The Murder Room (57 page)

T
he 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 & 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”).

Several other books were especially helpful, and I recommend them for readers interested respectively in the history of Philadelphia crime and the John List murders:

Avery, Ron.
City of Brotherly Mayhem: Philadelphia Crimes & Criminals
. Philadelphia: Otis Books, 1997.

Sharkey, Joe.
Death Sentence: The Inside Story of the John List Murders
. New York: Signet, 1990.

I also recommend the
Philadelphia
magazine investigative stories of author and National Magazine Award–winning journalist Stephen Fried, who broke open the Marie Noe case (see
www.stephenfried.com
). Fried’s reporting and personal recollections are reflected in the chapters about Marie Noe and in my understanding of the history of the Vidocq Society. The books and articles written by forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, especially in the
Vidocq Society Journal
and truTV Crime Library, also were very helpful.

I read hundreds of newspaper and magazine stories on Vidocq Society cases or the Vidocq Society itself. Most stories about the society are general histories with a smattering of case and character information, often based on a reporter spending a couple hours over lunch and being asked to leave before the investigation began. These include accounts in
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today,
Associated Press,
Harper’s Magazine, Reader’s Digest, London Telegraph, Montreal Gazette, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Philadelphia
magazine,
The Pocono Record,
and
The Philadelphia Lawyer
.

Important sources for major cases included: the
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
and
Plainview
(Texas)
Daily Herald
coverage of the police investigation of Scott Dunn’s murder and two trials, Dunn’s diary, travel itinerary, and other notes, tapes, photographs, and personal materials including the prepublished manuscript of his book; the
Syracuse
(New York)
Post-Standard
coverage of the Manlius murder, The Case of the Missing Face; articles in the
Trentonian
newspaper of Trenton, New Jersey,
UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News,
and
Bucks County Courier Times
on the murder of Terri Lee Brooks; the
Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Boulder Daily Camera, North Platte Telegraph, USA Today,
and Boulder County sheriff ’s office on the Colorado Jane Doe case; the
Atlantic City Press
and the CBS
48 Hours with Dan Rather
documentary “Murder on the Menu” reported by Richard Schlesinger for the Zoia Assur case; AP,
UPI, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News,
Drexel University archives on the murder of Deborah Lynn Wilson; numerous sources on John List including the
New York Times,
Newark
Star-Ledger,
truTV Crime Library, and an
America’s Most Wanted
episode. Thank you to J. D. Mullane of the
Bucks County Courier Times
for his excellent reporting and guidance on the Choir Loft Murder, based on his six-part series on the subject.

The Boy in the Box case has been extensively documented for more than half a century. The national coverage includes a July 1958
Saturday Evening Post
story (“A Box, a Blanket, and a Small Body”), a 1957
Front Page Detective
magazine story (“Who is the Boy in the Box?”), articles in
American Way
magazine, an October 1998
America’s Most Wanted
episode, and a CBS
48 Hours
transcript. While interviews with many Vidocq Society Members on the case were most helpful, I read more than a hundred articles dated from 1957 to the present in
The Philadelphia Press—
all that I could find—mostly in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
and
Philadelphia Daily News
but also the
Philadelphia City Paper, Northeast Times,
and
Frankford News Gleaner
. Other sources included the Associated Press, KYW-TV Channel 3 Philadelphia, and Fleisher’s obituary of Detective Samuel Weinstein published in May 2004 by the Philadelphia area chapter of Shomrim, the national Jewish law enforcement association.

Frank Bender may be the best-known VSM outside of FBI agent Robert Ressler. In addition to an avalanche of newspaper and magazine coverage from Paris to Philadelphia, several books, an
Esquire
profile, and a
60 Minutes
profile, I read reams of Frank’s personal materials including an unpublished autobiography. I read about Frank in sources as diverse as
Harper’s Magazine; ArtForum
magazine;
Frieze
magazine—London’s “leading magazine of contemporary arts and culture”—the transcript of an NPR/
Weekend Edition
interview with Frank; “Inside Corrections: The Quarterly Newsletter of the New Jersey Department of Corrections,” about the death of one of his captured fugitives (not in the book); and
Rockhound News
, the newsletter of the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society on the “Ice Man.” Richard Walter contributed thick files of press and personal material, plus his professional publications from such sources as the
International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.
In addition to Bill Fleisher’s book on interrogation, highlights of his U.S. Customs career were covered by the Philadelphia newspapers and wire services; Fleisher and Bender did an NPR “Talk of the Nation” interview in February 2009.

FBI Uniform Crime Reports since 1950 were a source of crime statistics. For historic weather, in addition to press accounts and interviews, I purchased National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Local Climatological Data weather charts for Lubbock, Texas, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and consulted weather data on the Web from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the Weather Underground. The Web was useful in hundreds of ways, from the Boy in the Box Web site—americasunknownchild .net—and its treasure trove of information to the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.

 

 

Aeschylus.
The Oresteia: Agamemnon; The Libation Bearers; The Eumenides.
New York: Penguin Classics, 1984.

Alighieri, Dante.
The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno.
New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.

Badal, James Jessen.
In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders.
Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2001.

Black, Joel.
The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Campbell, Joseph.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
. New York: MJF Book, 1949.

Campbell, Joseph.
The Mythic Image.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Campbell, Joseph.
The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers
. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Capote, Truman.
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences.
New York: Random House, 1965.

Collins, Philip.
Dickens and Crime.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1968.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor.
The Brothers Karamazov.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Douglas, John, and Mark Olshaker.
The Anatomy of Motive: The FBI’s Legendary Mindhunter Explores the Key to Understanding and Catching Violent Criminals.
New York: Scribner, 1999.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan.
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume 1.
New York: A Bantam Classic, 1986.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan.
Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume 2.
New York: A Bantam Classic, 1986.

Edwards, Samuel.
The Vidocq Dossier: The Story of the World’s First Detective.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977.

French, Thomas.
Unanswered Cries: A True Story of Friends, Neighbors, and Murder in a Small Town.
NewYork: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1992.

Friel, Francis, and John Guinther.
Breaking the Mob:The Gripping True Story of a Dedicated Cop Who Led the Fight That Put an Entire Mafia Family out of Business.
Lincoln, NE: Excel Press, 2000.

Gardiner, Eileen, ed.
Visions of Heaven & Hell Before Dante.
New York: Italica Press, 1989.

Hare, Robert D.
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us.
New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.

Hugo, Victor.
Les Misérables.
New York: Modern Library, 1992.

Jeffers, Paul H.
Who Killed Precious: How FBI Special Agents Combine Psychology and High Technology to Identify Violent Criminals.
New York: Pharos Books, 1991.

Johnson, Paul.
A History of the American People.
New York: Harper Perennial, 1999.

Jung, Emma, and Marie-Louise von Franz.
The Grail Legend.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Keppel, Robert D., with William J. Birnes.
Signature Killers: Interpreting the Calling Cards of the Serial Murderer.
New York : Pocket Books, 1997.

Kessler, Ronald.
The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI.
New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 2003.

Leeming, David Adams.
The World of Myth.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

McVarish, Douglas C.
Warships and Yardbirds: An Illustrated History of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
Philadelphia: Kvaerner, 2000.

Michaud, Stephen G., with Roy Hazelwood.
The Evil That Men Do: FBI Profiler Roy Hazelwood’s Journey into the Minds of Sexual Predators.
New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 1998.

Nickel, Steven.
Torso: The Story of Eliot Ness and the Search for a Psychopathic Killer.
Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, Publisher, 1989.

Ruehlmann, William.
Saint with a Gun: The Unlawful American Private Eye.
New York: New York University Press, 1974.

Sade, Donatien Alphonse François de.
The Marquis de Sade: Three Complete Novels: Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Eugenie de Franval and Other Writings
. New York: Grove Press, 1966.

Scott, Gini Graham.
Homicide: 100 Years of Murder in America.
Lincolnwood, IL: Roxbury Park Books, 1998.

Tennyson, Alfred Lord.
Idylls of the King.
New York: Penguin Classics, 1989.

Vidocq, Eugène François.
Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime.
Oakland, CA: Nabat/AKPress, 2003.

Weston, Jessie L.
From Ritual to Romance
. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 1997, republished from Cambridge University Press first edition, 1920.