Category: Mystery/Suspense Publisher: Strategic Book Group
Type: Fiction
Pages: 229
Copyright: 2011
ISBN-13: 9781609763473
Price: $9.99 (eBook)
The chilling discovery of the bodies of two young women in a pool of blood in the storeroom of an ice cream store in Staunton, Virginia, leads the police to false accusations. With no witnesses, the crime remains a mystery for forty years until a chance meeting provides a relative of one of the slain girls with a clue that leads him to accuse the girls’ co-worker, Diane Smith. Confused over the sequence of events because of time and deteriorating health, Diane provides the police with conflicting evidence, but enough for them to arrest her before she dies. In her final days, she tells the sordid details of her life to her lesbian lover and reveals who killed the girls.
The book is a murder mystery, a cold-case that remains unresolved for forty years.It tells of the results of jealousy, sexual abuse, and torment about sexual preference and murder.
It is based on press releases from the police department and newspaper articles concerning the murders, the trial and the arrest of the prime suspect.All conversations are imagined.Scenarios are the outcome of a vivid imagination assembling the details of the crime as reported.
Excerpt
Murder is a crime and a sin, and when a crime remains unsolved for many years, everyone thinks that the killer has escaped punishment. The families still grieve for their loved ones and they know that the legal system has failed to bring justice. Time has not healed their sorrow. They cannot bring their loved ones back. All they want are answers. Why did their loved ones have to die?
In 2008, the breaking of a cold case sent shivers up my spine as I read the newspaper reports from Virginia. Intrigued by the articles, I followed the unfolding story each day as the police released facts and transcripts of interviews with their latest suspect. So much time had passed since the shooting of two young girls in Staunton, Virginia in 1967 that the evidence was thin and sketchy. There were no eyewitnesses and as only a few vital forensic clues remained, the police had let the case slip after a failed attempt to convict someone.
Persistent private investigative work and a chance meeting followed by reminiscences about the case brought new information to light and threw the spotlight on a co-worker of the girls. Overlooked in the earlier investigations and now dying, it seemed simple to focus attention on that suspect and make an arrest. Why did they kill their friends and colleagues? Did they actually take a gun and kill the girls or did they see the crime scene and panic? Were they so emotionally disturbed and confused that they mixed up dates, times, places and events? Did the police neglect evidence or cover up their involvement in the case? Did the killer of the girls frame someone?
During the Christmas Season, servants Jane Meyers and Alfie Dawkins search for missing persons from opposite sides of the social spectrum: a homeless man and the Duke's son.
Willa Goodheart, honest and hard-working white collar worker finds herself connected to a police investigation for a serial killer; and she hasn't a clue why - that is, until she begins digging.
