Shocking True Story Read online

  SHOCKING TRUE STORY

  Gregg Olsen

  Copyright © 2013 GREGG OLSEN

  Cover Art and Photography: BEAUTeBOOK

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SHOCKING TRUE STORY

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  BOOK I - Murder Most Personal

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  BOOK II - The Finger of Guilt

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  BOOK III - Jumping to Conclusions

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  EPILOGUE

  BONUS CHAPTERS

  EMPTY COFFIN SERIES

  ENVY

  Chapter 1

  BETRAYAL

  Chapter 1

  ALSO BY GREGG OLSEN

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  BOOK IDEAS ARE BORN IN ANY NUMBER OF WAYS. Some come to authors in a burst of happenstance and, even, brilliance. Some come in the throes of a good dream. A few, I'm told, come from God. I have never been so lucky. My books have always been born of the truth. The one you are holding is one of those. I am a writer of true crime, a much-maligned genre, but one in which I felt I could stake a claim for a respectable career. It seemed that there were a million stories out there that—given some shaping and research—might make for interesting reading. The ideas come from television, prisoners who write to me, fans that show up at book signings (though I can't say I have enough of those to provide much of a stockpile) and, of course, newspapers and the internet.

  Shocking True Story is different. This is a story hatched from my own experiences; my own life.

  About a year ago my wife, Valerie, retrieved a carton under our bed amid rolls of Christmas wrapping paper and white and brown tufts of dog hair. She set the legal-size box with its ill-fitting, strapped-down lid next to the computer where I did most of my writing. She smiled reluctantly and said only three words.

  “Honey, it's time.”

  I understood what she meant. I knew it even if she had said nothing. I had tried to avoid the idea of telling the story contained in the beat-up box. I had resisted it for all the right reasons, though deep down I knew it was beyond my ability to do so. Beyond my need. Beyond the necessity of supporting my family.

  I had a dozen such boxes in various spots in my house. In the garage, too. Three that had been stacked and draped with a cheery chintz fabric passed as a bedside table in the guest room. Those contained Renata's story, one about a woman who had killed her husband for insurance money. They held her entire life in three boxes, including her video-store card, her purse (a blue and white nautical shoulder bag) and love letters to the man with whom she had conspired to commit the murder. I even had the convicted woman's Costco shopping lists (she loved salsa and chips) and a brush embedded with her Clairol Frivolous Fawn-dyed hair.

  Each was a Pandora's Box of sorts, a repository in which I was the keeper, the curator of little murder boxes which held the remnants of the books I had written. Inside each were the unspeakable and the unbelievable. I had been writing true crime books for nearly a decade and the memorabilia I had collected was suitable for a murder museum, if such a place existed. I had Christmas cards from Pamela Smart; a signed page of sheet music from Charles Manson. I even had a sketch by John Wayne Gacy (he was a better killer than artist, for sure). Inside each box of source material were numerous memories. All had been tagged with the name of the book that I had regarded as a potential bestseller.

  The carton my wife put near my desk was labeled with the name of a story I started to write, but was never destined to complete: Love You to Death.

  I took an X-acto knife from Val's art bin and sliced the silver duct tape I had used to seal the box. Even the tape rekindled a recollection of a terrible night not so long ago. The glint of silver. The flash of steel. A kind of coldness and fear I had never known before seized me once more. Some things, I know all too well, are too powerful to forget.

  I pushed the lid aside and drank some coffee before looking inside. The contents were remarkable, not only in their diversity, but in their very familiarity. The top was blanketed by a green leotard, a Halloween costume worn by one of my twin daughters. A small but unmistakable crescent of blood had stained the garment's neckline.

  I drank more coffee and pushed the green fabric aside. At first, I used a pencil to do so. Almost instantly, I felt clinical and foolish. Embarrassed. I was the little girl's father. Her blood was mine. I had carried her and her twin from the delivery room like two peachy footballs, one in each arm. I was the Daddy who saved her spit-up cloth because I knew that the smell would always remind me of my baby.

  I gently folded the leotard and peered deeper into the box. The contents had come so close to being the province of someone else's collection; some other writer who made his or her living from the anguish of others. It had been too damn close. The interview tapes, the photos of the hard-bitten players in a ridiculous drama, a photocopy of a lineup of fingerprints that resembled a black and white rendering of five small beehives. Everything was in there. Everything that had nearly cost me all I held precious in my life—the lives of every member of my family, my freedom.

  And so I agreed with Valerie. It was time. I fiddled with the yarn-covered pencil holder that little Teddy Bundy had made for his mom for Mother's Day in 1964 (I purchased it along with other personal belongings from the Bundy family's garage sale in 1989, after Ted was electrocuted in Florida for the murder of a schoolgirl). I had re-glued the uncoiling rainbow yarn twice before, as if keeping it intact somehow mattered.

  I have always been fascinated by crime. I have always wondered what brings a child like Teddy Bundy to seek the dark side of murder. How a child, born seemingly perfect, is transformed into the embodiment of evil. Before the events took place in the book you are now holding, I pondered the why of a crime from a distance. A safe distance.

  I'll never forget that summer day when the wheels of homicide had been set in motion, when my own story would eclipse the crime I was chronicling.

  This is my story.

  In Memory of June Rose Parker

  SHOCKING TRUE STORY

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Kevin Ryan — True-crime writer, Port Gamble resident

  Valerie Ryan — Kevin’s wife

  Taylor and Hayley Ryan — Kevin and Valerie’s twin daughters

  Hedda — The Ryan family’s dachshund

  Jeanne Morgan — Kevin’s top fan, website master

  Rita Adams — Host of tabloid TV talk show

  J. Jackson — Ellison County Coroner employee

  Muriel Constantine — Riverstone Women’s Prison public relations

  Martin Raine
s — Pierce County Sheriff’s detective

  Monica Maleng — Tabloid TV producer

  Adena King — Tabloid TV producer

  Gina, Carlton and Cecile — The Ryans’ “up the hill” neighbors

  Wanda-Lou Webster — Sleazy true-crime writer

  Fred Ross — Sleazy true-crime writer

  Ashlee — Jerry Springer Show producer

  Susan — Sales rep for Kevin’s publisher

  C.J. Cunningham — Seattle-area author

  Misty Dawn — Seattle-area author

  Darlene Fulton — Riverstone corrections officer

  Vernon Hess — Riverstone chaplain

  Davidson — Pierce County sheriff’s deputy

  Mona/Moans-a-Lot — Pierce County sheriff’s deputy

  April Raines — Wife of Martin Raines

  Kate O’Brien — Kitsap Regional Library researcher

  David R. — Maplewood employee

  Lynette Watson — Maplewood nurse’s aide

  Austin — Jett’s late boyfriend

  TIMBERLAKE

  Jett Carter — Daughter of Connie Carter, sister of Janet Lee Kerr, convicted of attempted murder

  Connie Carter — Jett’s mother, imprisoned at Riverstone

  Janet Lee Kerr — Jett’s sister, imprisoned at Riverstone

  Deke “Sugarbutt” Cameron — Janet’s boyfriend, victim of murder attempt

  Danny “Sugarbutt” Parker — Janet’s stooge, Deke’s shooter

  Paul Kerr — Janet’s ex-husband

  Anna Cameron — Deke’s mother

  June Parker — Danny’s mother

  Melba Warinski — Cameron shooting witness

  Andy Lowery — Cameron shooting witness

  Buzz Carter — Jett’s late father

  Davy Parker — Danny’s brother

  Dwight Parker — Danny’s father

  Brian Jackson — Friend of Danny Parker

  Lindy Kerr — Janet’s daughter, Jett’s niece

  Liz Kerr — Paul’s wife

  Michelle McMahon — Teenage friend of Janet Lee

  Jim Winston — Friend of Deke Cameron

  BOOK I

  Murder Most Personal

  "Kevin, you even thought that serial killer from Lincoln City was nice.

  Serial killers are always nice until they get what they want."

  —VALERIE RYAN

  Chapter One

  Friday, July 5

  I GAVE MY SLIGHTLY BALDING head a repeated shake. A good one. Back and forth like the last A-Rod bobble-head—before Madonna, before performance-enhancing drugs ruined his run at the all-time home run record—at a sports memorabilia fair. Again. I thought I'd be able to reconnect the synapses in my brain that I was sure were misfiring. I just didn't get it. I looked at the words printed out in pristine neatness by my laser printer. They were printed in Times New Roman, a crisp typeface known for starchy little serifs that saluted each word with definite preciseness. And the sequence of those words—they were arranged in an order of drama and truth.

  What was going on here?

  I considered the proposed book once more while the voice on the phone rambled on.

  It was the tale of Amanda Winfield, a woman of murderous charms. The setting was good—a small town in the fir-blanketed foothills of the Cascade Mountains east of Seattle. The lead characters were benign on the surface—Amanda was a part-time kindergarten teacher; her lover, a laid-off newspaper reporter in charge of the Family Life section (since lost to budget cuts) at a mid-size suburban daily. The crime—unbelievable. With promises of sex, insurance money and more sex, beguiling Amanda convinced her not-so-secret reporter lover, at loose ends after the loss of his job, to kill two of her husbands, six years apart. Two. Not one, but two.

  I thought it had all the elements of a true crime opus, a runaway best-seller.

  I, it now seemed, was alone in that regard.

  The editor's words over the phone continued to stupefy.

  "If only she killed with a little more originality, more over-the-top."

  The very idea hit me like a Frisbee in the back of the head. Come again? What was this guy saying? I stared once more at my opening chapter, the teaser to my proposed book. What kind of meaning was I supposed to find in his suggestion that murderess Amanda Winfield might have been a better book subject if she had offed her old man with a bow and arrow or maybe sliced his jugular with the crinkly metal edge of a tuna can lid? The fact was in the days of maybe-baby killers from Florida, the infectious outrage of Nancy Grace and other headline-chasing cable wonks, the Investigation: Discovery network, and CSI-inspired TV shows, truth was no longer interesting.

  I wondered if this is where we had sunk. Murders were so commonplace that a good story had to rise to a level of outrageousness faster than a two-day-old corpse in a pond before it would make the basis for a good book. Because of O.J. The Innocent, Eric and Lyle "We Are Orphans!" Menendez, Casey “Tot Mom” Anthony, Scottie "The Hottie" Peterson and Drew “Not Related to Scott and Not Particularly Hot but Still a Killer” Peterson, the next crazed killer had to do something really off the hook, totally off the wall, to get the notice of a publisher. A good story, a meaningful story, had been replaced by the likes of Lobster Boy Murders and any maniac who ate flesh or held his family captive for at least a decade.

  "Market's a little tough now," the book editor droned on.

  It was true, a sea of black and white and red covers stare out from the true crime section like a penguin massacre. But was that my fault? Was it the fault of women like Amanda Winfield? Were the killers running the art department of every mass market true crime book publisher in New York? I didn't think so.

  What I did think was that Amanda wanted her husbands (numbers two and three) out of the way so that she could be with her ex-reporter lover, who claimed he wanted to get into true crime himself. Husband No. 2, a geologist, was bludgeoned to death with a chunk of granite and husband No. 3, a fireman, was shot and torched.

  Torched! The fireman was torched, I had reminded the book editor.

  "There is some irony there, but it would have been better if Amanda had been a little more devious about it."

  I couldn't believe what I had heard. A little more devious?

  “Devious isn't screwing your lover ten minutes before sending him to kill your husband, with the promise of a blow job when he returns?”

  "It is and it isn't," the editor said.

  All I could do was drum my fingers on my mouse pad as I thought it all over while the young man, who lived in one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world, rambled on over the phone. He didn't get it. He just didn't get crime. This guy failed to understand that America extended beyond Manhattan, and true crime readers were interested in the shocking kind of murder among people they can relate to. It didn't have to be a greedy Boston socialite or a love-struck astronaut in diapers to strike a chord of interest among readers. The occupation didn't necessarily define the crime. Yet a preacher's wife who enlists two boys from the choir to kill, or a kindergarten teacher, like Amanda Winfield, who manipulates her lover—they are the people next door.

  Middle America loved those kinds of killers.

  "With Inside Editionand Datelineout there you really have to have something on the edge to compete," the editor concluded before hanging up to take a more important call.

  And so I sat there, two months from financial ruin with the hope that I'd find the right story in time to get my twin daughters braces, pay the mortgage, have my wife's hair highlighted and keep the gas tank reasonably full.

  I scanned the pages of USA Today. I flipped through back issues of People. I surfed through everything from CNN.com to TMZ.com. I Googled. I pawed through letters postmarked from San Quentin to Huntsville and every correctional facility in between. Envelopes were decorated with multicolored pen depictions of flowers and ferns, deer and tears. Prisoners spent as much time inking the outside of their envelopes as they did composing the contents held i
nside. Some weren't bad, at least insofar as their artwork was concerned. Most were, well, criminal.

  I thought about putting the Amanda Winfield book out myself. Self-publishing was huge, now that a quarter of all books sold were electronic editions, now that Kindles and Nooks and Kobos and iPads could be found on every ferry and in every coffee shop. I let my mind run wild with it for a moment. I'd put it up on Amazon—the new center of the book universe—and make 70 percent on every sale! I'd design my own cover! I'd promote it on Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads! I'd do blog tours! I'd work my media contacts! The word-of-mouth would be huge! Editors like that little twerp in Manhattan would beg me to sign with them!

  Then I thought about the cost of libel insurance. The prohibitive cost of libel insurance. Which every true crime writer had to have. Publishing true crime without legal cover—the kind publishers provided—was like going grocery shopping in the nude. You just couldn't get away with it.

  Moving right along...

  I'd sleep on it. I'd agonize over it. I just wanted a good crime. Was that too much to ask?

  Something else was on my mind. It. I kept it under my desk blotter. I couldn't even call it a letter. Just it. I had read it only once, which seemed enough given that its content was fairly direct. I remember picking through the stack of bills and opening it at the post office, thinking it was a fan letter. Like I got that many. Instead, it was a single sheet of paper with letters cut from magazines and newspapers and pasted down like some kind of ridiculous ransom note, the kind a deranged scrapbooker might fashion:

  Although I put crafty nutcase's note away, the implied threat never really left my mind.

  ♦

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 7, WAS HOT and the girls were restless. Fireworks littered the roadway, and the acrid smell of gunpowder still hung in the air. From our kitchen window I watched an eagle return to a snag that he had wisely abandoned the day of the Fourth of July festivities. The cracked-mirror surface of Puget Sound reflected through the soft branches of fir and cedar trees like a store searchlight. Valerie had gone to work and I had to get our girls occupied with something so I could rifle through my old-school, battle-scarred Rolodex and get on with my work. But no DVD would satisfy. Nor a game of Scrabble, which they usually loved. No suggestion for an outside activity would pull eleven-year-olds Taylor and Hayley from my peripheral vision so that I could get busy. I broke down and let them watch MTV while I made an early lunch.