Genre News

A New Last Chapter for An Ann Rule Classic Maybe you remember reading Ann Rule's Everything She Ever Wanted [Amazon; B&N], another unforgettable story from the Queen of True Crime that came out in 1992. The book documented the amazing tale of Georgia's Patricia Radcliffe Taylor, who talked her husband into murdering his parents before embarking on an arsenic murder spree that eventually landed her in prison. For some indiscernible reason, she was paroled. And now for a fresh new chapter in the tale: last month the Deadly Magnolia, who inflicted deaths slow and otherwise on so many victims, went back to prison - this time accused of swindling pain pills for resale from gullible doctors.

Art by Perry Smith? A library in Topeka now has on display a pastel of Christ drawn by Perry Smith and signed by Richard Hickock of In Cold Blood infamy. It seems a local man found the drawing rolled up in the closet of a relation who recently died. I'd bet the artist has yet to meet his subject.

"Thank Goodness [for] M. William Phelps" Akron, Ohio, the site of the bizarre murder case that formed the basis of the latest book by true crime author M. William Phelps [read the CLEWS interview], likes the book that resulted. Said a columnist for The Cleveland Free Times: "It didn't take long for someone to pen a tell-all book regarding the death of Jeff Zack.... Thank goodness that someone was M. William Phelps, a respected national journalist.... Phelps' position as an outsider to this local crime gives the book an unbiased feel that was lacking in recent Plain Dealer accounts. Finally, the full story is presented. And it's a doozy."

The Alabama Murder Twins Revisited Peggy and Betty were beautiful twins - one was the Homecoming queen of their high school. They were both accused of an ugly crime. 

Betty  was convicted for her role in the murder of her doctor-husband and is in the Tutwiler prison in Alabama today, serving a sentence of life without parole; Peggy was acquitted on the same evidence. The verdicts are difficult to reconcile. Did one woman get away with murder? Or was the other railroaded?

The case made headlines across the country in 1992-93, and it's been a staple of the true crime documentary shows ever since. Now it's made its way into a book by an author convinced that Betty Wilson got a raw deal. As Betty herself has remarked, “I think I was convicted for having an affair with a black man. I was convicted for being a rich bitch.”

The book is Killer For Hire - The Final Chapter of the Alabama Twins Murder Case [Amazon; B&N]. The author is Barbara Lunsford. A press release and website have been generated to support the book's release. This is the first full-length book about the case, though it was mentioned in John Glatt's Evil Twins.

For more on the case, see About.com on Huntsville, Alabama's Trial of the Century

Comments

[Fiz]

Much your photographer knows, Laura! I was thinking how glamorous you looked.