My thanks go to Nancy Ruhe, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC), who helped me understand the formidable issues facing families victimized by murder. With Richard Walter, a former POMC board member, I attended a POMC national convention in Cincinnati, and saw firsthand a scale of suffering not widely known or imagined. Retired Tampa doctor Bob Meyer and his wife, Sherry, shared with me their anguish and their bravery in facing and solving the murders of their daughter Sherry-Ann Brannon, thirty-five years old, and grandchildren Shelby, seven, and Cassidy, four. California forensic pathologist and POMC leader Harry Bonnell also helped me understand this tragic American underground.
I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Richard Shepherd, leading forensic pathologist in London and Liverpool and author of Simpson’s Forensic Medicine, at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) convention in Chicago. At the AAFS convention, I also met and interviewed John DeHaan of Vallejo, California, the premier fire, arson, and explosions investigator in criminal cases around the world and author of Kirk’s Fire Investigation, and Vernon J. Geberth, retired lieutenant-commander of the New York City Police Department and author of the detective’s bible, Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures, and Forensic Techniques. All three men contributed significantly to my understanding of cold-case investigations.
Thanks to Betty Smith of Montrose, Pennsylvania, for walking me through the history of the Susquehanna County seat, particularly the presence of the Biddle family of Philadelphia. Tom DeTitto, Cushman and Wakefield ’s project manager and archivist for the Philadelphia Navy Yard redevelopment, helped me understand the history of the Navy Yard and the Officers’ Club where the Vidocq Society first met, including pictures and elevations of Building 46. Douglas C. McVarish was also helpful.
Special thanks to Larry Biddison, emeritus professor of English at Mansfield University in Mansfield, Pennsylvania, for helping me sort out the unexpected presence of the Arthurian archetypes in the Vidocq Society. The professor walked me through Jessie L. Weston’s classic From Ritual to Romance, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, writings that echoed themes I first discovered in The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz. Thanks also to English professors Tom Murphy of Mansfield University and Nelljean Rice of Coastal Carolina University for providing inspiration. Sue Cummings of the Native Bagel in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, sustained me as well as offered a clean, well-lighted reading, writing, and interviewing place.
As I came down to the home stretch, I was lucky that Tom French, Pulitzer Prize-winning St. Petersburg Times reporter-turned-Indiana University professor, turned his remarkable narrative eye on this story one night over beers, and came up with several great suggestions. Tom was my teacher when I went back to school to the inspiring MFA program at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, where Patsy Sims also deserves thanks for her support and encouragement. Maryland always seems to be a place to recharge, thanks to my friend Jeff Leen of The Washington Post, and the incredible faculty and students at the University of Maryland ’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism-Eugene Roberts, Jon Franklin, Ira Chinoy, and especially Dean Tom Kunkel, author, journalist, and now president of St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. Thanks, too, to my attorney and magazine partner George Bochetto, Dave Tepps, Tucker Worthington, Denise and Pete Boal, Steve Sonsky, Peggy Landers, Christopher Boyd, Bruce Boynick, Matt Walsh, Richard Strauch, Barb Madden, Gus Ciardullo, Theresa and Stanley Banik, Mark and Jessica Banik, Ron and Jackie Patt, John and Ruthann Gasienski, Stephen and Lisa Banik, Christopher Banik, Greg Banik, Kim Achilly, Michael and Mary Ann Banik, and Mohammad and Kathleen Sanati.
My publisher, the brilliant William Shinker, founder and president of Gotham Books, was passionate and unwavering in his support and vision for the book. The book is dedicated to my wife, Teresa Banik Capuzzo, one of the most tireless and gifted editors and wordsmiths I know. Now Bill Shinker knows it, too, having formally worked with Teresa on this book. It would not have happened without them-or without the great editing support of Gotham executive editor Lauren Marino and her all-star lineup including Erin Moore, Brett Valley, Brendan Cahill, who first saw the story’s potential, Cara Bedick, Sophia Muthuraj, and Beth Parker, who shared it with the world. Thanks also to Eric Rayman, for his keen eye as both publishing attorney and former magazine publisher. Thanks to New York literary agents Robert Gottlieb and David McCormick for their irreplaceable roles in the selling and nurturing of this book and this author. A special thank-you to Douglas C. Clifton, the great newspaper editor of The Miami Herald and Cleveland Plain Dealer, who introduced a then-twenty-year-old intern from Northwestern University to the power of narrative.
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY •
The following is a partial record of the sources I consulted while writing The Murder Room, offered to provide readers additional sources of information. In addition to police records, court records, interviews with investigating police officers, prosecutors and Vidocq Society investigators, and hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, I read and consulted dozens of books on crime and murder. These books, written by or about Vidocq Society Members, were valuable sources:
Botha, Ted. The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry. New York: Random House, 2008. The story of Frank Bender’s remarkable career.
Dunn, James, and Wanda Evans. Trail of Blood: A Father, a Son, and a Telltale Crime Scene Investigation. Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press hardcover, 2007; Berkley True Crime paperback, 2007. A father’s search for his son’s killer ends with the Vidocq Society.
Gordon, Nathan J., and William L. Fleisher. Effective Interviewing amp; Interrogation Techniques. San Diego: Academic Press, 2002. The classic text by the Vidocq Society founder and board member.
Pettem, Silvia. Someone’s Daughter: In Search of Justice for Jane Doe. Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009. By the Colorado journalist whose work brought the long-dormant Colorado Jane Doe case to public and police attention and to the Vidocq Society.
Ressler, Robert K., and Tom Shachtman. I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Serial Killers. New York: St. Martin ’s Paperbacks, 1997. The murder cases and forensic adventures of VSM Ressler.
Ressler, Robert K., and Tom Shachtman. Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI. New York: St. Martin ’s Paperbacks, 1992. More cases of VSM Ressler.
Stout, David. The Boy in the Box: The Unsolved Case of America’s Unknown Child. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2008. VSMs Bill Kelly, Joe McGillen, Fleisher, and others pursue the legendary child murder case.
The numerous murder cases described in The Murder Room are true stories, with only slight changes in names and circumstances in order to protect the privacy of various individuals. To avoid confusion by those readers interested in other books about Vidocq Society cases, I have used the same pseudonyms of some of the true-life characters in these books: The Girl with the Crooked Nose (Laura Shaughnessy); The Boy in the Box (John Stachowiak and Frank Guthrum); and Trail of Blood (“Jessica”).