down the sidewalk only to leave it buy a pile of trash, call the SFPD or something.

What do you think of slanted news?  Do you even notice it, or do you have one news source you trust above all others?  Personally, I've become untrusting and cynical in my advancing years, so I see something one place and I have to go check to see what other places have to say on the subject.

Wicked Wednesday - The Green River Killer

Today's Wicked is a particularly nasty SOB, who managed to elude police for almost twenty years after his first known murder.  Gary Ridgway - better known as The Green River Killer - was convicted of 49 murders, but confessed to over 70 and is suspected of more than 90 murders.  The first in his long line of killings dates back to 1982.

But that's not where his evil started.  When he was 16, he lured a 6 year old boy into the woods and stabbed him.  The boy lived to tell the tale of Ridgway laughing afterwards and talking about how he had always wondered what it felt like to kill someone.

From what I could research, Gary left little boys alone and chose the remainder of his victims from a wide pool of woman and girls employed in the oldest profession.  Despite his religious fervor and apparent distaste for these women, he spent a great deal of money spending time with them before and during the years he killed them.

Thanks to the advances in technology, authorities were finally able to connect DNA evidence to Gary Ridgway.  He was arrested in 2001.  After a plea deal for information leading to the whereabouts of some of his victims' bodies, he is spending his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The deaths attributed to Gary Ridgway span the years of 1982 to 1998.  But there still remains suspicion that his last murder may have actually been in 2001.  Whether or not that is true is something we may never know. 

The unfortunate thing is that Ridgway was actually investigated as The Green River Killer back in 1983, but there didn't seem to be insufficient evidence to actually arrest the dude.  The sick thing he passed a lie detector test - which is probably why they're still not admissable in court.  After all, if a sicko like Ridgway can pass one, who know how many other criminals would escape justice?

In this case, DNA put the right man away - probably almost 20 years too late, but he'll never kill another woman.  Personally, I'd be happier if he was extra-crispy, but I understand the plea bargain in this case.  The families of those missing women deserved to know where their loved ones went. 

What do you think about lie detector tests?  Do you think you could pass one?  Personally, I think I'd fail them all - even telling the perfect truth - because I totally spazz in confrontational situations. 

True Crime Friday - Fictional Crime

As you all know, or certainly suspect, I am a fan of true crime shows.  I like figuring out who committed the crime.  I love seeing them face justice.  I really love all the forensics and the investigation and the personalities involved in catching a killer.

But does this translate to fictional crime dramas?

Well, yes and no.  Certain shows I love, and others I can't tolerate.  It's a personal preference thing, so I'm not going to get into which shows are which.  I do love the ones that tend to stick closer to the reality of crime fighting.  And I'll drop a show if they stray too far from that, or the ones that smush the investigation into a tiny part of the show so they can focus on the drama going on in the lives of the characters. 

I don't watch shows like that for the interpersonal drama.  I used to watch soap operas for that, and I'm over it.

There were a couple shows I really loved that went off the air years ago: Homicide: Life on the Street and Under Suspicion.  The latter didn't last long, but I thought it was the best thing on TV.  And despite the write up at IMDB there, I didn't get the whole "...the unending prejudice faced by the only female detective in a male-dominated police squad..."  She was just a tough chick doing her damnedest to catch criminals.  The former was just gritty and felt 'real' to me. 

After all the true crime I've watched, though, I don't know if either show would hold the same appeal.  It seems true crime has kind of ruined fictional crime show for me.  (Not fictional crime books, though.  If that makes any sense.  Maybe the fictional crime writers try harder to get it right.  Or maybe I get sucked into the story and don't pay as much attention to whether all the procedures are as correct as they should be. :shrug:)

How about you?  Do you watch both fictional and true crime television?  Can you separate the two?  And finally, how do you feel if a writer doesn't get it exactly right?

Wicked Wednesday - Wrongful Imprisonment

I was watching one of my true-crime shows yesterday (forget which one), when the subject of the episode turned out to be a couple of men who actually didn't do the crime for which they'd been imprisoned for 13 years.

Now this was a rerun from 2002, so this happened a while back, but it went something like this:

A pretty, young blonde was raped and murdered inside a pizza establishment.  The police searched for her attacker and hit on the idea that maybe it was these two guys.  So they brought the guys in for questioning.  They said they didn't do it.  The one guy's girlfriend gave him a solid alibi.  The other guy?  Well, they grilled him for two days and at the end of the two days, he confessed.  And he named his friend as his accomplice.  They were both convicted and sent to prison.

Flash forward to 2000 when a convicted freak confessed to killing a young, blonde woman inside a pizza establishment years before. 

The Innocence Project got involved.  They had an independent lab re-test all the evidence, and discovered that the DNA didn't match the two men convicted, but it sure did match the convicted freak.  So these two men - one of whom confessed to the police years ago - we set free.

Except the friend - the one who didn't confess?  He'd been attacked while he was in prison and now he's brain damaged to the point where he will need constant care for the rest of his life.

As for the guy who confessed, he'll have to live with that for the rest of his life, but it's still a better deal that his buddy.  Why did he confess?  Well, the police officers involved threatened him with death row if he didn't confess.  They threatened to make sure he got a cell with a man who would rape him if he didn't confess.  And they promised the guy he could get a lighter sentence if he just told them what they wanted to hear.  After two days of constant grilling, he gave in and confessed.

The guy who actually did it was on parole for some other crime.  When he was released for that, he vowed that he would kill the first woman he could.  It turned out to be that poor blonde girl.  In the interview, he seemed pretty pleased with himself.  Oh, and when they caught him, he was already serving time for something else.

The detective who cooked up the idea that he could badger a young man into confessing, and the officers who helped?  They declined to be interviewed, but I hope they paid for what they did.  I know the police have a difficult job getting at the truth, but I think in some cases they forget that the truth is what they're actually after and instead go for a conviction at any cost.

What do you think?  Would you ever confess to a crime you didn't commit?  What would make you forget your innocence and go to jail instead? 

Covers and Tagline and Blurbs, Oh My!

In case you missed it yesterday, when I did a sort of soft cover reveal on The Writing Spectacle, here's the cover:

I don't know if it's 100% finished, but there it is.

Last night, I sent off the tagline and the blurb to my cover artist so he could incorporate them into additional materials.  You know how when you look at a word or phrase over and over it begins to look weird?  (By the end of the cover decisions, DYING EMBERS looked like it was spelled wrong when it wasn't.)  Well, for me, that tends to bleed over into total uncertainty - where nothing looks right.  I know I spent so much time thinking about the tagline/blurb, and looking at them and tweaking them over the weekend that I kind of went a little loopy.  Hubs and I were making up jokey ones and cracking each other up.

"Burn me once, I'll burn you twice."
"Got that burning sensation?"
"Revenge is a dish best served with a side of fire."
"Fire: It's what's for dinner."
"Who's up for car-be-que?"

So now I'm offering you a chance to be silly.  What's a whacky tagline you would use for a book about revenge and payback and fire and fear?