Rusty Gun

A Crime of Biblio Proportions

Perhaps you've already heard of EO 36. No? Ok let's go, as they say, to the highlights:

Executive Order 36 as signed by Michigan's Gov. Jennifer Granholm July 31 and abolishes the state's Department of History, Arts and Libraries. That's the agency charged with historic preservation, staffing the Library of Michigan, the Law Library, the genealogy collection, and the State Archives, as well as promoting culturally significant sites from Portage to Pigeon to Petoskey to Paynesville. Click below if you want to read it in its short-sighted entirety:

Download Executive Order 36

So, what exactly does "abolish" mean for the 180-years worth of records currently safeguarded by the librarians, archivists, historians and genealogists who work at maintaining these priceless collections? This will give you some idea. Without libraries, we're doomed to ignorance. And, despite this video, ignorance ain't pretty and doesn't come standard with a Mercedes.

And that's why 36 is a crime of biblio proportions. It halts circulation of the main collection of the Library of Michigan, including its valuable databases and turns the State Archives over to the Department of Natural Resources. Which, to quote a friend, couldn't find a cougar in it's own backyard so how are they going to care for priceless and fragile documents, photographs, personal diaries, antique manuscripts, etc.?

I've tried to get a bees nest going on this important issue. The Detroit Free Press published my guest commentary, "No Way to Treat State History," on Sunday and you can read it here. It will be re-printed in the Petoskey News-Review, and I'm doing some talk radio, too.

Both Isadore's Secret and When Evil Came to Good Hart were researched at the State Archives and inside the Library of Michigan. Their holdings are awe-inspiring to anyone interested in regional, local, or even family history. Here's just one gem I found:

It's the parole card of the murderess of Sister Janina. I also found the weekly menu from the prison where she was incarcerated at the State Archives, along with letters she wrote from her cell.

I can't help but wonder about the thousands of stories with Michigan settings, still waiting to be told, their beginnings currently undiscovered and lying in wait inside these historical holdings.

If you live in Michigan, please call, phone, write or email your state senators and representatives and urge them to overturn EO 36. Unbeknownst to those aging documents, time is not limitless. The Order goes into effect Oct. 1.

If Bricks Could Talk

 

On Wednesday, July 29, the "Murder Takes a Road Trip" book tour made a stop in Benzonia at the Mills Community House, a stately and historic Northern Michigan landmark celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

What a setting in which to discuss our state's literary history and our own contributions to it!

When I walked up to the podium, it was impossible not to be humbled, knowing that I was standing in the same spot Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Michigan native Bruce Catton (Waiting for the Morning Train) had stood. As a boy, Catton lived in the building in the early 1900's when it was The Benzonia Academy and his father was headmaster. Even today, if you look up at the high ceilings, you can still see the circular marks left by the basketball games played here by the high school team in the 1920s.In 1972 it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and today there's an ongoing effort to rennovate the brick building to its former grandeur.

It was within these building bricks of history that we three road-trippers told the stories behind our books, and it struck me that while every book tells a story, they also create one, separate from what's inside the pages, a birth story of sorts all about where the book began, how the details were found, and even what happened after the book was published.

For example, just last month I met an amateur historian and postcard collector who shared with me a series of pamphlets written in the 1920s by a Polish journalist who covered the murder, investigation, and trial in my forthcoming book, Isadore's Secret. I had heard of these works, but could never locate copies until now.

Stories, fiction and non-fiction, are fluid, living things, just like historic buildings are, and don't completely end when the book is published or the building renovated. They go on, and make for new stories to share, and newly restored places to share them.

The Road Trip will next be sharing our stories at the Elk Rapids District Library on Saturday, August 8 for a lunchtime program beginning at 11 a.m. All are welcome; the event is free and open to the public.

Murder Takes A Road Trip to Sutton's Bay

Thursday night the Murder Takes A Road Trip book tour rolled into Suttons Bay, pages a'blazin'.

If the photo above appears a little blurry, chalk it up to road dust. That's Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli on the left, Aaron Stander in the middle, and me on the right. No cookies at the library, but a great crowd and even a nod this morning on Facebook. Plus, a stroll afterwards over to Brilliant Books to sign and chat.

As the SUV drives, there are 13.7 miles between the site of Sister Janina's murder and the Suttons Bay-Bingham District Library. As the crow flies, the distance is probably half that. As the clock ticks, 102 years have passed, and yet as I was researching Isadore's Secret, the forthcoming book about her murder and disappearance, it was almost as if no time at all had gone by. The church, the cemetery, and the convent all look the same, and many of the surnames printed on mailboxes back then, still appear on mailboxes at the same addresses today.

And that's what struck me at our book talk last night. Where unsolved, high profile crimes are concerned, the mystery attached almost seems to stop time.

Many people who came to hear the three of us speak had some personal connection to either the murder of Sister Janina or of the Robison family, the subject of my first true crime book.  Either they went to school at Holy Rosary years after Sister Janina taught there, or they married into an Isadore family and had heard the story, a legend now, told over the years, or they read about the Robisons in the newspaper and followed the case, or they knew someone connected to the investigation.

Tragic crimes like these create a story that lasts years, and sometimes even a century or more. Books satisfy what I'm beginning to think is almost a universal hunger reflected in the mantra of  every first year journalism student: Who, What, When, Where, Why & How. Of course, it's the "Why?" that makes for compelling writing. And reading.

Next stop on the Road Trip is Horizon Books in Petoskey. We'll be there this Saturday, July 25 from 1-3, pens a'blazin. For a peek at our method of transport, see below:

Michigan Murder, Homemade Cookies

Last night was the first stop on the "Murder Takes a Road Trip" book tour I'm currently on with two fellow writers, Elizabeth Buzzelli and Aaron Stander. The three of us --and we're privately calling ourselves the co-conspirators -- chatted up a good-sized crowd at the Bellaire Public Library.

As a non-fiction writer, it was fascinating for me to hear Elizabeth and Aaron talk about where their stories originate. For mystery writers, the smallest spark can be the impetus for great fiction.

Elizabeth said that one morning she was retrieving the trash can from the curb, felt something round rolling around inside, and had a "What if?" moment. Voila, Dead Dancing Woman and a 4 book contract with Midnight Ink. Aaron was on bed rest, recovering from a back injury and wrote four miscellaneous murder scenes to entertain himself. Summer People tied them all together in a narrative. His two other mystery books followed.

My stories, on the other hand, originate in the mind of a murderer. I'm bound by facts and as opposed to creating the arc of the story, it's already there in tragic detail when I show up. My job is to take the facts and tell a true story, one that tries to make sense of the senseless. Still, since I focus on unsolved cases, there is a real life mystery at their core.

Tonight, Thursday, the Road Trip will make a stop at the Suttons Bay Public Library beginning at 7 p.m. with a booksigning to follow across the street at Brilliant Books. I don't know if there will be cookies. That's another mystery.

A Holy Snooping

Today's New York Times has a feature story on naughty nuns. Well, not naughty nuns per se, but rather Rome's decidedly dim view of the behavior of nuns in the U.S. According to the article, the Vatican has initiated two investigations into the workings of American convents. Specifically, those convents whose Sisters are out and about, working with the public. Cloistered nuns who shun our modern world are, apparently, still ok.

"Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming," NYT reporter Laurie Goodstein writes in the piece.

An apt description of Sister Mary Janina, a Felician teaching nun here in Northern Michigan in the early 1900s. She was born in German Poland, emmigrated to the U.S. with her parents in the late 1880s, and was taken in by the Felician Motherhouse in Detroit after being orphaned. The Felicians educated her and, after she took her final vows, sent her to the Leelanau Peninsula to teach in the remote Holy Rosary School in Isadore.

If her fate is any indication, the Roman Catholic Church is about 100 years too lake in their snooping - just a year after she arrived, Sister Janina was pregnant, later murdered, and buried alived in the basement of the very church she had been assigned to serve.

I'm telling you all these juicy details because Sister Janina is the central character in my latest literary effort, Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town, to be released later this summer by The University of Michigan Press. Her disappearance, murder, and the trial of her accused killer was reported on by the NYT, as well as newspapers throughout the country, but despite her celebrity, this is the only known photograph of her, found inside her prayerbook after her disappearance, and first published in the now out-of-print book, The Errant Nun. 

I can't help but wonder what the Vatican would have found if they had launched their investigation in 1909 instead of 2009. Sister Janina had been missing for two years then, and townspeople assumed she had run off with a lover or fallen prey to a botched abortion. Her fellow Sisters had fled their convent in fear for their own lives, as they did not believe she had left of her own accord. Her lovesick priest, who had been out fishing with two witnesses on the day she disappeared, moped through his days and spent hours in the woods and fields searching for her body. 

In the comments section of today's NYT article, one reader suggests that where crimes within the Catholic Church are concerned,  "Let the nuns do the investigating, for God's sake." A viewpoint Sister Janina probably would have supported. 

You can read the Prologue of the book on Good Reads.

The Real Rusty Gun

I thought it might be fun to share the story of how this blog got its name.

Yes, there is a real rusty gun.

When I was researching the Good Hart book, buried deep in the Michigan State police's cold case file on a report dated May 10, 2004, the so-called "rusty gun" makes its debut. Keep in mind that the murder weapons in the Good Hart murders have never been recovered.

On this early spring day, an elderly local man by the name of Leon Peter Sehoyan walked into the Petoskey Post of the Michigan State Police, approached the desk sergeant, opened up a blue cloth bag, and pulled out a rusty handgun.

"This could be the gun that killed that family up in Good Hart," he said.

Apparently, Leon didn't find the gun himself but was given it by a friend who, for reasons unknown, didn't want to bring it to the police himself. The friend, whose name was John, was a digger. A person who dug up buried trinkets - coins, artifacts, rare plants, lost jewelry -  and sold them. This friend  found the gun directly across the dirt road from where the Robison cottage once stood, and passed it to Leon.

The sergeant accepted the possible clue and sent it to be tested at the crime lab. It turned out to be quite an antique: a .25 caliber semiautomatic Colt manufactured in 1908. And, despite being buried a stone's throw from the Good Hart crime scene, it had absolutely no relation to the six unsolved murders.

Who put the gun there, and why, remains one of the many mysteries in the case. And, a perfect example of the randomness of cold cases, hence the moniker of this blog.

Want to know more? You can Download Lab Report on the Rusty Gun.

Solving Cold Cases From Your Couch

If you happen to be a Comcast cable television customer, clicking around for something good to watch, in between "Pet Adoptions" and "Comedy Open Mic" on your programming menu of choices is something I just stumbled upon called "Police Blotter."

Police Blotter is a Video On Demand (VOD) offering available in select areas throughout the country that state & local police departments say they hope will help close cold cases and apprehend fugitives. 

Yes, right from your couch.

(Public Relations documentation available: Download Police Blotter sell sheet.)

Cue the dramatic music and mug shots: "In the hunt for fugitives our best weapon is you," says the deep voice of the narrator in the introduction to the service. "See the faces. Hear the stories. Call with your tips" 

Currently Police Blotter is available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chattanooga, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Richmond, Sacramento, and was just launched in New England last month.  Not a Comcast customer? (Me neither; only Charter is available in my neighborhood.) You can watch a sample video here.

Sounds kinda cool but does it work? The program was first launched in Philadelphia in 2007 and that city's police department chalks up more than 50 arrests due to tips called in by people who watched. That's reportedly how the FBI nabbed "The Bluffer." 

Who knew your remote was a powerful crime-fighting weapon?

Bear Pause

With all due respect to my third grade teacher Mrs. McConnell, she of the herd-like spelling tests and stampeding red correcting pen, writers 'wrock.' That is the general message conveyed by the organizers of the 9th annual Bear River Writers Conference from whence I just returned.

Lest Mrs. McConnell just happens to be still alive and a reader of blogs, I secured photographic proof of the 'wrock-i-ness' of writers, as you can see below.

Who among us is brave enough to challenge an absolute penned secretly by an anonymous author on a public dry erase board? Certainly not I.

But beyond mere "wrocking," the conference also conveyed a feeling of community, a sense of collective awe amongst those of us lucky enough to be in the midst of such compelling storytelling, a deep love of the Northern Michigan landscape, and some pretty good one-liners.

These wise words come straight from essayist extraordinaire, and my workshop instructor, Mr. Phillip Lopate:

"Literature is not a place for conformists."

"Dive into the wreck of your personality."

"Expose the jugular!" (My personal favorite.)

"Know that there is private writing and public writing and learn to tell the difference."

"Be brave enough to write with the gloves off."

"I recommend that you write about people too poor to sue."

So, you may be asking by now, what does all this have to do with true crime writing?

Lots.

This last quote of Lopate's was delivered tongue in cheek of course, but as any writer knows, today we live in an increasingly litigious society in which writers often find themselves unwittingly entangled. And "honesty," I heard said at the conference, is the best way to keep one's writing from being tied up in such legal knots.

Mrs. McConnell, that teacher who first taught me to spell words like, "unwittingly" and "entangled," also had the word "honestly" on our class spelling list. Not only did we have to spell this word correctly, we also had to use it appropriately in a sentence. As in, "I don't know how that naughty limerick got in my grammar book, Mrs. McConnell, honestly."

Childish textbook defacing aside, in the personal essay, as in the poem, as in the short story, as in the nature meditation, as in the novel, as in the true crime book, the two bookends of my writing education, Mrs. McConnell and Mr. Lopate, agree: Honesty is best. 

In the true crime book this means no invented dialogue, no made up details portrayed as hard facts, no authorial suppositions that aren't clearly identified as such. And, no surrender to the universal human tendency toward redemption. The only crime stories that come with a tidy ending are on TV.  Readers expect more truth than that from books, and truth is messy.

Mr. Lopate put it this way: "My own orientation is to be leery of transcendence. There's almost always a chasm between what you're supposed to think and what you really think. Be honest with yourself and with your reader."

 

Phillip Lopate signing books at the Bear River Writers Conference, 5.31.09.

Bear River Bon Voyage

Today I'm headed north to the ol' stomping grounds of Papa Hemingway, Walloon Lake.

The annual Bear River Writers Conference is held here at Camp Michigania. And, bless my northern sky stars, this year I'm in a workshop with essayist extraordinaire, Phillip Lopate.

Blog hiatus while this writer recharges with her kind.

Rainbows, both literal and figurative, live on this lake, as you can see. Photo by friend, fellow writer, and Bear River alum, Mary Ellen Geist.

There Go the "Law & Order" Plotlines . . .

In the longest running crime series in the history of television, after 18 seasons a standard plot still goes something like this:

Lennie Briscoe and Mike Logan (played in the 1990s by Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth respectively and my favorite pairing of the series) are convinced a suspect is guilty, but they just have to get him or her to confess instead of asking for an attorney. Oftentimes though, the "perp" they have in the interview room will sit back, cross their arms over their chest, and say, "Git me a lawyer."

This, television tells us, is a little victory for the bad guy/gal. Once those words are uttered, the questioning stops and a conviction is put in jeopardy.

After Tuesday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court however, the writers of shows such as  Law & Order are going to have to come up with some new material. In a 5-4 opinion the Court overturned a 1986 Michigan decision and ruled that police can continue to question a suspect even after they have invoked their right to counsel. The suspect doesn't have to answer a one of those questions, however, but Lennie and Mike can keep going at them to their heart's content. (Read the details in The Michigan Messenger.)

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samual Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts all voted in favor of overturning the 1986 decision. Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and John Paul Stevens dissented. In an unusual burst of emotion, Justice Stevens went public with his dissent, saying from the bench, "Such a decision can only diminish the public’s confidence in the reliability and fairness of our system of justice.”

And can only get writers' keyboards a clicking. I expect some of my favorite television programs like Law & Order, The Closer, and Southland to get their grill on in new episodes to reflect the change by the Supreme Court. Book authors, too, both fiction and non-fiction, are sure to come up against the issue.