There are 399 Web Log Items in 50 pages and you are on page number 41 |
| Odd Post from England |
Here is the post put on my website guest book. I want to be sure that all of you know that I know nothing about this person, and that it seems highly inappropriate for him to post his bizarre request on my guest book. Steer clear of him!
"Comments by christopher berry dee on Friday, June 17, 2005 at 15:01 IP Logged
Hi,
I am looking to r-establish my connections within the U.S.A.
Sadly I was charged with child sex abuse and need someone to offer a reference, can you help?
I can help you get a bigger forum, as we are expanding , visit my site and see.
I feel like Michael Jackson, I couldnt get away from what I did.
I have visited prisons in the U.S
People on death row appeal to me as I can milk them more easily.
So, if you want to join my crew then visit and copy this comment, I feel we can do business.
C.B.D.
United Kingdom "
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| Posted by Ann on Friday, June 17, 2005 at 16:36 |
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| Looking for photographs |
This is a real long shot, but I'll give it a try. Is there anyone out there from Denver or the Zanesville, Ohio area who has any photographs of (1) Justyn Rosen, the late owner of a huge Ford dealership in Denver, who was shot to death on October 3, 2003. I would like to buy a copy of it for a future book.
and
(2) Teresa Perez, who was also shot to death on October 3, 2003. She was 39, and a very beautiful young woman. I also need to purchase a picture of her.
Please contact me at my website or at AnnieR37@aol.com
Thank you,
Ann
www.annrules.com |
| Posted by Ann on Friday, June 17, 2005 at 16:31 |
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| Ann's Ticked Off! |
Oh Good Heavens!
I can't understand what Lance is talking about! I turned Ted Bundy's name in, yes, but I didn't know anything at that point about what he was doing. I knew he lived near some of the early victims and that he looked like the artist's drawing of the man seen at Lake Sammamish in the summer of 1974. What does Lance think I was supposed to do? I think I did my duty by informing the police of my concerns. THEY found out from my tip what kind of car he drove, and they proceeded to investigate him. I was only one of a few thousand people who turned in the names of people they knew who they thought might be the "Ted" who was killing girls. I didn't hide anything, or protect him, and I tried to help the detectives learn more about him. I had no way of proving that Ted Bundy was THE "Ted." So how could I have saved any future victims? The police knew he was writing to me. I shared his comments with the detectives, and passed their messages back to him. They followed me whenever I had lunch with him. I didn't keep any secrets from them. Or from him, for that matter. I can only think that Lance just didn't get it, or that he didn't even read The Stranger Beside Me! Lance strikes me as one of the those people who goes walking off in all directions without thinking first.
For the gal asking about someone named Daphne. I have never heard of her, so I don't know how her name was linked to my website. No, I'm not mad at Chrissy, who asked. I just don't know anything about her question.
As for the message from the self-described sex offender in England, asking for a link-up, I am flabberghasted that he would write to my website! Hopefully, my webmaster will have taken his post off before many of you see it. It is either a hoax or he is really stupid and approached the wrong person.
O.K. Off my high horse for the moment, and back to writing.
Muttering here,
Ann |
| Posted by Ann on Friday, June 17, 2005 at 16:27 |
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| 6/16/05 |
Hi,
I've been really slaving over a hot computer this week, closing in on the end of Worth More Dead.
I did see the letter from "Amber" today. I think what she doesn't understand is that I do months of research before I am convinced personally of the guilt of the defendant. Because I work continually to help victims of Domestic Violence, my first instinct was to believe Liysa Northon. But then I kept digging through so many layers, and, in the end, I had to conclude that she was anything but the normal DV victim. The evidence--both physical and circumstantial--led straight to Liysa as Chris Northon' s killer. My approach was not one-sided. I had to be convinced that she had cold-bloodedly planned to kill her husband, the father of her youngest child. THEN I wrote the book. Amber is naive in her failure to understand how I work. Thanks to the rest of you who do understand.
Just this past week, the Oregon Senate passed a bill that will prevent Liysa--or anyone convicted of killing a spouse--from gaining monetarily from the death of a child that inherited the victim's estate. Dick and Jeanne Northon have been worried sick that Liysa--who gets out of prison when Bjorn is only 16--might be dangerous to him because he stands to inherit his dead father's million dollar plus estate. It is an awful thing to ponder, but people who know her have worried that Bjorn might be in danger as he will be the only thing standing between Liysa and a fortune. This is a loophole in the Oregon State version of the Son of Sam law--that says killers cannot benefit financially from the death of the person they kill. Liysa cannot inherit from Chris, but she could inherit from Bjorn if anything happened to him.
The bill still needs to go the House in the Oregon Legislature before it becomes law.
Liysa, her father, and her brother are still sueing me for $3 million apiece because they contend that I libeled them in Heart Full of Lies. As most of you know, I depend on public records for my information: court testimony, police files, my own research and interviews, etc. to research my books. I had no axe to grind with Liysa Northon when I began Heart Full of Lies. When I came to the conclusion that she deliberately planned weeks ahead of time to kill Chris and also destroy his reputation so his little boy wouldn't even know what a good man his father was, THEN I wrote the book. Chris was sedated, lasered, almost drowned, and then shot in the head while he was virtually unconscious from sleeping pills slipped into his food. It's likely that he was also handcuffed at the time, on top of being zipped up in a "mummy" sleeping bag, The gentler sex isn't always.
I will continue to fight for true victims of Domestic Violence, but I deplore how Liysa set them back with her outrageous scenario.
It's raining a steady, gentle rain in Seattle, good sleeping weather! After July 4th, we will get, I suspect, our usual day after day after day of sunshine and no rain, so I'm enjoying the showers now.
I tried to order a new hollyhock plant because the sole survivor I had from seed has come down with rust. Alas, Nebraska can't send hollyhocks into Washington State! I am still fighting hard to save the rust victim.
I guess we had a tsunami scare the other night, but no sirens sounded in my part of Puget Sound. My grandaughter, who was vacationing in Texas, called to be sure I hadn't been swept away, and that's how I found out. I have ridden out some pretty scary earthquakes here. It's very scary to see your trees bending the ground, your TV's and computers sliding off the desks, and the ground jump up and own! Last time, although there was quite a bit of damage in downtown Seattle, all I lost was a jelly glass. All my antique glass and old bottles survived unscathed. In my life, I have been in tornados, floods, mudslides, earthquakes, and the tail end of a hurricane. In the end, Nature is so much stronger than we are! You just have to have faith.
Almost time for Letterman, so I'll sign off. He is a somewhat bizarre man, but I think he has a good heart and a fey sense of humor. Truth is that I usually fall asleep before the Top Ten and wake up about 3 a.m. in surprise.
All my best,
Ann
P.S. I talked by email this week with Kathleen, Anne Marie Fahey's sister. I always remember Anne Marie especially in June, the month in which she died. She would be about 39 now, and this tragic victim of And Never Let Her Go should be married now with her own babies. But she is lost. Tom Capano, her killer, still sits on Death Row in Delaware. The one-time millionaire claims that he is destitute and had no money for attorneys to continue his appeals. Somehow, I don't believe him. |
| Posted by Ann on Thursday, June 16, 2005 at 23:21 |
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| 6/11/05 |
Hi,
Just a quick note tonight. I just finished writing, it's 8:30, and I'm hungry! This is to Lynda who asked why my books weren't on A&E
Back a few years ago, the production companies who do shows for A& E used to come to me and interview me,on and although they didn't pay me anything, they were nice enough to show my book covers and credit me. But now, they just take my books, use them for their research, and make shows out of them. I don't get any credit for my research, and they don't show the book covers because they want to make it look as if they did all the work.
This is a pet peeve of mine, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Once in a while, they show some of the old shows where I WAS interviewed, but they all seem to just take my stories and run now. Occasionally, they call me--but only to make contact with the people I have written about. Most of "my people" talk to me, but they're not anxious to talk to television producers for whom it's just another show and don't seem to grasp the pain they are in or their grief.
I have found that 48 Hours is a very reputable show, considerate, honest, and they keep their promises. The last show I did with them was just before I had a hip replacement and it really hurt to walk--so they made the cameraman run around me so I could sit still. Then they sent me a huge, wonderful bouquet after my surgery--with orchids and all kinds of great-smelling flowers. Really nice people.
The folks at 20/20 are also very nice, And Charlie Gibson from Good Morning America is a sweetheart. Oprah is absolutely genuine and I really admire her. I also like the producers at the CBS Early Show.
Well, that's enough for tonight. The dogs are sopping wet from the rain, and they said they're hungry, too.
Night,
Ann
P.S. I did film a show with E-Entertainment that is supposed to show in July--about serial killers. I don't have the exact date yet.
Sunday morning. For some reason, this particular post does't appear on my own computer--so I don't know if it shows on yours or not.
I'm amending it to see if that will help.
Not much has happened since last night. I fell asleep right in the middle of Mad TV and totally missed Saturday Night Live. It rained all night, but now the sun is out and I'm debating the merits of writing all day versus going out and planting some bedding plants. I'll probably write first, and hope the sunshine lasts. At least we're getting close to the longest day of the year. In Seattle,that means the sun comes up about 4 and doesn't set until 10 p.m. Kind of neat,although our winter days are a lot shorter than those down south.
ARR
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| Posted by Ann on Saturday, June 11, 2005 at 20:34 |
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| 6/10/05 |
It's Friday night. Hooray! In my case, that doesn't mean that I'm taking the weekend off--as you all know. Saturday and Sunday are excellent quiet writing days. But Friday is my tabloid night. I still can't break the habit, even though I'm not interested in about 90% of the people in there. But my rule is that I can't read any of them until I've typed ten pages that day. . .so it will be a while yet until I read the latest gossip. For those of you who think my brain has turned to mush and that my intellect isn't far behind, I also subscribe to The New Yorker, and enjoy Shakespeare, John Updike, Anne Tyler, Wally Lamb and any biography I can get my hands on!
I'm sorry the news about Worth More Dead, my next book, is buried in the middle of my regular website. I've been too busy writing it to update the rest of the website. I'm 60% done now, and only have three more cases to go. The pub date is either late November or the first week in December. The cover is already set, and I'll deliver the whole book by July 7th.
Before that, the paperback of Green River, Running Red, comes out in October. By late fall, I will probably be in Atlanta and Augusta attending trials for the murders of Jennifer Corbin and Dolly Hearn. The defendant is Bart Corbin, a dentist from Dacula, Georgia. These beautiful young womens' deaths are profoundly tragic. I'm not sure of the trial dates yet, and those dates will affect the publishing time for my next hardcover--as yet untitled. I've been to Georgia before--to research Everything She Ever Wanted. It's a beautiful state, and people there are very gracious.
If there is a long enough space between my finishing Worth More Dead and the Georgia trials, I will write another True Crime Files book while I'm waiting. I have really appreciated your positive reaction to the idea of a sequel to Possession and to my writing my autobiography. Both are definitely on my agenda. I just wanted to be sure that you, my readers, would like to read them. Like most authors, I am always thinking "So many books to write, so little time." Hope I can emulate James Michener who just kept writing until he passed away at over ninety. Nobody makes writers retire, although somebody probably should order us to stop and take vacations once in a while. I feel so lucky that I really love what I do for a living.
Darlie Routier must have been on some docudrama lately because I've had a lot of mail about her. I really don't know that much about her case, although her behavior has reminded me a great deal of Diane Downs and Susan Smith. Unless I can go to a trial myself, and really dig deep into research, I don't have any more knowledge than anyone else who sees cases on TV or in the newspapers. So I can't debate my impressions with those who write to me. Actually, I can't debate much all because between researching, writing, answering emails (with necessarily short responses) and keeping up this blog, there isn't much time left over.
Yesterday, I bought so many bedding plants: zinnias, petunias, lobelia, impatiens, trailing nasturstiums, more geraniums, three kinds of tomato plants, and more zuchinnis. I decided to go the "Plant zuchinni in old tires" route. I finally found some Midnight Madness dark blue petunias. They smell so good, and are one of the few favorites that haven't had the fragrance bred right out of them. Does anyone remember how delicious white nicotinias used to smell--especially at night? I haven't been able to find any that smelled at all for about ten years. They're really hardy, but that kind of honeysuckle-vanilla-jasmine smell is completely gone. Anyone know where to find the old-fashioned nicotinias?
I'm really sad because the one holly-hock that I managed to grow from seed is very sick. Last year, it grew to about 12 feet tall and bloomed until November. This year, it has "rust." and the leaves are covered with orange fungus and then they just turn grey and curl up. The garden books say to pull it up, but I hate to do that. I only have one. My grandma Hansen always grew hollyhocks, but that was in Michigan and they don't do very well in the Northwest, at least on the west side of the mountains.
Altogether, I got about 10 rocks for my going-to-be fireplace, and each one is special. But, since I had to scrap my new building project, I am using the rocks in my garden, with a placard to mark the names of the donors. I felt kind of guilty because the postage for rocks is pretty pricey. :*)
Many of you have written to say my books scared them--but in a good way; they are now much more conscious of their surroundings and of keeping safe and being aware. Hooray!
Oh, and I did get an enticing mail offer from a man. It was hard to resist--but I did. 6'4", 195, blue eyes, blonde hair, 30-years-old ( a bit too young!) and, by the way, in the penitentiary. What more could a gal ask for? The thing is that if any would be inclined to have a prison correspondent--which I don't approve of unless you KNOW who you are writing to-- is that many convicts write to any number of women, ask for money, send someone else's photo, and often won't tell you why they are in prison.
Back to work. I'm no where near ten pages yet!
Ann
P.S. And thank you again for all the great positive comments. It really helps and keeps me going when I am tempted to play hookey from writing. How lucky am I to get up in the morning and read so many great thoughts about my writing. It almost erases my five years of rejection slips before I sold anything! |
| Posted by Ann on Friday, June 10, 2005 at 18:35 |
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| Rumbles about Diane Downs |
Hi,
I've had quite a few emails lately about Diane Downs, whom I wrote about in Small Sacrifices. She has been in prison since 1984, and yet some people still ask me if I've had any doubts about her guilt, or what I think of the prosecutor and his wife adopting her children after she was convicted. I just responded to one correspondent--who assured me that she did feel Diane was guilty, but wanted me to give my opinion in some areas. I've copied my answers to her questions.
For some reason, infamous criminals like Diane, Jeffrey MacDonald, O.J., Scott Peterson, Darlie Routier, etc. always have somebody out there who believe them to be innocent, despite their meeting the criteria that a prosecutor tries to establish. "Would a prudent man be convinced that the evidence (absolute physical and circunstantial) that the defendant is guilty?" Sometimes, we never know completely, but the scales of justice eventually tip to one side or another.
Here is what I wrote to today's emailer:
To your questions about Fred and Joanne Hugi adopting Christie and Danny. They were about 40 at the time the kids were so terribly injured, needing lifelong care (especially Danny), and they hadn't planned on having kids. However, they fell in love with those little children who were struggling to live--while their mother, Diane, was being histrionic and complaining about the wound in her lower arm. Danny and Christie went to live with a foster home, and the Slavens were really nice to them. But Danny required so much care as he could not control his bladder or his bowels, couldn't move below the chest, etc.etc. after Diane shot him in the spine. It got to the place where the Slavens just couldn't give that much care, and Christie and Danny were going to be separated as he was going to have to go to a hospital set up to care for crippled children. Those little kids were all each other had left. Their father didn't want them (He wasn't Danny's father biologically). Their grandparents didn't want them. So Joanne and Fred stepped in. They did a wonderful job of raising those kids,and they are all still a family. The Hugis were a career couple--not people desperately hoping for child. They adopted them AFTER the trial. And I know both Fred and Joanne,and they are decent, caring people who completely changed their lives to give these kids a loving home.
The ballistics evidence--where the bullet casings found at the shooting scene by the river had identical extractor and ejector marks to the bullet casings detectives found on Diane's bedspread-- holds up. Bullets don't have to be fired to get these marks. Someone aimlessly putting them through a gun( and just ejecting them without firing) would have casings marked with extractor and ejectors, too. How would a "bushy-haired stranger" have had access to Diane's gun in her locked apartment? Cheryl was shot both inside the car and outside when she was down on the pavement. Yet Diane said the stranger shot her in the car. Why did the towel Diane used to absorb the bleeding in her injured arm have stains that absolutely proved she had carefully wrapped her arm in a triangular bandage? Why did Diane hurry to wash her hands at the hospital?
And there is so much circumstantial evidence. Why on earth would Diane have taken three little children out that late on a school night, and then driven home along a lonely road in the dark when there was a shorter way on a good road? Why would she say that she had the keys in her hand, pretending to throw them to fool the BHS, when Christie clearly remembers that the tape deck in the car was playing Hungry Like the Wolf as she watched her mother shoot them? It wouldn't play with the key out of the ignition. Why would Diane stop for a weird looking stranger with all her kids in the car? I don't know any mother who would take such a chance! Why was she driving less than 5 miles an hour according the the car behind her (which she didn't know was there) and then say she"raced" to the hospital with the injured kids? Why did she get their names engraved on the Unicorn statue and the date that she first intended to kill them all? It just goes on and on. Remember that I knew all of the people involved well, and I went to the whole trial, sitting three feet away from Diane as she loved being the center of attention!
No one brainwashed Christie. Instead, on a psychologist's advice, the detectives, doctors, social workers et al went overboard not to implant any ideas in her head--while Diane did just the opposite. Diane says in this new website that she wasn't pining for Lew (Yes, his real name is Nick) but I have copies of the letters she sent him and her diary where she is desperate for him to come back to her. Talk about histrionic! She even went back down to Arizona to make another plea in person to get him to leave his wife. He just didn't want to have children, and as he told me later, "Ann, as soon as Diane left Chandler and I got her voice out of my head all the time, I was just grateful she was gone!" He didn't want to be with Diane.
I am baffled that Diane has convinced somebody in Europe of her innocence. She says I never interviewed her and I did--right there in the Lane County Jail. She wrote many letters to me. She now can't seen to recall all of this.
Writing this book made a tremendous impression on me, and I tried to include all the damning evidence against her that I could. I do feel that if doubters read Small Sacrifices, they will come away with the truth, and not some far-fetched bunch of lies and fantasies that Diane has told someone who wasn't there and who doesn't know the real story.
Good night for now,
Ann |
| Posted by Ann on Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 18:24 |
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| 6/8/05 |
Wednesay Morning, June 8th
I'm afraid the days have gotten away from me because I've been writing every day, and I'm making good headway on Worth More Dead. I intend to write something for this Blog every night, but it gets too late. And then, as you know, Willow, my Bernese Mountain Dog, keeps hitting my right arm with her nose and knocking it off the keyboard.She's the one who decides when it's time to quit!
We're getting more and more readers and friends on this site, and it's a pleasure to read the posts and, especially, to see how supportive you are to one another. When I don't have time to answer a question, I appreciate that lots of you do it for me.
I've had a lot of enthusiastic responses to the idea of my writing a sequel to Possession, my only novel so far, and also to my writing my autobiography. Sometimes I think my life is nothing to write about, and then I'll remember some fascinating incident, usually connected to being a true crime writer. I think I'd enjoy putting them all together in one book. And I wouldn't have to travel far to do my research, as they're all in my head. Better get them down on paper before they slide off my brain! As for Possession, I have always pondered about who the little red-haired baby would grow up to be. I need to find the answer. It's a funny thing when you write fiction. I thought I had discovered this phenomenon myself--until I hear so many other novelists say it. Once you set up your characters and know who they are, they really do take on a life of their own. Writing Possession, I was amazed at what some of my "people" did; they even talked differently than I expected them do. Some of them swore, which I don't do--well, maybe once in a while if something happens like my computer eating up several hours' work. . .
For those of you who have written that they are worried about Brad Cunningham's (Small Sacrifices" new trial, you can relax. I mentioned this several weeks earlier in my Blog, but the pages pile up so fast that we almost have a book here now. Although the Oregon Court of Appeals granted Brad a new trial in February, 2002, the Oregon Attorney General and the Washington County Distrist Attorney appealed that decision. I'm happy to say that the Oregon Supreme Court REVERSED the first decision, so Brad is NOT getting a new trial. He has come back with several other objections to things in his original 1994 trial, but the Appeals Court has declined to hear them. He has never been out of custody since 1994, and he remains in the Oregon State Prison in Salem.
Many of the killers I've written about are in the same penitentiary: Jerome Brudos, Randy Woodfield, and several from my shorter cases. Sometimes, they do get out on parole, and, sadly, a number of them have reoffended. Sadistic sociopaths don't change, even though they make ideal prisoners. Diane Downs is still in the Valley Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California.
Fairly recently, someone in Europe has started a small movement and a website saying that Diane was unjustly convicted, and that she is innocent. I don't recall the name of the website, but it is full of false information. It fails to consider the physical evidence that ties Diane to the crime of shooting her three children (Small Sacrifices) and it says that I never interviewed her in person. That isn't true. I went to the Lane County Jail the night before Diane gave birth to the baby she conceived with a virtual stranger AFTER she shot her children. I talked with her then for an hour or more, exchanged many letters with her, and sat three feet from her all during the weeks of her 1984 trial in Eugene, Oregon. I listened to hours and hours and hours of tapes of Diane jousting with the homicide detectives as she gave away secrets, which she didn't realize, and read all the police reports. Plus, I went to Chandler, Arizona, where she lived before she moved to Oregon--hoping her married lover would follow her, and I talked to many people there who knew her.. She is a very bizarre woman, now close to 50. Her children who survived--Christie and Danny--are now adults--and they have had a happy life after the Lane County prosecutor and his wife adopted them. Christie is close to thirty, married and had a baby boy this spring. Danny, like Christie, graduated from college, works in the computer industry where he is extremely talented, and is doing very well--even though his mother's bullet left him a paraplegic. I don't want to dignify the false website by debating all the points made there that allege Diane is an innocent victim--but I will if I have to.
Anyone who saw the two of us on the Oprah Show will recall how nutty Diane is and how inappropriate her comments were! She is scheduled to come up for parole consideration in about 2010. My hope is that she is past child-bearing age when she gets out.
For those of you who are looking for my books and can't find them on the shelves, it is just because they are sold out. They're all still in print, so just ask the bookstore clerk to order them for you. They will have a list of all of them in their computer. It usually only takes a week or two to get them back in stock. Or you can order them on the Internet from places like www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com or www.Booksamillion.com They will usually ship them within 24 hours. For those readers who live in the UK, France, Italy, Australia and New Zealand, or in Scandanavia, there probably aren't as many choices. The UK has the most, I think, published by Time-Warner, and France is publishing more and more from Michele La Fon. I think I spelled that correctly.
Well, I'd better get to book-writing. It's cloudy and drizzly in Seattle this week, pretty good weather for writing, but not so good for gardens.
All Best,
Ann |
| Posted by Ann on Wednesday, June 08, 2005 at 10:46 |
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