Green River Killer by Jonathan Case and Jeff Jensen

Early last month, there was a new graphic nonfiction book getting a lot of buzz. It's very rare that I see non-comic graphic books getting some much needed hype, so I was quite thrilled to see Green River Killer featured. But I wasn't very sure about the subject itself. I prefer reading non-graphic nonfiction about true crime, I wasn't sure how the graphic medium was going to handle that. How sensitive would it be? Words in reference to psychopaths can make me queasy, but pictures, even more so. Sometimes, it helps to be judgmental when you read - seeing the picture of a tragedy breaks open some vulnerable part in you, and can affect your perception of an incident. With pictures, there's usually only one side that's presented. Even in writing, it's hard to present two sides justly. Not that there's anything just or right about killing - but to understand why a killing happened, I find it necessary to understand the killer himself. But I needn't have worried much - this book was less about the killer and more about the detective who took charge of the investigation. And in that respect, I think the writers/illustrators did a genuinely wonderful job in bringing forth a lot of emotions and issues related to the case.

Green River Killer is, as the title says, about the Green River Killer, the serial killer who raped and murdered a possible 90+ women, many of them prostitutes. Most of the murders occurred between 1982 and 1984, and the bodies were disposed off in the Green River area in Seattle, hence the name. The killer, Gary Ridgway was arrested twice on charges of prostitution, but no one had any concrete proof to link him to the killings. When, finally, DNA technology made it possible to conduct more reliable tests, Ridgway was formally arrested and charged with seven murders. However, Ridgway came forward with a plea bargain - he will lead the detectives to the bodies of as many of his victims as possible. Rather than give him the death penalty for seven solved murders and leaving the remaining dozens of mysteries go unresolved and the victims' families without closure, the State Prosecution decided to spare him the axe and get as many answers as they could. Green River Killer is the story of that investigation, particularly from the viewpoint of detective Tom Jensen, as told to his son Jeff.

The book slips back and forth in time, almost unobtrusively - in the present, the detectives are interviewing Ridgway, who isn't exactly having any significant detail or evidence to share. The images set in the past almost always follow the fruitless investigation and the immense effect it has on Tom Jensen. Following a true detective "story" on graphic media was an interesting experience. Some of the guys had been working on the case for years. Jensen had been on it right from the start and following the progress on the case was like cheering on an embattled fighter in a ring, or the valiant underdog team in a high-stakes game. You just wanted him to nail the guy, and go home to enjoy his retirement. But it wasn't easy. What he expected to take "no time" at all, took almost twenty years. During that time, the years catch up on Tom Jensen, though he remains as charismatic as ever and still smoking many cigarettes a day, after having promised to give it up when the case is finally solved. In all these years, he remained the primary investigator in the Green River killer case, which pretty much overtook every aspect of his life.

(Picture source)

This book is as much about the detective process as it is not about the killer himself. And that's where I was slightly disappointed. Ridgway was shown as mostly the killer he is with not much remorse or back story. What we hear about him is what's mostly in the public domain already - his troubled childhood, his compulsion to conquer in sex and death, his fascination with committing necrophilia and difficulty to resist it. Although I hoped for a little more insight into this man, this wasn't the book for it, as the writers also made it clear. Still, that's not to say that Ridgway was portrayed as one-dimensional. There are times you can actually see some feeling in him, while you're trying not to feel that sensation of your skin crawling when you look at his pictures. I hated it when he tried to justify his killing habits by saying that he was doing a good thing for the country by ridding it of prostitutes. On the other hand, he loved his wife (his third), and even liked one of the women he killed. When he was trying to provide evidence to the detectives, it was hard to not feel sorry for him while he tried to recollect his memory. The detectives kept accusing him of how they would never forget it if they did something of this magnitude. My guess was more that raping and killing was such a routine exercise for him that it wasn't hard for him to forget the details.

Green River Killer was very thought-provoking and well-done. It had the right amount of mystery, intrigue, and humanity added to the illustrations. The black and white sketches also gave the book a dark gothic tone, well in sync with the tone of the story itself. This is yet another fabulous graphic book that I will strongly recommend to you guys. It's far less disturbing than it might be reading about the killer, and the crime itself is never exploited in graphics - giving it just the amount of truth and sense of tragedy as is necessary, but the people's emotions and reactions lend the tragedy the rest of the weight.

I received this book for free for review from the publisher, Top Shelf Productions via NetGalley. Green River Killer was published on October 11, 2011.

A Thousand Lives by Julia Scheeres

There were worse punishments: when Tommy failed a class, Jones sentenced him to fifty whacks with the board of education, and Brian got fifty whacks for refusing to attend services in Los Angeles. It was humiliating, as a macho-posturing teenager, to be spanked in front of the entire congregation, to have a whimper of pain escape your mouth as a microphone was held to it.

In 1954, a pastor named Jim Jones opened a new church in Indianapolis called the Peoples Temple. Being charismatic and fully aware of how to influence people, he began preaching his idealistic beliefs and managed to quickly gather a good number of followers. Over the next twenty years, as the church moved from Indiana to California, and ultimately to its deathbed, Guyana, Jones would amass a huge number of followers, many willing to follow him to the ends of the earth, in the hopes of making the world take heed to their socialistic beliefs.  Their temple did make history in 1978, but for its role in the largest mass murder/suicide of Americans, when close to a thousand people either killed themselves or others, in answer to Jones request to commit 'revolutionary suicide'.

I had never known something this horrific had even happened. I ordinarily wouldn't have read this book because of its heavy leanings into religion, but the tragedy behind this book kept popping in my radar. If there's one thing I struggle to understand, its how people can stop trusting their instinct or listening to their inner person, and do something so outrageous as kill themselves. And this isn't one or two people we are talking about - the statistics are incredibly hard to believe. Moreover, this tragedy wasn't the result of a war or a religious faction taking control - instead these people had free will and the freedom to do as they wished. But, as Julia Scheeres shows in this book, A Thousand Lives, it's one thing for me to tell my friends that I'm not interested in joining them for something. It's a totally different thing and an impossibly hard one to walk out of a huge violence-capable mob, with your freedom and dreams intact. And that's why riots are hard to control.

A Thousand Lives chalks the intertwined histories of Peoples Temple, Jim Jones and many of its members. It is written based on the diaries, letters, and several tons of paperwork left behind by the people of Jonestown, recently declassified by the FBA. Some of these documents contain evocative dreams, hopes and wishes, while others are devoid of feeling and very robotic. From very early on, Jim Jones and his temple made for fascinating news material. Stuff about Jones' healings and miracles attracted people. These staged miracles did find him a lot of believers who couldn't wait for him to pull a magic trick on them and ease their sufferings. Jones also seemed to pull in more African Americans with his call for equal rights for all, at a time when America was going through an intense segregation period. And he even had some interesting but disgustingly cheap tactics to discourage people from leaving his temple. From the moment Jones had the eureka moment of taking his power a step beyond, his followers were doomed. And this was many years before the actual tragedy.

Scheeres shows how Jones started off as a perfectly reasonable, though idealistic person. It would be hard to refute his claims, especially by someone looking for some identity, something to belong to. His intentions were initially noble, he genuinely wanted to provide his people a place where they can all be equals and find in others a companion rather than an adversary. And despite what horror he cultivates in the end, it was hard not to see in him what people like to see in some leaders. But power is a dangerous thing in highly influential minds. And paranoia soon starts becoming him.

At the outset, the reader (at least me) doesn't know who manages to survive the tragedy. Although there is no single protagonist, some victims/survivors take the reins of the story occasionally. Some are highly religious people and have always been so, others are looking to find something to help overcome a recent tragedy in their lives, yet others are barely religious, but Jones' teachings made perfect sense to them and hence they decided to join the group. While most of the principal 'characters' in this book sounded sane to me, it is the ones who are always in the background but playing important roles in Jonestown that didn't sound so sane. Almost all the information on them are third-hand, which makes it hard to know exactly what they were thinking or why they felt compelled to partake in Jones' paranoia. Religion and socialism are the two major characters of this book, apart from the architect Jones himself. The author paints a clear picture of how even sane people like you and me ended up committing the unbelievable act.

Ultimately, I'm glad I read this book. Full suspension of belief in some religious people has always boggled my mind. Having been fiercely independent for most of my life, I find it hard to fathom someone else making a decision for me and deciding what I will do each day. There's usually a word for the kind of behavior described in this book - cult. The author makes it clear at the start that she wouldn't be using that word in the book, because it isn't the right word here. The book does justify her perspective (of course she wrote the book), and although I do think it's not too hard to write a story to make it look both cult-like and non-cult-like, I am inclined to agree with her here. There was nothing cultish in the behaviors of the people here, except for maybe their final action, which I'm still struggling to understand on so many levels.


I receive this book for free for review from the publisher, Free Press.

Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford *WOW!*

"When I left Adam that day, I told him, 'Honey, I'll be right over there in the lamp department,' and he looked back at me and said, 'I know where you'll be, Mommy.' Those are the last words I ever heard him say. That's the moment I've lived with for twenty-five years, and that is worse than anything some sick son of a bitch could ever say to me."

Bringing Adam Home is a grisly unflinching account of six-year old Adam Walsh's murder and the long jinxed investigation that followed. Many of you might be familiar with the name Adam Walsh - son of America's Most Wanted host, John Walsh and his wife, Revé. He was abducted one day in 1981 from Sears, where his mother left him for a few minutes at an arcade stall and came back to find him missing. He was then murdered by a serial killer, Otis Toole. What follows is a badly put investigative effort that should have solved the case in 1983, but instead neglects evidence, abandons proper interviewing techniques and has an incompetent detective who is more worried about his reputation than in solving crimes. This book details much of that evidence - Otis Toole himself coming forward multiple times to confess, the crime scene photos that were never printed (the biggest evidence of all was in these photos), and not following up with or giving any importance to the eyewitnesses that came forward.

Right from the first page, this book hooked me in. I like reading about true crime - I've thoroughly enjoyed reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, which features a cold-blooded killer, Perry Smith. Columbine by Dave Cullen was a favorite read from last year, it featured two teen misfits, who went on to make Columbine a household word forever. Otis Toole, Adam's murderer is a drifter and a very "strange man" with "strange eyes" - he has a very low IQ, several learning disabilities, and a troubled upbringing. He was the only suspect in the murder right from when he first confesses, but he was never charged. Detective Sgt Joe Matthews was pulled in to help on the case initially but Jack Hoffman, the arrogant detective in charge dismissed him soon. Since then, Matthews' repeated attempts to help were always botched, even though he always made some new finding.

Les Standiford writes a well-researched book, that never once reads like a boring crime report. Instead, although the reader already knows the outcome of the whole investigation right in the first few pages of this book, I never once could put the book down - and took to reading it at every spare minute I got. Les Standiford attributes Detective Sgt. Joe Matthews for all the research, but it cannot be denied that he has shared all that research with the readers in a compelling style. This book is a reader's dream - a true crime, psychopathic or remorseless killers, the anxious wait for justice. This book is also a person's nightmare - a true crime, psychopathic or remorseless killers, the anxious wait for justice.

Adam Walsh's murder is another one of those defining events that can be said in terms of before and after. Before the murder, children enjoyed plenty of freedom, they would play out all day without adult supervision and be back as promised before dinner. Parents hardly batted an eyelid when their child requested if he/she could play someplace else in a mall, while they went shopping. After Adam Walsh's murder, though, "Few parents would ever again leave their children alone or unattended in public places". I belong to the After era. I've never known life otherwise, so some parts of this book evoked plain disbelief in me. I wanted to ask many times, how Revé and a lot of parents left their children unattended. I grew up hearing every day from my parents - there are bad people out there, don't talk to strangers, don't go anywhere without telling us. That's the same thing I've told every younger cousin of mine and also my nieces and nephews. I had to suspend my current conditioning to accept that times used to be safer for kids at one point. There weren't any pedophiles or serial killers who targeted kids, rapists or abductors then, like there are plentiful now.

As I mentioned earlier, this book is a grisly and unflinching account of the murder. There are many aspects described vividly (Adam Walsh is the only child Toole murders. But he confesses to it many times.) There is supposedly a photo shared in this book (it was absent in my review copy, but I saw it online), that I couldn't stop staring at. It was horrifying once you understood what the picture was but it wasn't obvious (a layman glance didn't help me much). But this book is not so much about the grisly murders as it is about the investigation. It is also a testament to the Walshes' work towards ensuring stronger laws and legislation to protect kids. In Matthews' words, their work made sure that "From the moment a child goes missing, no matter what, everybody drops what they're doing". It is also an ovation to Sgt. Matthews for finally providing the Walshes an answer to the twenty-five year old question regarding what happened to their child. In the end, this is an impressive documentation of how things changed so much - from the days when kids could easily go anywhere so long as they promised to be back before dark, to the current unwritten rule of never leaving a child unattended.

I received an ebook version of this title for free for review from the publishing imprint ECCO via NetGalley. Bringing Adam Home was released on March 1st. Check it out on the publisher's page, Goodreads, Amazon and Barnes and Noble. To visit the author's website, click here.

Review: Columbine by Dave Cullen

Title: Columbine
Author: Dave Cullen
First Published: April 2009
Publisher: Twelve
Source: Library
417 pages



In a nutshell
On April 20, 1999, two boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave 'a lasting impression on the world.' Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence--irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting 'another Columbine.'

This book is the story of Columbine - the story that none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.

Rebecca wondered how I could read Columbine so soon after April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers. I didn't think I could do it either. But something in me wanted to understand why both incidents happened. How can someone walk into one's own school and kill students and teachers? Fellow students you might have played with or talked to. How can someone have so much anger in them? (Of course, terrorism is no longer limited to the school playgrounds now. But that's a discussion for another day.)

I think...
I still remember sitting in front of the TV on the morning of April 21st, 1999, as I did every morning before leaving for school. I was 15 and had just started my 10th grade in a school in Dubai. Columbine was on every news channel that day. It was scary. A crime, the kind of which I had not heard of. It made me realize that even schools weren't safe. I had not given it a thought before, but the news of that day acutely sharpened my antennae.

Columbine by Dave Cullen, was a remarkably informative book. I thought I knew enough about what happened that day and during the following weeks and months. I couldn't have been more wrong. As I was reading, I took two pages worth of notes. Half of them were indignant outbursts at some decisions taken. Michelle's review first introduced me to the fact that the Columbine tragedy was not a shooting but a failed bombing. Thirteen lives were lost that day. Eric and Dylan expected to take 2000 lives with them.

---

For investigators, the big bombs changed everything: the scale, the method, and the motive of the attack. Above all, it had been indiscriminate. Everyone was supposed to die. Columbine was fundamentally different from the other school shootings. It had not really been intended as a shooting at all. Primarily, it had been a bombing that failed.

---

Dave Cullen gives an excellent insight into the minds of the killers, from almost two years prior to the "Judgment day". Eric Harris is revealed to be a classic textbook psychopath. His diligent methodical approach to anything astounded me. If he weren't a murderer, I would have been impressed with him. He was successful in fooling everyone - his parents, teachers, Diversion officers, friends, police officers. Apparently, there had been plenty of complaints previously registered against the two, that were not taken too seriously. The boys were making bombs, and quite a few people knew that.

Dylan Klebold, on the other hand, was depressed and suicidal. For two years, he pined for love obsessively. Murder was far from his mind. Columbine skillfully charts out Dylan's path from suicidal thoughts to homicidal. Dylan's family never saw it coming. He was his dad's "best friend", though I admit I couldn't see how his condition could not have been obvious. He was severely depressed with no motivation in life at all. I guess, no one expects their placid-appearing children to tote guns and kill others.

Eric's obsession with destroying the human race horrified me. He dreamed to stun the world. He wanted to be known as the perpetrator of the worst crime. By choosing Columbine High School, and planting plenty of bombs at strategic locations, he expected to reach his exorbitant target count.

---

Most terrorists target symbols of the system they abhor - generally, iconic government buildings. Eric followed the same logic. He understood that the cornerstone of his plan was the explosives. When all his bombs fizzled, everything about his attack was misread. He didn't just fail to top Timothy McVeigh's record - he wasn't even recognized for trying. He was never categorized with his peer group. We lumped him in with the pathetic loners who shot people.

---

Eric Harris was intelligent. I hate to say that, because I despised his character. But when you see the number of people he duped and got to make them believe exactly what he wanted them to, it was not hard for me to see his mental prowess.

Columbine also captures the community's response well. The parents' wait for their children teared me up. Especially those parents whose children would never come back. It exposed the various cover-ups that followed the tragedy. As with all tragedies, there were quite a few dirty name-calling and scapegoating that happened after this one too. I wish I could say that we as a community and as a government have learned a lot from this tragedy.

Overall, I strongly recommend this book. This book puts to rest most of the myths surrounding this tragedy, and believe me, there are too many. I wanted a look into the heads of Eric and Dylan. One a psychopath (which is apparently a trait that comes with birth) and the other a suicidally depressed kid (a curable and treatable condition). That doesn't excuse them, but they gave plenty of hints that no one paid attention to. The clues were everywhere, and some of them made me aghast, wondering why no one paid heed.

Review: April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers

Title: April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers
First Published: August 2007
Publisher: Plume Books
Source: Library
323 pages



On the flap
Monday, April 16, 2007 started like any other Monday at Virginia Tech, with professors and students preparing for another busy week of classes. However, word quickly circulated of a shooting in the dorms - and the gunman was still loose. The campus went into lockdown, and as the gruesome events unfolded in Norris Hall, a group of journalism students trapped in a nearby building transmitted stories and updates to the student-run website, PlanetBlacksburg.com.

Now, these students, together with their journalism instructor and members of the Virginia Tech community, have documented the events of that day. April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers gives a voice to the students, faculty, and staff who lived through the shooting, and serves as a memorial for the 32 victims. The book also describes the onslaught of media coverage that immediately followed, and reveals the remarkable resilience of the students of Virginia Tech throughout the entire ordeal.

You will notice that I do not mention any author for this book. If you look at the book cover, there is no author mentioned. This book was edited by Roland Lazenby, a faculty member at Virginia Tech's Department of Communication based on several eye-witness accounts and interviews. A few students from his media writing class were also involved in gathering news of the tragedy as it unfolded, and this book is compiled from those new items as well.

My opinion
April 16th: Virginia Tech Remembers is a record of the events of that tragic day when Seung-Hui Cho killed 27 students and 5 faculty members. It is not a book analyzing the right and wrong decisions that were taken on that fateful day. For that I am thankful. A lot has been said and publicized about this event that this shooting requires no introduction. I won't be bringing up that event in this post, but only what I thought about this book. For those of you interested in knowing what happened, check out some of these archives.

Over the past three years, I have read a lot of articles about this shooting. Eye-witness accounts, survivor accounts. Interviews with parents, police and university officials. The suits filed against Virginia Tech. I was hoping this book will not go into any of the sad events that followed the shooting. I was looking for an account of that day and the following few hours. I was sure I will be crying. What I didn't expect was that this book would also have me feeling uplifted.

The start is very powerful. There were so many parts that were very hard to read. By now, I already knew the names of most of the victims and survivors. Hence, reading wasn't easy. But amidst the deaths, there were several stories of heroism and courage - in how Holocaust survivor, Liviu Librescu persuaded his students to escape while he barricaded the door; in how Kevin Granata decided to go downstairs and try to prevent the shootings; in how the students of some classes held the door closed to prevent the shooter entry; in how they helped their classmates through the terror that lasted just 10 minutes but felt like a lifetime; in how they tried to stop themselves and their friends from bleeding to death through their injuries.

The book also includes accounts of how Roland Lazenby's class of students in another building set up an improvised news center to report the tragedy to the world outside with accurate information as and when available. It shows how some of the survivors managed to battle their demons and fears after the shooting. It gave a glimpse of how one pair of parents tried to find solace and comfort in their late daughter's belief of forgiveness. It showed how the media exploited the event and the outpouring of sadness to sell some sensational stories. In all these events, I managed to see hope. Hope for the future, hope for the community, hope for recovery. It has been three years but this is not something that will ever be forgotten at Virginia Tech.

Overall, this is a book that I will strongly recommend. I did have fears that I will not be able to read it or that I will feel depressed at the end. On the contrary, this book gave me closure. It is in so many ways a means to give hope and trust to the reader.

Today, we have a Day of Remembrance at our campus. There is a 3.2 mile run in Remembrance and a candlelight vigil, in addition to a few other events too.