"A Scar On All Of Us"

Photo of Raymond Clark and one of his attorneys, from the New Haven Register





By Pat Browning

Few mystery novels can match the unutterable sadness of the real life drama going on around the murder of Annie Le at Yale University.

I was reading John Lescroart’s legal thriller, A PLAGUE OF SECRETS, when the Annie Le story began to unfold, so I was already attuned to what the police can and can’t do. I thought it odd that they handcuffed Raymond Clark, “a person of interest,” and hauled him down to the station while they searched his apartment, then turned him loose but staked him out.

Turns out I wasn’t the only person puzzling over it. Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz weighed in Friday on The Huffington Post. Quoting his article:

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With the arrest of Raymond Clark on charges of murdering Annie Le, the New Haven police now seem to be acknowledging that he was more than a mere "person of interest" when they handcuffed him and took him into custody two days earlier. He was surely a suspect then, despite the police disclaimers.

The only definite way of knowing what his status was at the time of his initial detention is to see the search warrants signed by the judge and the affidavit submitted in support of that search warrant. If the affidavit alleged, and the warrant found, "probable cause," then his initial detention was probably valid.

If, however, the judge authorized his arrest in handcuffs based on him merely being a "person of interest," then serious constitutional problems arise. But, according to the Yale Daily News, the authorities have refused to disclose any of these documents, even the name of the judge who signed the warrant.

It would be a sad day in America if anyone deemed by the police to be a "person of interest" -- which could include anyone who worked with, knew, or came in contact with the victim -- could be handcuffed, placed in a police car and hauled down to the police station, even if only for a few hours.

This is precisely the sort of conduct that we, as a nation, condemn when carried out in other parts of the world. Our Constitution demands that a seizure -- roughly the equivalent of an arrest -- not be unreasonable. In general that means that the police must demonstrate to a judge that they have probable cause for believing that the person may be guilty of a crime.

The evidence of Clark's complicity in Le's death now seems substantial, if there was in fact a DNA match and if his card swipe and e-mails confirm his contact with her just prior to her disappearance. But the evidence that he murdered her in premeditated fashion seems sparse.

Indeed, the manner by which her body was hidden appears to be inconsistent with long term planning. As a matter of law, however, premeditation can occur over a very short period of time. Moreover, if we ultimately learn that Le was sexually assaulted by Clark -- and I've heard nothing to suggest this -- her death would be classified as felony murder under the law of most states.

There is much yet to be learned about this horrible crime, most particularly with regard to the motive of the killer. At trial, if there is a trial rather than a plea, Clark will benefit from a presumption of innocence, not only with regard to whether he committed the crime, but also with regard to whether the crime was murder, manslaughter or something else. Stay tuned.
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A further brief note appeared on The Huffington Post:
“Hartford news station WTIC/Fox61 reports that police are questioning a second suspect in the murder of Annie Le. Sources tell the station that a second person may have helped Raymond Clark III, who was arrested and charged yesterday, hide Le's body behind the wall of a lab building. Clark's fiancée, sister and brother-in-law all work at the lab.”

Stay tuned indeed.

A fairly tight lid has been kept on the case, but details leak out. Clark played in a softball game the day Le’s body was found. Some saw him as a control freak. As a lab technician responsible for the welfare of research animals he was reportedly rude and demanding of students doing the research.

According to a story in the New York Times, the arrest warrant runs to 1,000 pages, but it’s sealed for two weeks because of an ongoing investigation. The police chief is quoted as saying we may never know the motive and all theories are speculation.

From the Times story: “Chief James Lewis of the New Haven police would not speak about a possible motive, but said, ‘It is important to note that this is not about urban crime, university crime, domestic crime, but an issue of workplace violence, which is becoming a growing concern around the country.’”

The Times also quotes Richard Levin, university president: “This killing could have happened in any city, in any university. It says more about the dark side of the human soul than it does about the extent of security measures.”

The human toll taken by the Yale murder cannot be measured. Clark had scratches and bruises on his face and chest – defensive wounds, if he is indeed the killer, and evidence of how hard Annie Le fought for her life. Her family, her friends, her fiancé and his family, must live with that. The killer and his family, too, are caught in a nightmare.

The case reminds Scott Herhold, a columnist for the (San Jose) Mercury News of an unsolved 1974 murder at Stanford University. He says it still nags at the Sheriff’s Office, and adds: “There's a reason murder has no statute of limitations. It leaves a scar on all of us, even 35 years later.”

Perfect Grammar?

by Jean Henry Mead

While I was writing my first novel, Escape on the Wind, I joined an online critique group on AOL. The book concerns a young girl kidnapped by members of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, and one of the comments I received was, “You need to clean up your grammar.”

The critiquer was referring to my outlaw characters, whom I had spent researching for several years. Because I live in former outlaw territory, there are still plenty of people in the area with the same speech patterns--in fact, I interviewed several oldtimers who had actually known some of the aging outlaws. So I felt certain that I was getting their speech patterns right.

Mark Twain’s phonetically spelled dialogue slows down reading but a few choice colloquallisms not only add color and authenticity to a story, a few words of dialogue tell more about the person speaking than paragraphs of description.

“I ain’t got nobody,” tells readers that the speaker is probably unloved, uneducated and lonely, in only four words. Try explaining the same conditions in narrative in the same amount of words.

Gary Provost, the author of Make Every Word Count, said there are two groups of people who get it wrong about grammar, “and generally speaking, neither group produces good writers.” One group completely ignores the rules of grammar while the other group discusses the subject as though grammar were some sort of religion that has to be rigidly followed, sacrificing style as well as originality. “They would rather be right than write well.”

Good narrative grammar is essential to good writing although the rules have relaxed over the years. Carlos Baker wrote that “Ernest Hemingway’s personal trademark was to use nor instead of or after a previous negative. He also retained an e when adding ing or able, as in loveing or comeing or in the phrase immortialized in the tile of A Moveable Feast. He also didn’t care about the distinctions between who and whom, lying and laying.”

“The last thing I remember about English in high school,” Hemingway once wrote, “was a big controversy on whether it was 'already' or 'all ready.' How did it ever come out?”

Andy Rooney wrote in one of his newspaper columns: “I wouldn’t think of using the word data as a plural word, which it is. I often find myself using the word hard when I should be writing difficult. It’s hard to stick to the rules when the rules make you sound more formal than you want to be. I seldom use the subjunctive were for was.”

Rooney also wrote: “I know a lot about using the language. Still, there are times when I’m stumped. I was wondering the other day what part of speech the word please is in the sentence, as in 'Please don’t take me seriously.’”

Seriously is how most of us took the lessons of our English teachers who taught us that each sentence must have a subject and predicate and that the absence of those elements render the sentence unacceptable.

I disagree as did Gary Provost, who said, "Good writing often consists of partial sentences, especially when written in dialogue. Although partial sentences don’t fare well in large numbers, a few well placed partials can invigorate your work. Like a chime. Or the beat of a drum."

A Steady Climb

By Mark W. Danielson

“Climb” is a word with many meanings. In Miley Cyrus’ song, it refers to her reaching her dreams. In the entertainment industry, it frequently describes sales progression. In this article, it compares fiction writing to climbing Seoul’s Mount Namsan; the largest mountain within the city.

As with drafting manuscripts, Namsan’s gradient is steep and constant. Its endless steps can be intimidating, and yet I climb them because of the elderly. Though I could ride a gondola to the top, I prefer following the senior Koreans who still climb Namsan. These people inspire me to follow their lead in much the same way as my writing mentors have challenged me to write. Anyone facing obstacles always smiles after achieving their goals.

In this regard, scaling Namsan parallels my efforts in drafting manuscripts. While I'm elated when it’s finished, I still find plenty of challenges along the way. Editing is often more difficult than writing the initial draft, and when it's done, I’m not confident it’s perfect. The ecstatic feeling I get when a book has been picked up by a publisher is easily diminished when dealing with the business aspect. But that’s when reminiscing about the elderly Namsan climbers helps to keep things in perspective. Their images constantly remind me that as much as I enjoy writing, there is more to life than writing and selling books, and that moving forward, regardless of the struggles, is the best way to live life while still achieving goals. These lessons have stayed with me as long as those of my mentors'.

For as long as I’m able, I will continue to climb mountains and draft manuscripts. Perhaps when I’m old enough, others might follow in my footsteps. I haven’t caught up with Namsan’s elderly yet, but I’m getting there. So far they’ve taught me that life is a series of steps, and that all I can do is stay focused and climb them one at a time. Perhaps that's what Miley Cyrus had in mind in her song, too. That being said, I eagerly await my next lesson, and hope I have many years left.

Electrifying

by Ben Small

I am amazed and sometimes flabbergasted by some of the new weapon technologies available, or soon to be available. How about this for a new one? A shotgun taser, capable of stunning its target at a distance of one hundred feet or more.

No, I'm not kidding. Mossberg and Taser have teamed up to provide you with the Mossberg Taser X-12, and it comes in designer colors.


Seriously, this weapon offers both close-range and distance utility. A great way to quell a threatening riot, perhaps.

The normal taser attachment can be seen hanging down below the barrel. But what makes this shotgun special is two things: the projectile, and the fact that Mossberg has come up with a way to make an accidental loading of a lethal shell impossible. This gun is not made for lethality, and without this safety measure, all sorts of bad things might happen. The shotgun might blow up; someone might accidentally be killed or maimed, and lawsuits would rain down all over everybody -- not that they won't anyway. We are a lawsuit-happy populace, aren't we?

The projectile is a marvelous feat of engineering. The Taser XREP (Extended Range Electronic Projectile) is a self-contained, wireless projectile that fires from a standard 12-gauge shotgun. It delivers the same Neuro-Muscular Incapacitation (NMI) bio-effect as the handheld Taser X26.



For now, this weapon is only available to police forces and the military. But it could soon be coming to a gun store near you. But this thing is not for me. Too great a chance my wife will pick me off as I bike down the driveway. Or maybe Little Tommy will see the pretty colored rifle and take down his sister. Or maybe some idiot will bring one to a Town Hall meeting.

Okay, now I'm scaring the hell out of myself. But you may want one for your mystery or thriller. Creates all sorts of new possibilities...

BTW, if you want more details, as far as legality, etc. you might want to check out Taser's Legal Page

Call Me A Weenie

Mug shots: Pix of Thomas B. Sawyer (top) and William Bernhardt (bottom) came from the Web. I snapped the photo of Ridley Pearson at Left Coast Crime-Monterey 2004.

By Pat Browning

I’m a weenie. Can’t stand suspense. Makes my skin itch. I’ve been known to turn to the last page of a book to find out who lives, who dies, and then go back and finish reading the book. A story is a story. Even if I know how it ends, I want to know how it gets there from here.

I’ve recently read three excellent suspense novels by seasoned authors. All three books are different, but all three are page-turners.

You might assume from the riveting first pages of Thomas B. Sawyer’s NO PLACE TO RUN that a guy named Bill Lawrence is the protagonist. You might be right. You might be wrong. Things are not always what they seem in this Byzantine tale of the discovery of certain facts about the events leading to 9/11 – and the desperate, damn-the-costs attempt to prevent them from emerging.

What rogue federal agents do to protect a powerful Washington figure with a connection to the terror attacks of 9/11 makes for nasty business. Sawyer brings it down to human levels with a 24 year-old sister and her young brother running for their lives, trusting no one, not even the agent intent on saving them, as they try to solve cryptic evidence uncovered by their father.

Sawyer is a TV/film veteran and it shows in the quick cuts from scene to scene, with no wasted motion. Along about page 50 the story stretches out a little with a bit of back-story. But don’t get comfortable. The whole thing blows up with a shocking twist, and takes off in a different, unexpected direction.

NO PLACE TO RUN is an exciting, satisfying, thought-provoking stomach-churner, one worth staying up late to finish.

Ridley Pearson’s KILLER SUMMER is a kind of “Mission Impossible” in reverse. The bad guys are the derring-do team, led by master thief Cantell, planning the perfect heist down to the smallest detail. Idaho’s Sun Valley and environs (towns Hailey and Ketchum) make a perfect setting. The occasion is the annual wine auction, a high society fundraiser. At stake are three old bottles of wine, said to be gifts from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.

The stage is set. What can possibly go wrong? Just about everything, beginning with a scholar who claims the wines are fakes. Sheriff Walt Fleming and his deputies are a half step behind all the way.

Walt Fleming is an interesting character. Nothing flashy about him, but he’s a good, solid lawman and an expert tracker of those on the wrong side of the law. The last part of the book gives a totally unexpected twist to the heist, ending in a nail-biting pursuit through Idaho’s rugged terrain.

I tried to look up the places where the action takes place, but Idaho looks like one big national forest and wilderness area in a road atlas. Even online maps were no help. This is one time I would have enjoyed seeing a map at the front of the book. I’m a fan of Pearson’s Lou Boldt series, and have added his newer Walt Fleming series to my favorites list.

CAPITOL CONSPIRACY by William Bernhardt has two settings, Oklahoma and Washington D.C. Bernhardt’s contemporary Oklahoma settings are so real it’s like being set down in a particular neighborhood, being part of the action. Offhand I can’t think of another writer who does it as well, except for Robert Fate in his BABY SHARK books.

What kept me turning the pages of CAPITOL CONSPIRACY was the depiction of Washington shenanigans out of sight of reporters and cameras. It’s revolting, and ultimately discouraging. This book was published in 2008 but it might have been written this morning. The tenor of the times is the same.

In Oklahoma City for an anniversary commemoration of the Murrah Building bombing, the President is caught squarely in the midst of an apparent terrorist attack, barely escaping with his life. Others are not so lucky, or well protected.

The country is paralyzed by shock and fear. The President calls on Congress to amend the Constitution by suspending the Bill of Rights. At the center of the action is Ben Kincaid, a newly appointed senator filling an unexpired term.

Kincaid is a low-profile Tulsa lawyer. He’s married to his chief of staff who’s a real firecracker. Together they negotiate the treacherous halls of Congress and the national uproar over constitutional rights. The surprise ending is a testament to greed and ambition at high levels.

CAPITOL CONSPIRACY is 16th in Bernhardt’s Ben Kincaid series. Number 17, CAPITOL OFFENSE, will be released Sept. 29, and 18 in the series, CAPITOL BETRAYAL, is due out from Ballantine in March 2010. I hope to go back through the list and read some of the earlier ones.

All of a sudden I seem to be hooked on suspense novels. Right now I’m two-thirds of the way through A PLAGUE OF SECRETS, a legal drama by John Lescroart. If Lescroart knows what he’s talking about, a U.S. attorney’s reach and power is worse than scary.

The Grande Dame of Western Literature

By Jean Henry Mead

While I was interviewing for my third book, Maverick Writers, I was devastated when Dorothy Johnson died in 1984 before I could make the trip to Montana to see her. I still have two of her letters tucked away as keepsakes, written on humorous stationery picturing Dorothy mounting a horse, her dog covering his eyes with his paws.

Miss Johnson is best known for three short stories that were adapted to film: “The Hanging Tree," which starred fellow Montanan Gary Cooper; “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” which partnered John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart; and “A Man Called Horse,” which was so successful that several sequels followed.

A prolific writer of stories set in the frontier West, she also wrote novels, non-fiction books and articles. “Lost Sister” won the 1956 Spur Award from Western Writers of America as “Best Short Story” of the year. Well known for her painstaking research of the pre-1890s West, she often said she preferred the 19th century to the 20th, “because we know how it all came out.” In her novels of Plains Indian life, Buffalo Woman and All the Buffalo Returning, she wrote about the changes of both landscape and lifestyle that resulted from white settlement of the western U.S.

While a senior at Whitefish High School, class of ’22, she began her professional writing career, serving as a stringer for The Kalispell Daily Inter Lake. She attended Montana State College, later renamed Montana State University, to major in pre-med until she realized that she would have to dissect a cat. Transferring to the University of Montana, she majored in English and was taken under the wing of Professor H.G. Merriam, who founded The Frontier, a campus literary magazine, for which Dorothy contributed articles throughout her college years, switching form poetry to prose. She then worked for nine years at Gregg Publishing Company before joining the staff of The Woman magazine as managing editor and contributor under a number of pseudonyms.

In her free time she continued to write fiction. Her first sale was in 1930 to the Saturday Evening Post, which paid her $400 for a story about Bonnie George Campbell. It was eleven years before she sold another.

In 1950 she resigned her editorial post with The Woman to return to Whitefish as a reporter-photographer for The Whitefish Pilot, but confessed that her reporting skills were inadequate because she was too shy to interview people she didn't know. But during the years she served as secretary-manager of the Montana Press Association (1953–1967), her successes as a novelist continued to grow. She was also teaching at her alma mater as an assistant professor of journalism. She later worked in New York for 15 years as a magazine editor before returning to Big Sky Country in 1950, where she taught magazine writing at the University of Montana.

A 1982 Writer’s Digest article written by Kathy Crump described Dorothy Johnson as “Petite, animated, witty, crusty and feisty” as well as someone who didn’t "fit the rough-and-tumble image of a teller of tales about outlaws and Indians and cowboys," although she kept a pistol nearby when writing western short stories.

“There’s something about a Colt .44 beside the typewriter that inspires me,” she said.

Branching out into novels and historicals when the western short story markets began to dry up, she sold her antique pistol collection, including her Colt .44, but kept a .38 “hawg laig,” loaded with scattershot, which she used to clear rattlesnakes from her land in Rattlesnake Gulch on the outskirts of Missoula, Montana.

Not all her books were about the West. Three of her later books were about Greece, which she called her "heart's home." She visited the country five times and said she was "just mad about it." She was "overwhelmed" by the reception she received in Athens during the showing of the film "A Man Called Horse." She said, laughing, "To think a kid from Whitefish was speaking in Athens, the city of Pericles and Socrates and Plato. Of course, they weren't there anymore, so Athens had to take what it could get."

Writing is Easy...

By Beth Terrell

Gene Fowler once said, "Writing is easy. Just stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." Or how about Ben Hecht's, "Writing is easy. Just open a vein." We've talked a lot about how much fun writing is (and it is!). None of us seems to have too much trouble with writer's block. I have a dear friend, a brilliant writer, who has been unable to write creatively for years. I've been fortunate that, when I do get stuck, I can usually find a way through it pretty easily. I write fiction, which is a joy to me; if I wrote two books a year and never had another new idea, I would still be writing for the next fifty years. I sometimes get busy; I sometimes have to find my way through a section that isn't working; but I don't get blocked.

But this week, I've had a very specific type of writer's block: Blogger's Block. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has it, since when I thought I'd coined the name and Googled it, I got 44,000 hits. That's a lot of blockage.

Take yesterday for example. I spent much of the day coming up with and discarding ideas. At 8:00, I sat down in front of my computer fully intending to write my blog post a day ahead of time. At 11:30, when I had to go to bed because I had to get up and travel, I still had a blank title box and "By Beth Terrell" in the composition box. Not an auspicious beginning. Not a single idea had been able to gasp past the finish line.

Today, I my mom, brother, and I drove from Nashville to a little town just north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (we'll finish the last leg of our trip tomorrow). We checked into a Country Hearth Inn & Suites and ate at a nearby Italian restaurant (crab manicotti!). Then I came back to the room and pulled up the composition box again. No title. "By Beth Terrell." Bleh.

Took a shower while mom checked her email. Checked my own email and responded to the ones that couldn't wait. Made a couple of false starts on the blog entry and couldn't for the life of me think of anything to write that anybody would particularly want to read about. Checked email again and found a link from my sister-in-law to a video of a group of people at Dragoncon (a fantasy and sf convention) trying to break the world's record for the number of people dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in one place. The previous record was a 242 by students at William and Mary. Dragoncon had 902. Now this, I could not resist.

If you're the least bit curious to see zombies, Klingons, a man dressed as a giant silver glove, sort of tentacled creature with eyestalks, and a host of other costumed and plainclothes folks dancing in semi-unison to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," you can see it here: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1345089824?bctid=37858935001.

I came back to the composition page refreshed and a great deal more amused. Made a couple more false starts. Chuckled about the Dragoncon dancers. Called my husband and complained that I couldn't think of anything to write that anybody would want to read. Apparently, I'm in a funk. He said it didn't matter. Write anything. Just write something.

This is the something, and the point of it is, my husband is a wise man. I often meet writers who say they would love to write if...They would write if only...They have this great idea, but...How do I start? What do I do? What if a publisher won't buy it? What if no one reads it?

The answer is always the same. Just write something.