Where My Fascination Began and Where it Goes

 Since it will take me a while to get back into things and started back up I thought I would start with how I got here and how my mind works.  I hope you have some time on your hands.

They say never ask a woman her age, well as we go through cases and probably my opinions of such I do not think my age would be a secret so lets just get that out of the way.  I am fifty-one.  I am married and my husband and I have three grown children.  But, I did not wake up last year and become fascinated with crime.  It has been a lifelong passion it seems.

While I cannot say for certain, I am pretty sure the first true crime book I read was written by Ann Rule.  She was big in the 1980's.  She had come out with "The Stranger Beside Me" about her real life relationship with serial killer Ted Bundy in 1980 and she ran with it.  She is probably one of the best known, and some say loved, true crime writers.  I admit that throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's I too read many, if not all at that time, of her books and for the most part enjoyed them. I know that I am in the minority, although not fully alone, in my thinking that as time went on Ann Rule changed not just in her personality that you saw in interviewed but in her writing also.  To this day I still love to hear about a story that I do not know about because sometimes it seems you hear the same stories over and over.  I am the person who can watch the opening of Criminal Minds where they shows mugshots of famous criminals and can name a majority of them, and tell you what they did.  But, the more famous Ann Rule became the more opinionated she became and almost appeared, in my opinion, to inject herself into cases and distort facts.  I was less entertained by her as time went on.  Even still she played a huge part in start of my love of true crime.

Also the 1980's and 1990's were decades of the "true crime" television movies as well as the "mini-series era." Today with all of our streaming channels and independent filmmaking that may not seem to be a big deal but it was back then.  Over the past few years we have seen "limited series'" that are basically true crime movies or short series' but in the 80's and 90's they were either the standard two hour televised movie or if you were lucky you got a mini-series out of it that last two nights.  I know of other mini-series' in that era that were longer than that, last four and five nights like North and South or Thornbirds, but off the top of my head I do not recall a true crime story that last more than two nights, but I could be wrong.  Probably one of the first true crime television movies I saw was The Burning Bed with Farrah Fawcett.  It was the story of Francine Hughes who after years of abuse from her husband literally set fire to the bed he slept in and fled the home with her children.  Farrah would go on to star in Small Sacrifices, a movie based on an Ann Rule book about Diane Downs.  There was a catch with these movies that took me a long time to understand.  There is a difference between "Based on a True Story" and "Inspired By a True Story" although not much because both versions would take "liberties" with things such and it just depended on the writing whether those were important things.  Basically a lot of it boiled down to whether the creators had the proper permission to publish the stories from those involved.  But, that still carries on today in the many true crime shows that air.  

Many consider Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood to be the first true crime book, published in 1965.  It was touted as a "true crime novel."  Now, if you are here, then you obviously like true crime and if you read the books then you know when the word "novel" is added you can probably count on some exaggerations.  It has been a few decades since I last read In Cold Blood, but I will be fair that I was not as impressed as some although I am fascinated with the crime, one that involved the murder of the Clutter family. I was much more impressed by Helter Skelter written by Vincent Bugliosi and published in 1974.  

As time went on and I moved away from Ann Rule a bit I found new authors to love.  One of my favorites is Tom Henderson.  Ann Rule got a lot of her stories from the northwest area of the United States where Tom Henderson's stories were based a lot in the Michigan and surrounding areas.  Being from Indiana maybe I identified the areas and the types of people a little better but I have found every one of his books to be great.  There have been many others over the years that I have and continue to enjoy.

Along with my reading of true crime I would throw in a celebrity biography from time to time because of course they always had scandals going on.  And who does not like a good scandal even if they are not criminal, although there have been plenty of those in history also.  

Shows like 48 Hours and Dateline are staples in our time now, but they were just coming out in the late 80's and 90's.  You had that and maybe 20/20 would throw a crime story in sometimes but not a lot.  Court TV came out back in the 1990's and looked nothing like it does today.  Have I mentioned I miss the old days?  Court TV was just that... you saw the trials, you heard some commentary later in the day when the courts were done for the day or on a break but again, nothing like you see today.  They did away with them for a little while.  I remember some of them that are there now from back then.  I liked them better before also.  Everything was less dramatized and I'm like Joe Friday (Yes, before my time but still fitting) where I just want the facts.  

I am an avid reader and while I admit I went through a Danielle Steele phase for a bit there were only two other writers that I read that were not true crime, Stephen King and John Grisham (who was still about law) for literally decades.  It has only been in the past year or so that I have taken up reading mystery fiction.  I cannot say why, other than I like them I suppose, but I have read several series' that involves cooking and murder.  I even tried to start the Sue Grafton Alphabet Series but I was not impressed. But, I do have a list of other "new" authors to try and I do throw a biography or true crime book in from time to time.  I think the last true crime book I read was Doomsday Mom about Lori Vallow-Daybell.  I also recently read Andrew McCarthy's memoir.  I am and will forever be an 80's girl at heart so I have to read the books from The Brat Pack.  But I have books on a list, just like I have a blog list, about Alex Murdaugh from South Carolina and other true crime books I have heard about recently that I would like to check out.

As far as television goes during the day my husband and I each do our own thing and then in the evening we come together to watch whatever we are interested in at the time and binge watch shows like CSI, Criminal Minds or Smallville.  But, when it is just me almost all of my time is spent watching true crime shows and documentaries.  After getting rid of Netflix for a while and just deciding to get it back I have been on a documentary kick.  In the last week I have watched stories on murders, sex scandals, exonerations, you name it.  

I have my favorite stories such as JonBonet Ramsey, H.H. Holmes, Sylvia Likens that I find and watch all that I can. And then there are the stories like Celeste Beard, O.J., and Casey Anthony that if I have to watch one more dramatized show or documentary about I may scream.  Now, in the cases that I cannot handle hearing any more about the reasons vary. Some I just do not find that interesting and some just anger me to no end.

What you will likely find in these blogs is a pattern.  I will get into I do not want to say "ruts" so we will say "grooves" where I do several cases that may be similar.  So you may find that I do several cases that are based in the same area or maybe I am in a mood to do spousal murders, which as we know are rather common.  Maybe I will do several "dated" cases meaning from a time period like the 1960's or maybe the 1880's, who knows!  I tend to do the type, era or area that I am interested at the time until that phase goes away.  I have found that no matter how interesting the case may seem I may not be interested in it today but that may change tomorrow and if I start doing a case that does not "grab" me in the moment I will drag out my research and then when I sit down to put it all together it is not just less interesting to me, but also to the reader.  As I built this blog back up you will be able to have a larger variety of cases to find yourself to fit your mood rather than the mood I was when I published them.

I hope to decide on one to start in the next few days and once I get started I am going to try to spend my time late at night, after my husband goes to bed to put them together and publish them because that requires things to be quiet around me while I compose them.

Until next time ....... (Yes, Casey Kasem is in my head, but I won't do that to you)