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You are now listening to True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, Bck. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history, True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening, This is your host Dan Zufanski, for the program True Murder. The most shocking killers in true crime History and the authors that have written about them. In this collection of thirteen diverse and compelling narratives, writers, among them criminals, law enforcement officers, and victims, elevate their personal stories of crime into high powered literature. The book also includes an interview with Eric Larsen, author of The Devil
in the White City. The book that we're featuring this evening is called True Crime Real Stories of Abduction, Addiction, Obsession, murder, grave, robbing, and Moore with editor Lee Gutkind. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Lee Gutkind, Hi, how are you fine? Thank you Congratulations on a very very different and very very fascinating and interesting book, and
congratulations on this fine book True Crimes you're welcome. What I wanted to ask is, because this book is so different and so unique, that's why I take the effort to distinguish it. And so maybe you can tell us, as an editor, who you've assembled, what kind of writers? Again, I just mentioned it briefly in the introduction, but tell us about the assembled writers. What kind of writers, because we alluded to that some are criminal summer police officers.
Tell us about the collection of writers and what was the criteria to pick these writers. Tell us a little bit about the process of picking the writers that were included in this true crime book.
Well, I'm glad you asked that, because this is kind of different in many respects. And what we did, and what I did as editor was send out literally advertise, send out an announcement all across the world literally for people who had true crime stories, real interesting human true crime stories that they would like to tell. And I asked them, requested that they send essays to me. Send these essays to me, and we would select We did
not commission any of these. We would select them all from kind of the big pile, the slush pile of manuscripts that we received. And we received over two hundred essays from literally all over the world, mostly the United States, and they came from people who write this is true, but also people who, as you said, very real They're not just writers, but very realistic backgrounds. So we have, indeed,
we have two pieces from police officers. We have pieces from criminals who who have been or are continually in jail. And we have pieces from journalists who decided to dig deep into crimes that were committed horrific crimes in one case, the massacre in Arizona in which Gabby Giffords was almost killed, in another case a lynching that went all the way back to Florida in the nineteen thirties. So we have a real different.
Collection of people, right, So that's very interesting how that process was of assembling authors, which is again, like you say, very unique in itself. Usually that the authors are approached and there was a much different approach with this. Now we did talk about that you asked for essays, So true crime books are not that usually that format that
style essay. So tell us why you felt that this essay style would be more effective in this true crime collection, and yeah, why did you choose this style and why do you in what way did you think was going to be more effective to tell the stories?
Well, yeah, sometimes using the word essay is kind of a it's kind of a mistake in many ways, because the book says real life stories of abduction, addiction, obsession, murder, grave robbing, more, And that's what they are. We call them essays because they're all in the in what people call these days creative nonfiction format, a creative nonfiction presentation. And that only and so that only means I'll give
you two answers to that. That only means that creative nonfiction is not only just a story, but it's a story in which you learn something about either the people involved or the subject, the crimes committed, and perhaps even the psychology behind the crimes. So creative nonfiction, that's two words. The creative part is is the story part, and the nonfiction is the information part. And so that's one aspect.
And the other aspect is that I believe that these pieces are a cut of above from a literary standpoint, the more traditional true crime pieces that most people see and expect. It goes beyond that. We really wanted excellent not just exciting stories, but excellent literary writing and so we can refer to them as essays, but they're not the traditional this is what I had the Region high school essay. They're literally packed with story and packed with information at the same time.
Yes, and this other The idea too, is that as editor, what was your role in terms of it Was it a traditional role, but what was the role in terms of the content itself? And what was your role otherwise other than managing that content and editing that content to fit this what your plan was for the book? But tell us about your role as editor and what that entails.
Well, you know, the book starts with my introduction, my editor's note, which is a long introduction, and it talks about a murder that I didn't witness but I was close to in high school. And it turns out that and something and it's a murder. It's a crime that I have never forgotten since high school. And it turns out that two very nice young men from I went
to high school with and graduated high school with. There was a small mom and pop grocery store in the neighborhood and it was run by seemingly people who hardly had a dime. It was a dusty store. It was a dirty store. They had very little items to sell. But the rumor, you know how these rumors go on when in high school, was that they were so dirty and so dusty and so old that they were a fortune in their store. And the rumor went on and on.
And these two young men in their late teens, right after high school, one day cooked up the idea that they wanted to rob the store. And they walked in and one of them had a gun from his father's gun, and the gun was loaded, and they went in there and the old people simply didn't have a dime. They were old, and they were poor, and they had no money. And one of the of my friends shot them both and killed them. And I hunt and these were very nice young men and they had never been in any
serious trouble before. Now it occurred to me what motivated these people, to these kids, to commit this absolutely unnecessary, ridiculous crime. They ended up with less than twenty dollars. And the whole thing made me think about about the
kind of the essays. And you're asking you this the kind of essays I wanted, the kind of stories I wanted to publish so real that you know, from the time I heard that story until even now as I talk to you, I realize that when people are in those authentic, scary, suddenly frightening situations, they could do anything. Those boys didn't walk into that store only just to kill. They went in there because they wanted some money, and
the circumstances presented itself. God knows what happened in that store, but they killed the two old people. And it occurred to me that committing these crimes, committing these awful crimes so often happened to people who have no business even thinking about crime and never ever purposely commit these horrific crimes. It's the circumstance that makes you do things that you forever regret. And and all of us we're also close to making those awful decisions about that ruin our lives
and ruin the lives of other people. And so when I looked at these, all of these two hundred stories that true stories that I that I received, I wanted to find as many true to life tales that I could honest ordinary everyday people, not just not criminals, but everyday people who kind of went crazy, who kind of lost control at the moment when they could have walked away and done nothing, because I think that that that these crimes, that that murder, robbery, many spontaneous crimes, are
decided in a second, in a nanosecond, and it could happen to us, to you, to meet, to anyone making the wrong decision the wrong time, And so that's kind of what I was looking for in many of these stories.
What I just found interesting in the introduction, most interesting and unique was that you said you hopefully I'm not paraphrasing, but it basically said that you had an empathy for you had an understanding of what it might be to be vulnerable enough or be in a position to be a victim. But you also seem to be very understanding that you very well could have been a perpetrator as well.
That's very interesting admission. Now, the story that you included in here about the lynching of Claude Neil is something I had no idea about, and I think it warrants that we really use this as a really great example of the writing and the kind of stories that are included in here. Not that they're all like at this level of depravity, of course they couldn't, but this is a fact fascinating story, and this incredible story. So why don't we talk a little bit about the lynching of
Claude Neil? And sure, talk about Greenwood and talk about the circumstances of a young girl named Lola that was pick us back and tell us a little bit about Claude Neil and the circumstances that led to this shameful chapter in American history.
Well, you know, there were from the late nineteen eighties until the nineteen thirties over five thousand. Can you imagine five thousand lynchings of black people in the United States over that very short period. And Claude Neil was maybe one of the most horrific. He was a young farmhand twenty one years old, and he allegedly confessed to raping a uh and and killing a white farm girl who
lived on the farm in which he was working. And and I say allegedly because he was he was the first suspect that the sheriff and his men went after. And uh he and and he allegedly confessed and signed a confession with an ex with an ex And so who's ex that with an X? So whose ex was that? What he knows? But suddenly the town, the area uh in Florida went the people went berserk, they went crazy, and they they they wanted Claude Neil's blood. They wanted to lynch him and to hang him, and to give
the sheriff his due. Uh. The sheriff wasn't particularly pleased with having to deal with Claude Neil, but the sheriff decided to protect Neil. Took him out snacking and literally out of town and into a neighboring town and a neighboring jail, and tried to protect him. But the townspeople were just crazy, and they went after Claude. They went after Claude Neil, and they captured him. They dragged him into the woods, they beat him, they cut off his fingers and his toes, and then they hung him in
front of a large crowd, lots of people. There were six people who actually did the deed. And evidently I had not seen the photo, but evidently this photo was sold unmasks for fifty dollars of anyone who wanted it, of Claude Neil hanging from a noose from a tree, missing his toes and his fingers and blood, you know, reeking pouring out of him. It was an awful, and nobody ever knew whether Claude Neil really did this or didn't do it, But afterwards things didn't end. Okay.
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Even at the lynching, everyone who was every black person in that area was in danger of just revenge and anger by the white folks around, and especially anyone related to the Neo family at all. And interestingly enough, right the six people who who went after who killed Claude Neil also went after a woman, a pregnant woman and a little girl who was only three or four years old, and the woman was injured so much that her baby,
the baby she was pregnant with, died. But the book opens Sorry, the story opens up introducing the a eighty year old character who happened to have been the thirty the three year old girl who was huddled beside her mother at that point, and for all these years, the girl lived in fear and also wanted to find out who, I mean, who the six people were, and wanted to
bring them to justice. And her sixty seven year old nephew had dedicated a good deal of his life to trying to persuade the FBI and other authorities to come back into this area in Florida and rescue them and
investigate and find out what actually happened. And so it starts at that point introducing this woman, this eighty year old woman, takes us all the way back through the awful crime and the rampage that followed against all of the Neil family, and finally it ends up with in the end with the FBI finally agreed to come back and reinvestigate it.
And there's another family member, Orlando Williams, that young cousin of Ali May, which takes on the mental and perseveres with.
This case, doesn't he right? Right?
It's now now there's a different story where they are in Greenwood, Florida. Though with this and that you said there was people from eleven states. There was invitations to the lynching women kids. It was it was amazing, amazing. Yes, My point is that that this shocked a lot of people, not in this area. In this area, this lynching seemed to be well, just pretty normal. But again you said, how many lynchings they had in in the US in a short period of years. But what how did the
New York Times depict this? And how did they what was the story? How did the story? Was it conveyed there in the New York Times?
I can't remember? Was it? It was conveyed generally as as as as a terrible crime. Sure, and UH and and it it's it connected to the presidency and the the NAACP began to to campaign to have UH to launch a much more serious investigation. It made national news for a long time, but it did not make a great deal of an impact in changing things or in finding who who the six men were and bringing them to justice.
Yes, amazing now that you said the FBI finally gets in on the investigation. Of course, that's still an ongoing investigation, isn't it.
It's still an ongoing investigation. The six men are all dead, and you know, it's the funniest thing. It's just so curious and interesting. The six men are dead. There are many people, however, who were related to the six men who are alive, and many people who allegedly, according to the author and according to the other characters, still know a lot of the details of what actually happened to
Claude Neil and who actually did it. And to this day we're talking about so long ago, people are still afraid to talk, still do not discuss in any great detail what actually what they know about what what happened.
But the Ku Klux Klan seems to be involved in this.
Well, I think, yes, I think that it was a it was a big clan event, and and the six men were were certainly clan members, and they were certainly hooded, and and and it was certainly and they were the Klan was a major force in what happened to Klude.
And why did you want to include this story? For obvious, it's a very very interesting story in it. And obviously you were reporting on the Times and reporting on yes, you know this this the separate views on you know the same thing. You know, you got a little place in Greenwood where everybody's standing around and anticipating a lynching. In New York Times, people are agast and horror. What overall would you like to summarizes Why you would include
this particular story. What would you trying to illustrate with this more than anything else.
Well, for one thing, it was horrific, and and it kind of this is these are thirteen stories, and so I wanted to give different pictures of different kinds of crime that that ha been in that and that that that work committed. And so this was really quite interesting and it was the one piece that brought me back, that allowed me to provide a historical perspective. But also again the theme I explained to you before that to
me was so important. Yes, the six people were were the perpetrators, but as you pointed out, it became an event. So many people became involved, people who probably wouldn't have necessarily even considered being one of those six events. But if six men, but the events begin to to cause its own momentum and bring people who are normally people who who wouldn't necessarily commit crimes of such violence come and watch and be a part of it, and even
make it into kind of a pageant. This is this is not the kind of behavior that probably most people have had ever experienced before and so again it was this touching of of of people outside of the spectrum the crime or the moment brought them in and and made them perpetrators, made them part of it. I thought that was really quite interesting and and you know, and
it's just amazing. This was written by a reporter for the Saint Petersburg Times with Phanta time by Times Ben Montgomery, and it goes to show people say these days also that newspaper work is dying, and newspapers are dying, and long stories everything is dumb down. But here we have a story that's almost ten thousand words, that it's being told by all kinds of different points of viewing perspectives.
And he was able to dig deeply and talk to lots of folks and kind of recreate all of the events behind the scene that so many people have forgotten.
Absolutely. And the thing is the creative nonfiction that you're talking about too. Less people not understand. There's nothing dialogue created or composite characters or anything like that. It's just like the very best true crime is written with a lot of creative nonfiction devices as well.
Well. So again, go ahead, the best piece of true crime, the literary true crime. The great model, of course, is in Cold Blood by Truman Campodi. No one has ever said even so they people have questioned his research, no one has really questioned the information that he provided. The creative part was the fact that he was able to take this and structurally and turn it into a riveting
murder story from beginning to end. And he was able to interview people deeply enough so that and he conducted four hundred interviews over a period of a half dozen years, so he was able to recreate validly and vividly exactly what occurred in the events leading up to the crime, during the crime, and the events after the crime, and
so and that's what creative nonfiction writers do. We we researched intensely for long periods of time so that our facts remain accurate, but so that we can really and stories that are incredibly vivid and filled with the tales and filled with nuances that that newspaper reporters who report crime often don't have the time to do. There there's there's another long story uh in this book about the uh Gabby Giffords uh murder or or attempted murder as well.
And it's also written by a uh By, a reporter for the Arizona Republic. And this is even longer than than than the story that then Montgomery put together. And he uh traces back from the beginning of the robo calls, when Gabby Gifford was giving a speech and was calling people together. He Sean Kinnon traces back from the beginning many of the people who received robot calls, robo calls inviting them to this shopping area where she would be
giving a talk. And he interviews these people and talks about how they got the call, why they decided to go to the shopping center, and what happened to them when the bullets started to pop and when the people started to fall. And not only does he talk about many of the people, give us a really inside look at many of the people who just came to hear her talk because they admired her. But we learn about the shooter early on, actually twenty four hours before the
event occurs. And we learn where he goes, where he tries to buy ammunition for his gun, how he got his gun, who he talked to, how he prepared himself. Sean put this story together brilliantly with incredible detail. And then afterwards, after the shooting occurs, he's stuck with the story.
Interviewed the two surgeons from the time they got the phone call, even before they got the phone call that that that they had work to do in the emergency department, and follows them far beyond the day that they had
to do the surgery. So so what we do is we do, like Truman Capodi, we researched the heck out of what we're doing so that we can tell stories that are so vivid and so powerful and create characters that are so real that our readers are not going to be able We hope put the stories down until they're over.
Why is the gifferent story? Obviously it's a congress woman, But it story doesn't end after this article either, because after this article there is another dimension to this story as well, in terms of gun to control proposed legislation after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
So there's a part of me, yes, that's true.
So maybe for international audience, because we do have a big audience in Australia, England and abroad, let's put it that way, places like Canada as well. Maybe tell us a little bit about just give us an outline of the Gifford's story itself and some of the Again you said, we cover it from every single angle. Just give us a little bit of an overview and why you've felt Again, this story is important on for very many reasons. But
tell us why. This is also a great American story and it demonstrates a lot of things just via the story itself, it represents a lot of things.
Well, it's it's it's This collection shows how how the most innocent people can can be hurt ruined by crime, by murder especially, and the most prominent as well. Nobody is immune to people to to terrible things happening to them. And in this particular case, Gabrielle Giffords was a congress person, a running for her third term, and she was a Democrat, but she was a conservative Democrat and actually a former Republican, and she was pretty popular. She was quite popular in
her area around Tucson, New Mexico. And she was married to an astronaut. So, I mean, there's no other more American, more respected, yeah, all American person than an astronaut to the United States, and so and so they were, you know, it was like a perfect couple and she had quite a career, and she was very articulate, and she was attractive,
and she was young and and uh uh. Jared Blackner, a young man who was who suffered from mental illness, was somewhat obsessed by her and decided that he was going to not only do away with himself but kill her at the same time.
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I'm and he plotted it out and brought his glock to the scene and began shooting and shot uh, Gabby Giffords, and also shot a number of other people, as I said to you before. So that's that's the story that's
being told. But it's really an interesting toy story, as you've just pointed out what happens next, because the Gabrielle Gabrielle Giffords has become one of the people most significant in fighting across the United States for gun legislation, gun control legislation, and I mean, we have very very lenient, very lax rules about guns in the United States. They're easy to purchase, you don't have to wait a lot of you will. They're easy to purchase, and sometimes you
don't have to wait to even get your license. You can buy guns on the spot. You can buy bullets, and frankly, if you want to go kill someone in an hour after you buy the gun, you can certainly get away. You can certainly try to do that here. And so for years the Republicans, the Democrats, conservatives and liberals, people from the Western States many respects versus the people from the Eastern States have been fighting over gun legislation.
And the other thing that that's kind of resting here, and the other dimension is that mister Lockner had serious
emotional problems. And the fight in the United States right now, well or at least the conversation and the debate, has to do with whether we should be uh checking to see if people have experienced mental problems, mental health problems prior to selling them the guns, and you know, kind of looking into the records so that those are the issues that have taken that have that have been sparked.
These are issues that aren't knew, but they were really sparked by Gaby Giffords who slowly, by the ways, heroically slowly but surely the covering and we probably none of us will probably be surprised if she decides to run for office at some point, not in the non too distant future.
Right, amazing story. Now tell us about some of the other stories. Another one that was I thought was interesting is a grave robber about and you call it a love story. Tell us a little bit about that story, give us a little overview.
Well, it's actually it's it's a story of a woman who falls in love with a man who and and the man teaches her how to make money and while they travel by by literally robbing the graves of people in Peru or at the same time allowing some of the people to to to buying artifacts from some of the people in villages that she visits. It's it's not as uh, it's it's kind of an interesting story because because it has more to do with with with love and less than it does with with with murder and
and and mayhem. But it's a it's a different kind of story. And again, you have an innocent person, a woman from an upper class, middle class family who just decides to have some fun and uh and travel and see the world and uh, and she gets herself involved in a very difficult uh.
Situation and and tell us more about the love aspect of this.
Well, she has an affair with with with the man who introduced her to this, and then they don't see each other anymore. It's just kind of like a one time passionate and quick incident that that that kind of changes her life in many very in a significant way. And again it's one of those incidents.
That that that that could have been rather easily avoided and really makes an impact far beyond what one ever expects.
And this a story that I would like to mention in the same regard is is it's called The Biophone, and it's written by an author named David McGlenn, and it really shows how one crime, one crime, in this case, an awful crime, can infect an entire town and neighborhood, a city can be reverberations of a crime. An awful crime can can spread farm ride and ruling people literally ruling people, and ruined the lives of people who were
only tangentially involved. So this is about a young man named Jeremy who the writer David McGlenn, is one of Jeremy's very good friends, and and the the somehow and for some reason, a uh people burst into his house and Jeremy is killed, and Jeremy's brother is killed and Jeremy's father is killed, and it's evidently a some sort of planned murder. And you would think for the typical kind of story that this would turn into a police procedural, and and we would find out how they investigate and
how they find the perpetrators of the crime. But that doesn't occur. What we begin to learn is what happens to the people who were friends with Jeremy after the crime. So the crime is committed, the father and the two boys are killed, but then there was kind of a backlash.
Jeremy was part of the swim team, so too is the narrator David, and the entire swimming team kinds to seems to kind of lose their energy, and they're they're caring about winning or losing or participating, and and and kind of falls apart, and and you know, kind of disbands the whole high school swim team that Jeremy and David and all these other guys were so very much
a part of. And the captain of the swim team, the Star, he literally he locks himself in his car and and and he won't come out for for for a long for hours, for days. And another member of the swim team wrecked. Wrecked, drove around with his Honda car crazily. He wrecked it a couple of times. One time he had his girl in the car and she was smashed through the window, and uh the captain of the swim team, a guy named chray Trey Smith, suddenly becomes a skinhead, and and and and joined the gang.
There they all kind of fall apart with with the shock and the violence of the assassination of Jeremy, his brother, and his dad. And this is the way the story goes again, focusing on the innocent people, not necessarily the guilty people. We don't then the story ever know who killed the three people or why they were killed, but we do know that that the narrator finally decides that he just can't live in this town. He's a kid still,
and he can't live in this town anymore. And and he was once a rather liberal fellow, didn't quite wasn't in any way religious. But but what happened to him was he he left his friends. All these friends were kind of falling apart, and and he left town and his father and joined his father. His parents were divorced.
He had always lived with his mom, but in this case he joined his father and kind of started listening to Rush Limbaugh and became a uh yeah, and became an avowed follower of churt Ristianity and he just he found that was a way out of the torment and the suffering of the impact of this murder that took
place in his neighborhood. So again I've said this before, but it really has to do with to me, it has to do with the impact of the people who commit these crimes or the impact of the people who suffer from them after other people commit.
Yeah, I think this Leviathan was a really good example of there's a lot of true crime books do cover the victims, they have access to the victims families and friends. Yes, this was more of a psychological sort of understanding of what these people were going through, and not like any kind of profound conclusions, but just the sheer impact, the weirdness that this crime seemed to deflect off, all of
the personalities that we're very very close. So it was it was almost like family of the victims, so right, and so it was felt within that swim team and the close friendships and these people really had a dramatic effects from this unsolved murder here.
So I wonder, I mean, as I know this collection was these stories were collected a year ago, and you know, and so often, you know, one wishes that sure when they're true and they're not made up. They're absolutely positively true, real people, real names, and you know, and it's it kind of makes you the the stories live with you in your mind and in your head for long periods
of time afterwards, because they're real people. You don't usually wonder about about what happens in the future to fictional characters, but you sure wonder about Yeah, right, you're exactly right, So so you know, it would be interesting to go back and and and find out what's happened to those guys now two years later.
Mm hmm.
Now for for this book, have any of the authors themselves done any promotion being featured in the book themselves or or is there any anything like that? Are you the person that's doing the interviews speaking on behalf because you put this together and you're the editor and to the organizer of this or are these people.
Uh I've been doing when people ask for our marketing person in fact books, I'm one person that people ask for. But yes, almost all of the writers have been doing some promotion and are available for other people. If you ever want to talk to some of the authors collective here, I'm sure they'd be be excited to do that with you.
Well, No, what I'm saying is that a lot of these stories are gesu from you know, accomplished journalists working at different various you know, newspapers, and so these people also are are continuous some of these stories or have again, you know, ten thousand words is being very involved with the subject, which, like you say, is kind of unusual for newspapers especially, it's not the trend.
Let's put it that way, right. I think I think some of them are in fact continuing on. There's uh, there's a story called The Addict by Lazy Johnson, and essentially Lazy is stocked and eventually lured in event kidnapped by a former lover, tied up, threatened, kept in isolation for a longest, longist period of time. She eventually escapes, but but but lived a terrible a terrible a moment or or experience with with this former lover of hers, and she escaped, the police chased him until he left
the country. But Lacey has now written and published a memoir of the entire not just the event. It's called Trespasses, and it was published last year, and she it was not only just the just She wrote about just the event of being captured and kidnapped and kept in isolation for this story. But now it's it's kind of it's turned into a book, and that I gather is doing very well, so great.
Now, why did you include that story, that personal story of the kidnapping?
What was it?
I mean, obviously it's an interesting story, but was there something that you there was there some access to information that you had again to put a very unique spin on it, so it it gave it a different You had a different perspective for that story.
Again, this moment was doing nothing but working as an editor, and at one point the cashier at at kmart and and she was taken by surprise, just like so many of us could be, for all kinds of different reasons. And and and lord, she knew this man was stalking her. He was a former lover, and she should have known better. But when he lured her into a basement. But but again it's it's to me, it's so real. It's so much like something that could have happened to to to me,
to you, to somebody else. But so and and also about all these stories, as I said to you, is when I meant they were literary I mean they were, they're really written incredibly well. These uh Lacy for example, has a PhD and creative writing and uh so, and she's now at work on a on another memoir. So she has a lot of experience. She studied writing for
for eight years. She's read uh uh deeply into the whole world of literature, and and I think that she and she's published significantly in many different places and so and so it's a it's a high quality look at a dirty rotten crown.
Now you've also included which would we appeal to a lot of true crime people. We can't get enough of this guy and some of the subject matter that he's especially known for Eric Larson. So for those people again that don't quite know who Eric Larsen is in the Devil in the White City, tell us is briefly what that book is subject, who the subject of that book is, and tell us a little bit about the interview with Eric Larson.
Yeah, well, Devil in White City. I noted this week, how by the way, that its tenth anniversary edition, ten years after publication, has been published, and it's kind of on a certain level an exploration of in the eighteen ninety three Columbian Exposition in Chicago. And the book also tells an interesting tale of a guy, a hotel owner named h ah Holmes, who is a serial killer, and he he kind of lured attendees of the Chicago Fair who were obviously unsuspecting to a hotel that he built.
And the hotel was equipped with all kinds of strange and and kind of scary stuff like an acid that a diffection table, even a crematorium. And it's a true story, completely true story, vivid and accurate, and and Larson was a finalist for he won an Edgar Award, but he was a finalist for the National Book Award, which is a really big deal as well. Since that time, he's
written many of these true crime, deeply historical books. I enjoyed in the Garden of Beasts, which was I believe his last book, and it's about the mostly about the daughter of the US ambassador to Hitler's Germany in the nineteen thirties, and she was a rather frisky person and she had affairs with a number of German officers and and kind of ran around in around Berlin during the periods of the thirties, while lots of terrible things were
happening in the country and beyond. So that's that's his latest books. A fascinating book and the interview I talked to you before about how hard creative nonfiction writers work to make sure that you that they get the facts and they make sure that it's incredibly accurate and Larsen I was astounded, pleased and astounded to find out that Larsen is an incredibly serious researcher. It's like to him, the whole pile of research is a big mystery that
he has to go through. And one of the first things he does, as he describes in this interview, he goes to the Library of Congress and he plants himself there. He camps there, and he goes through the through tons, you know, cartons and cartons of notes and transcripts, just as the very beginning of his research to any of his books, and spends as much time as he needs to spend doing that before he goes into the second stages of research.
And what else did do? What else did you get from him in terms of commonality, in terms of the way you might approach editing and collecting and research. Was there any commonalities or what did you learn from this interview? Did you didn't know? And what did you sort of gain affirmation saying, jeez, that's right in line with what I try to do.
Well, you know, he does all this research and he meticulously collects it, but he's looking all the time for the storylines. So, as I said to you earlier, the idea of creative nonfiction is to tell a story and communicate in for interesting information. So the first thing you kind of tried to do, and this is what Larson does.
He digs up the really fascinating information and that's terrific, and he kind of catalogs that information, but then he looks for storylines, waste what stories that will enable him to tell his readers about the information. And then when he finds out who the characters are in the story and where the stories took place, his next step is to research the characters, find out who they are, what they look like, their habits, their friends, their mode of dress.
And then he goes and visits I remember, he writes a lot about history, recreates history, and so he goes and visits the sights that his stories take place, and he slowly but surely pieces together a suspenseful, often chronological narrative to tell a story. In his vivid ants and mysterious ways, he can to keep his readers riveted. And this is what creative nonfiction writers do. But he makes it even much more difficult. Well, he makes it much more.
He takes a much more challenging situation because he's doing history. Historians for years have been writing historical fiction. But now someone like like like Larson has demonstrated that you can write. You don't have to be there watching anyone, you don't have to interview anyone. Really, you just have to research the heck out of something and be patient and look for the stories that history and documentation will tell you.
And so and he has certain rules like like in Larson's work and also in Compoe's work, he'll tell you what it is, even though even though he he has never talked to his characters, he will tell you. This is the other thing creative nonfiction writers do. If you reach significant if you research significantly enough and deeply enough, he'll tell you what the what the characters are thinking. He'll tell you what the characters might have said or
did say based upon transcripts and other documentation. It's really question of how much patience you have, how much determination you have, how deeply you are willing to go in order to flesh out to dig up every kind of morsel of information available to you.
And Eric Larson has been very successful with Devil in the White City especially. That's probably the main reason why it's the tenth anniversary is being celebrated so much. There's now books ten twenty thirty years old that now are become the new legion of true crime classics. And that book has been around four years and people know of it and now it is just official for those that have not heard of the story, have not read his work,
it's a certified true crime classics. So employing those techniques has worked very well for him.
Certainly, absolutely absolutely.
Now some of the maybe you could just tell us all the writers that are have been included in in the book true crime and uh, maybe we just spoke of a couple, but tell us about all of the people that are involved and in this fine book.
Well, as I mentioned, there are a couple of of police officers and and one is Vance Boyles, who is a detective and the story he writes is it's called Regret. And again a very interesting story. It's a story of an alleged rape. A woman calls and and reports it's the fact that that she was raped, and he vance boils.
A detective gets the case and he interviews her and he begins to to suspect that perhaps she's not telling the truth, and so he tries to contact He in fact, contents contacts uh the young man who she is accusing, and the young man becomes very nervous. The whole idea of this woman accusing him of doing something that he didn't do makes it and then getting a phone call from police officer makes him nervous, and he begins and he backs away from talking from with vance Boils and
gets an attorney and refuses to be cooperative. And all vance Boyles wants. The detective wants to do is to just talk to n because he's convinced that the girl is not telling the truth. But he needs to have a statement, a direct conversation with this young man before he files his more official reports, and he knows that once he files the official report, the young man's going to get into big trouble. But the young man gets an attorney. The attorney advises him to not speak to
the police officer. And Vance is a very nice, as I said, easygoing, cooperative man, and all he wanted to do was was kind of go through the numbers and talk to the young man. And the young man refused, and unfortunately he did not receive judge justice. He went to jail. He was tried and convicted and went to jail. And so Vance Boyles is uh. Also, I should say also to you that I mentioned to you that Lacy
Johnson was a was a person who studied writing. There are four or five people in this book who who have literally gotten degrees in creative writing, and Vance Boyles is one of them. Is along with Lacey and Stephen Church, who who's part of this book writing a lot about Mike the savagery of Mike Tyson teaches creative writing in California. And David Dyke in the Death of a Family is actually the sun a really wonderful writer and the son of the you know, one of the most famous American
writers of all time, John Updike. Right, So this is a really terrific collection.
Absolutely, And when did this book colloquially.
It came out about four or five months.
Ago, four or five months ago, right, And I guess you've been doing a fair amount of interviews for this book as.
Well, been doing interviews talking about the book, talking about about about the themes in the book, and the fact that that that these are absolutely superior pieces of literature in addition to being great crime stories.
Absolutely. Now, if people are interested, is it this is published by in Fact Books?
Is it?
Where's the best place they get? Obviously everybody knows you at Barnes and the Amazon dot com and then Canada chapters and but is there any benefit of going to in Fact to get the book itself or to your website? What do you recommend and tell us a little bit.
About I think the best thing to do is to go to the bookstores, your independent bookstore or Barnes and Noble or order from Amazon. If you want any of the writers or me the editor to literally autograph the book for you, and you can go to the in Fact Books website right and order from order from Impact directly and just you know, write a note or give them a call and say that you'd like me or any either writers to autograph it and we'll make sure that that happens.
Well, that's great, Yeah, lots of times websites now offer something personal like that, so that if somebody really wants something like that, you're surely not going to get it from Amazon. So that would be a nice addition to somebody it's really really interested in the book and once that collector's editions, as so many people do. I know that's been it's been very good talking to Lee about this true crime Well.
Thank you, nice to talk with you. Thanks for asking me to speak about the book.
Well that You're very welcome. It's been my pleasure. It's people been listening to true crime real stories of abduction, addiction, obsession, murder, grave robbing, and more with editor Lee Guttkind. Well, thank you very much for this interview and hope to hear from you again real soon. Lee, thank you very much.
Thank you, have a good bye bye YouTube.
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