Morbid Curiosity or Fascinating Character Study

"I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror."  Edgar Allan Poe

Call me sick, call me twisted, but I seem to have a morbid curiosity regarding true crime.  I'm fascinated by what drives people to do such things.  And a great way to develop fictional bad guys is by reading factual criminal accounts and watching televised reenactments.

And this provides a place for me to do a little shameless self-promotion. My new Black OOps Mystery series is now available. Please checkout books one and two, Cad to Cadaver and Growler to Grave. 

Now back to business.

A tragic local story was in the news several years ago that involved a 17-year-old young man who strangled his 10-year-old brother.  

During the courtroom proceedings the prosecution, as well as the public, displayed outrage because the young man showed no remorse, and never apologized for what he'd done.  In response, he did make an apology.  But the statement was chilling to hear as the young man read it with the same emotion he'd use to read a book report. 

Although the youth never mentioned his sibling by name, he did say he was sorry for the murder and that he'd never forget how much his little brother meant to him and everyone else. (Really???)  Another unsettling aspect of this apology was that he spoke of how he planned to spend his time in prison (receiving his GED, taking college courses and working toward a degree), and when released, he'd go back to work at the restaurant he'd previously been employed by before the murder.  (Really???)

The prosecution didn't buy the apology, and neither did the public.  The young man received life without parole, because he was only 17 when the murder was committed.  What I learned after the trial was that the young man said he did it because he wanted to see what it would feel like to kill someone.  He also mentioned that he'd fantasized about committing murder since age 13.  I was flabbergasted upon hearing this!  

When I brought the case up to my husband, he said, "I don't want to talk about it, I can't even think about it!  How can you?"

Perhaps I'm just sick and twisted.  But this case reminds me of another one; that of Leopold and Loeb.  I first became acquainted with this infamous case when I was 16, working at the library during summer break.  One of the reference books kept in the work room was called The Encyclopedia of Murder.  I tried to get to work early everyday so I could read it.  (Okay, pretty twisted, I know.) 

Maybe this is when I realized I had a morbid curiosity about true crime.  I'm not interested in horror movies, and scary books (sorry Stephen King) frighten me too much!  True crime, however, fascinates me.

If you're not familiar with Leopold and Loeb, I've provided a thumbnail summary below.  But to learn more, click here.

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were two wealthy University of Chicago college students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924.  They were eventually sentenced to life in prison, and this case has inspired works of fiction, film and theater including Rope, a play by Patrick Hamilton, and a film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock.

Both men were exceptionally intelligent.  Leopold was 19, and Loeb 18 at the time of the murder, and they believed themselves to be Nietzchean supermen, capable of committing the perfect crime.  "A superman," Leopold had written, "is on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men.  He is not liable for anything he may do."

The duo (residents of Kenwood, a wealthy Jewish suburb of Chicago at the time) spent seven months planning an elaborate kidnap and murder scheme of a neighbor, and distant relative of Loeb's.  They even planned on a way of receiving ransom money without getting caught.  Money wasn't something they needed, as their families were wealthy and provided them plenty.

The boy was kidnapped, murdered and his body disposed of.  But when the corpse was discovered, also found at the scene was a pair of eyeglasses.  Expensive ones, with a unique hinge mechanism, only purchased by three people in the Chicago area, one of whom was Nathan Leopold.  So much for the perfect crime!

Clarence Darrow was hired by Loeb's family and the trial soon became known as  "The Trial of the Century."  It was later revealed that the men were driven by the "thrill of the kill," as well as to prove that they could commit the perfect crime.

Is it just me, or do you have a morbid curiosity, too?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

I love detective shows and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was one of my favorites when I was a kid. As a six-year-old, I had a desperate crush on blond spy David McCallum, who played Russian Illya Kuryakin, to Robert Vaughn's American Napoleon Solo.

The women in that series were only eye candy, but then there was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., starring Stephanie Powers, as Agent April Dancer. I vaguely remember that show, but it didn't last long. Critics claimed Powers was ill-suited for the role, a trifle limited on acting ability, and that she came across as a timid agent. 

Too bad for The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. It was cancelled after only one season. Off topic here, but why was a female agent called a girl when she was a grown woman? I digress... 

Stephanie Powers is much better remembered from Hart to Hart, as amateur sleuth Jennifer Hart, who solved crimes along with her jet setting husband Jonathan Hart, played by Robert Wagner. 

If you enjoy a crime solving duo with a feisty heroin and a strong silent guy who aren't  jet-setters, but a couple looking for their next paying gig, please check out my RomCozy Black OOps Detective Mysteries, Cad to Cadaver and Growler to Grave. 

Now, back to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. If you're not familiar with the series, here's the gist from Wikipedia:

The series centered on a two-man troubleshooting team working for U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement): American Napoleon Solo, and Georgian (Georgia-USSR) Illya Kuryakin.

U.N.C.L.E.'s adversary was T.H.R.U.S.H.... The original series never divulged what T.H.R.U.S.H. represented, but in several U.N.C.L.E. novels by David McDaniel, it is the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, described as founded by Col. Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Final Problem."

T.H.R.U.S.H.'s aim was to conquer the world. Napoleon Solo said, in "The Green Opal Affair", "T.H.R.U.S.H. believes in the two-party system — the masters and the slaves," and in the pilot episode ("The Vulcan Affair"), T.H.R.U.S.H. "kills people the way people kill flies — a reflex action — a flick of the wrist." So dangerous was T.H.R.U.S.H. that governments — even those ideologically opposed, such as the United States and the Soviet Union — had cooperated in forming and operating the U.N.C.L.E. organization. Similarly, when Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the friction between them in the story was held to a minimum.

 The show was quite fun to watch with all the espionage and intrigue! And there was just enough humor to lighten the mood.

Were you a fan of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Mannix

I just finished my second Tracy Black Black OOps Detective Mystery Growler to Grave. Please check it out, along with the first book in the series, Cad to Cadaver. 

While I worked on these mysteries, I thought about one of my favorite detective shows from long ago, Mannix. I loved that series! It starred Mike Conners as private investigator Joe Mannix, and Gail Fisher, who played his trusty secretary Peggy Fair. 

Gail Fisher was one of the first black women to have a substantive part in an American TV series, and for her role in Mannix, she won two Golden Globe Awards and an Emmy Award. Mannix aired from 1967-1975, and perhaps one of the reasons I enjoyed watching it was because of Gail Fisher. I was just a kid back then, and there weren't too many women who looked like me on television.

If you're not familiar with the series, here's some information from Wikipedia:

Mannix worked on his own with the assistance of his loyal secretary Peggy Fair, a police officer's widow played by Gail Fisher. He also has assistance from the L.A. police department, the two most prominent officers being Lieutenant Art Malcolm (portrayed by Ward Wood) and Lieutenant Adam Tobias (portrayed by Robert Reed). Other police contacts were Lieutenant George Kramer (Larry Linville), who had been the partner of Peggy's late husband, and Lieutenant Dan Ives (Jack Ging).

While Mannix was not generally known as a show that explored socially relevant topics, several episodes had topical themes, starting in Season Two. In Season Two alone, there were episodes featuring compulsive gambling, deaf and blind characters that were instrumental in solving cases in spite of their physical limitations, and episodes that focused on racism against blacks and Hispanics. Season Six had an episode focusing on the effects the Vietnam War had on returning veterans, including the effects of PTSD.

Joseph R. "Joe" Mannix is a regular guy, without pretense, who has a store of proverbs to rely upon in conversation. What demons he has mostly come from having fought in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he was initially listed as MIA while he was a prisoner of war in a brutal POW camp until he escaped. Unfortunately, over the length of the series, a sizable percentage of his old Army comrades turn out to have homicidal impulses against him, as did his fellow running back from his college football days. 

During the series, it is also revealed that Mannix worked as a mercenary in Latin America. Like the actor who plays him, Mannix is of Armenian descent. Mannix was shown to speak fluent Armenian during the series, as well as conversational Spanish. Mannix is notable for taking a lot of physical punishment. During the course of the series he is shot and wounded over a dozen separate times, or is knocked unconscious around 55 times. 

Mannix frequently took brutal beatings to the abdomen; some of these went on quite a long time, particularly by the television standards of the era. Whenever Mannix gets into one of his convertibles he can expect to be shot at from another car, run off the road by another car, or find his vehicle sabotaged. Nevertheless he keeps his cool and perseveres until his antagonists are brought down. 

The excitement was non-stop! Did you watch Mannix and enjoy it as much as I did?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!  

Homicide Hunter

Do you love mysteries? Maybe with some comedy and romance thrown into the mix to take the edge off of murder? If so, please check out my new mystery series Black OOps. It really is OOps not Ops. Find Cad to Cadaver and Growler to Grave, written under my pen name Marissa Allen, on Amazon. 

My mysteries are on the lighter side, but I do enjoy reading about and watching true crime, so I'm a big fan of Homicide Hunter.

Homicide Hunter Joe Kenda

I discovered this series several years ago when visiting my in-laws. It's a crime documentary television series that aired on the Investigation Discovery channel for nine seasons with a total of 144 episodes. 

The series showcases the career of retired Colorado Springs, Colorado, police department detective Joe Kenda.

I find what drives people to commit violent crimes to be pretty fascinating.  This also helps me when crafting a story. As a writer I can better understand the psychology of the criminal mind.

If you're not at all familiar with the show Homicide Hunter, here's an article about it and star Joe Kenda from The Columbus Dispatch (by way of McClatchy-Tribune News Service) by Luaine Lee. 

Retired homicide detective Joe Kenda is an unlikely TV star.

With straight gray hair, a hounded look in his eyes and a minimalist way of speaking, he probably wouldn’t succeed at a casting call.

Yet he stars on Investigation Discovery’s Homicide Hunter, which began a new season this month.

Kenda narrates re-enactments of the crimes he covered from his years on the police force in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“When I arrested somebody, I’d have a gun in one hand and a badge in the other,” he said. “I say very quietly: ‘My name is Kenda. I’m with the police department, and you’re under arrest for murder. If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to kill you right here and right now.’”

Kenda spent 19 years on the force, working his way up from patrolman to commander of the major-crime unit at the time of his retirement at age 52.

There was no magic, he said, to his solving 92 percent of assault cases.

“I’m a student of human nature. People do stupid things; they do. And if you watch them and observe them and talk to them and deal with them — hundreds of different people — you become a student of what they do. And that’s all this work is.”

Kenda said he could sense when he was being told the truth — or just a story.

“You know when you’re getting lied to and when you’re not, based on what ... (people) are telling you, because you know what people do. Even though this person believes he’s very different, he’s very much the same.”

Kenda didn’t envision doing police work. He and his wife of 45 years, Kathy, met at college in their native Pittsburgh, where he tried for a time to work for his dad’s trucking business. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and struggled financially.

Finally, he said, his wife gave him an ultimatum.

“I couldn’t make ends meet, and I’m really good at making ends meet,” said Kathy Kenda, a nurse. “If he wasn’t working, he was with the boys, golfing and stuff, and I was stuck with the two kids. So he came home, and I was drunk one night, and I said: ‘This has got to change. I never see you. You never see the kids.’

“He said, ‘OK, I’ve always wanted to be a policeman.’”

So he applied and was accepted on the force.

Kenda’s brief official appearances on television in Colorado are what prompted producer Patrick Bryant’s idea for Homicide Hunter.

When his query letter arrived, however, Kenda ignored it.

His wife insisted that he reply.

When he arrived for the tryout, Bryant instructed Kenda to talk to the camera about murder.

“So I did, for about an hour — whatever came into my head. I reached what I thought was a natural stopping place, and I stood up and said, ‘Is that what you had in mind?’

“Everybody’s standing there with their mouths open. And I’m thinking, ‘Well, this didn’t go well.’ Nobody said a word. I said, ‘Let me ask you again: Is that what you had in mind?’ ‘Oh, yeah.’ And here we are.”

I loved this show, and if you love true crime and learning about what makes people tick, this is definitely a program for you!

Have you ever seen Homicide Hunter? And please give my Black OOps Series a try if you like mysteries. Thanks for visiting and have a great week!