true crime « Dee Savoy

Archive for the 'true crime' Category

Aug

TSTL?

By writerds 2 Comments

Categories: blogosphere, in the news, mystery/thriller, romance, romantic suspense, true crime and writing
Tags: fiction, my work, rockefeller, romance, romantic fantasy, shallow grave, true crime, tstl, women, women in crime

Romance writers are familiar with the concept of the TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine. You know her. She’s the one who rushes into the fray with only a can opener and a bottle of Gatorade. She hasn’t a clue and therefore the hero or some other character must continually rescue her from herself and other dangers.

Most readers are not too fond of the TSTL heroine unless she manages to redeem herself (or she’s Stephanie Plum–sorry, I couldn’t help myself), but since they’re only fictional folk, there’s not too much damage done, except to the psyches of the young girls who admire them.

But I was tooling around the blogosphere today and I happened on an article at the Women in Crime site talking about gullible real-life women who risk much to be with men who mistreat or kill them. Case in point: Sandra Boss and her daughter who was duped by a supposed Rockefeller, a man with no social security card, no job or history of having one, no real family. How the hell did this guy fool a supposedly smart woman duped into sharing their lives and their fortunes with reprobate men.

A big part of the equation is that these men don’t want you to know. They go to great lengths to preserve their con. This is their whole life and when it starts to unravel, they usually do one of two things–kill to cover their tracks or disappear. Luckily for little Reigh Rockefeller (now Boss) her dad chose the latter route even if he took her with him.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that there is something lacking in these women that these men pick up on and exploit. I would agree with that. When you consider that many of these type of love stories begin with the same formula: a whirlwind courtship followed by a quick marriage. Then the woman finds herself separated either emotionally or physically from her family and friends. It’s the same way many abusers and other predators behave: separate the weak one from the herd.

Another part of the equation is the pervasive sentiment that we women are still not complete without a man. We spout crazy statistics like we are more likely to get hit by lightning than to find that man after a certain age. Like a demented game of muscial chairs women are afraid to be the one left without a place to call their own. So, many close their eyes to signals anyone else would see. They don’t want to admit, until perhaps too late, that their (possibly) one shot at love isn’t who or what they claim to be.

But I think it’s also true that some folks take the fantasy of the romance novel and the movie theatre too literally. Some guy sweeps into their life and rather than being suspicious about why some man with millions wants ordinary ol’ you, you swoon. It’s not like Cinderella stories never happen, but more than likely the heroine ends up in divorce court trying to salvage some bit of her life, in a shallow grave–or, perhaps, my next novel. We’ll have to wait and see.

Apr

Keeping it real

By writerds 1 Comment

Categories: blogosphere, industry, mystery, reading, romantic suspense and true crime

I think I’m in love with Lee Lofland’s blog The Graveyard Shift, particularly the last entry on “getting it right” in crime fiction posted by literary agent Scott Hoffman. He’s discussing why writers should strive to know what they are talking about, with both agents and the general public. You can read for yourself what he says about agents, but as for readers, here’s my favorite part.

Well, readers of crime fiction like to feel smart. To the extent that you can debunk closely-held myths in the course of your writing, agents, editors, and ultimately readers will love it. If you can tell readers how things REALLY happen—as opposed to the way they look on TV, it will give your work a feeling of authenticity that’s often missing in crime fiction (and nonfiction.)

That’s always been my goal in writing crime fiction–to show what I know that the reader doesn’t without making them feel foolish for believing everything you see on CSI.

So, I end by asking you the same question as Mr. Hoffman does his readers–whast are your bugaboos and pet peeves about crime fiction (or even reportage of true crime)? What story line could you do without ever seeing again? Fess up!

Mar

Is it a crime or just really, really stupid?

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: true crime and wtf?

Submitted for your appproval:

A Wichita, Kansas woman has been sitting on her boyfriend’s toilet for the past two years. No, it’s not the world’s worst case of diarrhea, but, to my mind, a case of something mental gone awry. Supposedly the boyfriend, whose name has not been released (but the house the couple lived in is listed in public records as belonging to Kory McFarren. According to police who were finally called in to help the poor woman, they found her skin had grown around the seat and her legs appeared to have atrophied.

According to the AP report:

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

Even though this case is bizarre, I feel for this young woman.

And now it seems authorities may be looking into pressing charges against the boyfriend for not getting her out of there sooner. According to reports, he brought her food everyday and asked her when she was going to come out of the bathroom. Her answer was always “maybe, tomorrow.”

I don’t know why, but her response reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner and the older couple who decided their fates on the whim of a fortune telling machine–maybe it’s because her rationale for her behavior seems just as incomprehensible to me.

What do you think of this case? Is the boyfriend partly responsible? Why didn’t anyone else notice they hadn’t seen her in TWO YEARS?

Mar

More proof that testosterone in the wrong, um, hands, just leads to trouble

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: my work, romantic suspense, sounding off, true crime, writing and wtf?

Here in New York State, we’re dealing with yet another scandal. Our governor, Eliot Spitzer was found to have been a patron of prostitutes in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The same hotel has been linked to two infamous former Presidents: Kennedy held trysts there, while Lewinsky stayed there during Clinton’s impeachment trials. Maybe a smart guy would have picked a less notorious love nest for his clandestine meetings, but there you have it.

I never liked Spitzer, despite his squeaky clean reputation. He just didn’t do it for me and besides, there’s something about the word “spit” in a person’s name that gives me the willies. There are just some bodily functions I’d rather not know about. But what really disturbs me, particularly of late, is that it seems to be those people who campaign and win on their vows to clean up corruption are the very ones that are proven to be most deeply entrenched in it. I doubt I’m the only one on overload.

And now, from what I understand, Spitzer has no choice but to resign. What he did was similar to, but not quite the same, as other recent sex scandals. Not only did he deal with an organized prostitution ring (illegal) he flew one of said high-class hookers from NY to DC at his expense (very illegal). Just in case anyone forgot, the Mann Act, which bars the transport of young lovelies across state lines for a little suh-um suh-um, is still in effect.

Last I heard on the news, Spitzer may be trying to trade his resignation for a guarantee of no prosecution. I know I wouldn’t want to take that deal if I were the one able to prosecute him. Those who make their name exposing others ought to have to suffer the same kind of scrutiny themselves should they take a fall.

Two further ironies come out of this scandal, however. The first is that if Spitzer resigns, David Paterson, currently the Lt. Governor will become the first ever black Governor of the state of New York and only the third overall since Reconstruction. Paterson, who has been legally blind since infancy, would also be the first visually impaired person to preside over the folks in Albany. Aside from that, he’s credited with being a true man of integrity who can reach across the divide that is NY State politics to get everyone to get along. Sounds like there’s no downside to this deal to me.

The second is that Spitzer was a superdelegate pledged to Hilary Clinton at the upcoming convention. The old girl can’t get a break can she? Well, Paterson has also been in her corner, though I don’t know if he is a superdelegate or if superdelegatedom is transferable thataway.

Now I know I pledged to keep this blog more about the writing, so I don’t want to leave out that connection either. I was having trouble figuring out the crime and the motive for the crime for a romantic suspense I’m working on. Usually with RS, the crime sort of comes first, then the characters, then more details. For this one, the characters came first so I was like, okay folks, what’s going on? And they were like, hey, you’re the writer. You tell us. This is the kind of rebelliousness I have to deal with. But anyway, I started thinking high-class hookers, hmm, I could do something with that. You’ve got to take your inspiration where you can get it, right?

Jan

Will the real possible future president please stand up?

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: mystery, true crime and writing

A small item appeared in the Daily News here in New York about presidential hopeful Barack Obama in which Dennis Haysbert, the actor who played President Palmer on 24, claimed credit for fomenting in the American mind the idea that a black man–the right man–could become president. And I thought hmmm.

Now there’s no doubt in my mind that the actor was not really serious about his assertion, but who knows if that isn’t partly the truth. I’ve heard complaints from both cops and layers that it’s more difficult to prosecute folks now unless you can CSI the jury up the wazoo. Crime writing has been accused of glorifying crime since, at least, the time Truman Capote put pen to paper for In Cold Blood.

So how much of a rap should fiction in the form of film, TV, song lyrics and books take when it comes to forging reality, and is it really a bad thing?

With the pervasiveness of information on the internet, no one needs to look to fiction of any kind for inspiration, motivation or how-to-do-it guides. Where do you think writers get it from? But is it our duty to self-monitor? What do you think?

Jul

What You Were Born to (ahem) Read

By writerds 1 Comment

Categories: blogosphere, publishing, the secret life of dee, true crime and writing

I did my blogging thing over at Blogging in Black in the wee hours of the morning since I thought today (Monday) was the 30th only to realize I’d slipped up on my calendar by a day.

Hope you enjoy the post!

Apr

Another Take on the Virginia Tech shooting

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: blogosphere, mystery, true crime and writing

Tess says it all here. There’s no need for me to embellish.

Mar

Killers and rapists and perverts, oh my

By writerds 5 Comments

Categories: my work, reading, romantic suspense, true crime and writing

In the past couple of days, several people have mentioned how scary a read Body of Lies was for them. One woman said her friend, a fellow reader wanted to douse the book in holy water after she read it. These comments amused me since fright was not a reaction I considered in my readers. I’m not writing horror, I’m writing romantic suspense. What was there to be scared of?

But maybe I’m arguing semantics here. With my body series, my aim is to thrill, to titillate, to have the reader on the edge of her seat waiting to see what happens next. To that end, I created the Amazon Killer, a serial rapist that removes the right breasts of his victims (hence the Amazon connection). To say the guy is a bit warped is an understatement.

Of course, as the writer of this (ahem) masterpiece, I know my killer isn’t real. I know he isn’t even the killer I started out with. As I wrote, he morphed into someone who became more dangerous at every turn. And not because the character ran away with the story but because as I wrote he, as well as the other characters, became more clear to me. That’s how it always starts out with me–I have a general idea of the story I want to tell. Details become clear as writing adds flesh to the characters.

That’s not to say that these characters just spring into my head. I’ve always had a fascination with deeply disturbed individuals. I started out as a psych major in college for that reason. I eventually got a degree in something else, but the fascination remained. I read a lot about true crime, police work, etc. Some of the books in my office are so gruesome even I can’t look at them without getting creeped out.

But I love wading in the deep end of the romantic suspense pool. I’ve done some light (Looking for Love in all the Wrong Places, Holding Out for a Hero, etc.) and some darker (my Body series, and to some degree Forbidden Games coming out in 08). If you enjoy the darker stuff, too, don’t be afraid to tell me.

And no, my husband does not sleep with one eye open, but he does wear his glasses.

Feb

No, but three rights make a left . . .*

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: true crime and wtf?

It seems to me that Americans these days are an angry lot. We don’t eat right, we marinate in our own fat on our couches and we don’t get enough sleep. And if that weren’t bad enough, we’ve got acid reflux disease to compromise any transient moment when we mistakenly think nothing is wrong with us.

Then we get on the road and we don’t know how to behave. Here in New York, we never did. In New York, if you can’t ride someone’s tail while simultaneously honking, cursing and giving some idiot pedestrian the finger, you need to go back where you came from, hayseed. (Mind you, not every NY driver does this, but we could, baby, we could.)

So it doesn’t surprise me to hear of the story a young military mom who got busted for throwing a “McMissle” into the car of another driver who cut her off for the second time on Interstate 95. The woman had a pregnant sister and three whiny kids in the car. If you ask me, the other car was lucky she wasn’t throwing bullets. First lesson here: carry pregnant woman or carry kids. Never, ever both.

Granted the McMom should have held her Mctemper. But how could a jury of reasonable people have sentenced her to TWO YEARS in prison over such nonsense? Even the people in the McIced car were shocked at the outcome. Even though the judge changed the sentence to probation, here’s what bothers me about this situation: when did we as a nation become so willing to punish each other over every minor thing?

Couldn’t someone understand this McMom’s frustration, give her some service project that would allow her to reflect on what she’d done (and get away from those kids) for a hot minute and do someone else some good in the meantime? Does it not occur to anyone beside me that throwing the woman in jail is an even bigger overreaction to poor circumstances than the McMom throwing the ice after being cut off a second time was? Two wrongs (or overreactions) don’t make a right. They just make us all look silly.

——–

*My son’s answer to the question, “Do two wrongs make a right?” Yes, he was smacked upside the head for that, but with love, you know, with love.

Feb

We’ve come a long way, baby–but not always on time

By writerds 0 Comments

Categories: romantic suspense, true crime and writing

Journalist Sarah Weinman (who also writes this blog) explores the case of America’s Unknown Child, the story of a boy found in a cardboard box that originally held a bassinet in the woods of Philadelphia. This boy, believed to be between four and six years old was never identified. As the 50 year anniversary of this case draws near, so too does new news coverage of the decades-old case.

It’s interesting to note that most of the investigators involved believe that had the case occurred now or up to twenty years ago, the case would have been solved. Forensic science has advanced tremendously from the days that the most you could hope to get from a corpse were some fingerprints, dental records and a crude (by today’s standard) blood typing.

Even if you don’t watch CSI, it seems new forensic technologies pop up daily. For the crime writer, it can be daunting to keep up with all of them. I had an editor ask me once to put more forensics in a story, since readers like that. Believe me, I put in all that I could. But when you’ve got a story that takes place within days it’s not that easy. For one thing, it’s not like on TV where the test results come back within minutes or hours instead of days or weeks–and that’s once the lab gets around to performing them. In a city like New York where most of my books are set, you’re not going to get instant answers, no matter what they say on Law and Order.


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  --Debra Ross,
     Romance in Color

A skewed sense of humor has kept me sane through 10+ years of teaching and almost as many writing. I invite you to come in and look around. Leave a comment if you like. My goal is to leave you with a smile on your face and a few new thoughts to mull over. If you like the blog, please tell your friends. If not, tell your enemies.