Alexandra Kitty joined True Murder to discuss Murder in a Sundown Town and the haunting 1968 murder of Carol Jenkins—a case that remained unsolved for decades and still raises difficult questions about racism, injustice, and the walls of silence that surrounded her death.

Listen to the episode below.

Want to go deeper into Carol Jenkins’s story?

In Murder in a Sundown Town, Alexandra Kitty examines the crime, investigation, cultural context, and decades-long search for answers in a case whose significance reaches far beyond 1968.

Get your copy of Murder in a Sundown Town from Genius Books

Who was the man behind the murders and cryptic messages? What do we actually know about him? And after decades of investigation, speculation, and competing theories, are we any closer to understanding one of America’s most infamous unidentified killers?

Dr. Mark Hewitt has spent years digging deeply into the Zodiac case, examining the crimes, the evidence, the letters, and the many questions that still surround them.

In this live Q&A, Dr. Hewitt takes questions and talks about the case, his research, and the enduring mystery of the Zodiac Killer.

Whether you’ve followed the case for years or have only recently fallen down the Zodiac rabbit hole, this is a fascinating opportunity to hear directly from an author who has devoted extensive research to the subject.

Watch the full Live Q&A below:

Want to go deeper into the Zodiac case?

Dr. Mark Hewitt’s Obsessed: The Search for the Zodiac Killer takes readers into one of the most enduring true-crime mysteries in American history.

Drawing on years of research, Hewitt examines the crimes, the investigation, and the evidence surrounding the killer who terrorized Northern California—and then seemingly disappeared.

If the Q&A leaves you wanting to know more, start with Obsessed.

Explore Obsessed: The Search for the Zodiac Killer

It’s always exciting to see the work we do at Genius Book Publishing recognized out in the world — and today I get to share one of those moments.

Genius Book Publishing was recently featured in Founders Magazine!

The article, “Genius Book Publishing Puts the Journey to Readers at the Center of Publishing,” takes a look at the philosophy behind Genius and something that has always been at the heart of what we do: Publishing isn’t simply about producing a book.

It’s about helping that book find its readers.

As someone who gets to work behind the scenes at Genius — with our books, our authors, our marketing, and all the many little pieces that happen after someone types The End — I know just how much work goes into that journey.

And I’m pretty darn proud to be part of it. ❤️

Read the Founders Magazine feature here:

Read “Genius Book Publishing Puts the Journey to Readers at the Center of Publishing”

If you’re an author wondering what happens after the manuscript is written, or simply curious about the philosophy behind Genius Book Publishing, I hope you’ll give it a read.

There’s crime fiction, and then there’s crime fiction written by someone who actually knows what happens after the yellow tape goes up.

Former detective and forensic investigator Steve Rush brings real-world investigative experience to his writing, whether he’s teaching authors how to create believable murders or putting forensic expert Ridge Warner in the middle of one.

If you like your crime fiction grounded in the details or you’re a writer determined to get those details right, Steve Rush has you covered.

Strive for Uniqueness

Life in a place one person claimed got hotter after sunset than in the middle of the sunny afternoon will doubtless never become a best-place-to live city. That city is Atlanta, Georgia. My home. It is surrounded by places to enjoy outdoor activities, but best suited for writing in an air-conditioned room, begging for winters that avoid us most years.

Here are a few important bits I’ve learned about writing: Strive for uniqueness. Write for one reader. Write a character’s story told the way you talk to a friend.

Ideas for my stories stem from a growing up in a minister’s home and tenure investigating homicides and employment in a medical examiner’s office, which led to a forensic consulting job with national travel and investigations and plethora of ideas for novels.

The first literary agent I queried asked to read my work. I thought, “Okay, this is a good start.” He rejected it. Looking back. I understand why. Rejections are a major downer when they begin to fill file folders. I edited the story based on feedback and the recognition of this subjective business. I continued to write and read while I waited on a bright-future moment to shine on me.

I enjoy crime fiction and suspense/thriller novels. I enjoy writing in this genre for the challenge it offers in adding suspense, red herrings, and unexpected twists.

I am an organic writer. I outlined my first novel and changed much of what I had written in the process. I felt it best to let creativity take over. When I reach a sticking point, I ask, What if?

Craft alone is not enough. Readers know when include incorrect facts in our stories. Along with craft, we strive for authenticity, believability, and credibility to keep readers turning pages.

Accuracy reflects credibility and enhances belief. Facts paint images we want readers to see as if everything happens in their presence. This is one reason I wrote Kill Your Characters, a nonfiction book published by Genius Books in 2022.

In crime fiction, suspense, and thrillers, tips offered in Kill Your Characters show readers how to kill, collect evidence, investigate deaths and put together a case for prosecution. Each endeavor embraces appropriate facts and validates scenes. Like Jack Webb’s character Joe Friday in the TV series Dragnet, “All we want are the facts.”

I’m all-in for offering readers an impression of reality and adhere to self-imposed standards based on my experience in environmental and forensic pathology and medicine.

Details in fiction reflect real-world situations. The major difference is the writer’s personal perspective. A story’s foundation based on personal perception and response. Personal knowledge provides the foundation for writing what you know. The best part about the advice is, it works.

Life is full of encounters and experiences useful to every writer. A unique opportunity exists to write like no one else. No writer can tell a story from a perspective unique to other writers. The water and nutrients needed to make stories grow and thrive come from each writer’s viewpoint.

These are a writer’s assets. Uniqueness comes from personal aspirations and dreams, life experiences, life lessons, insights, nature and humanity, positive and negative emotional responses involving the five senses, pain and suffering, personal loss, love, sadness, happiness, grief, empathy, passions and interests, inspiration, loneliness, fears, desires, wants, disappointments and discoveries. Sensory details rate as one of the most powerful tools a writer uses for creating emotional depth.

I give life to characters and place them in true-to-life situations and watch their reactions and responses. I create a few based on a person’s unique name. Of course, I always ask permission and portray those characters as good people.

Two unique names, Ridge and Berky, became characters in my Ridge Warner thrillers, Blood Red Deceit and After Her Deceit, also published by Genius Books. I met Ridge in a Western store in Tennessee. Berky worked in a local jewelry store. More than surface characters, Ridge became the main character while Berky became Berky Raines, owner of Eagle Fire Lodge with a secret hidden from all except a select few.

When I write, I shut off my surroundings and become a spectator in my characters’ world. I get involved to the extent I have no clue what is going on around me.

Here are my responsibilities: Hook readers with the first sentence. Lure them with promise in the first paragraph. Embrace them through the first chapter and refuse to let go through every chapter thereafter until I write those important and satisfying words, “The end.”

A finished novel is only the first step toward success and I am honored to be a part of the Genius Books family.

Here are the opening lines from my upcoming novels.

“No room existed in my heart for mercy or forgiveness.” After Her Deceit, release date in September 2026.

“The note drew Detective Mike Canyon into a deviant’s game.” The Shocking Truth, release scheduled for late 2026.

“No one expected Wanda Norkum’s killer to investigate the scene of her murder.” Deadline 4:59, scheduled for release in 2027.

“A haunting specter clung to Nicholas Marek from the moment he heard the threat.” The Threat in His Shadow, scheduled for release in 2027.

“No one proved more adept at levying shame than Kellen’s father, Rodney Koufax.” Where the Pieces Fall, scheduled for release in 2028.

I want readers to experience my characters’ highs and lows the way I did while writing their stories and hope they approve of the way I fulfilled my promises. My objective is to transform readers into fans. I’ll do my best to live up to their expectations.

Steve Rush

Ready to step inside the crime scene?

🔎 Writers: Kill Your Characters: Crime Scene Tips for Writers gives you practical forensic knowledge for creating murders, evidence, investigations, and crime scenes that hold up under scrutiny.

🩸 Thriller readers: Start with Blood Red Deceit, where forensic expert Ridge Warner is pulled into a deadly investigation involving murder, secrets, shifting loyalties, and a truth that may cost him everything.

🎯 Then continue with After Her Deceit, where the danger becomes deeply personal and Ridge faces an adversary who knows exactly how to manipulate evidence, reality—and him.

Explore Steve Rush’s books from Genius Books and discover what happens when real forensic experience meets crime fiction.

For Dave Case, Once Upon a Crime in Minneapolis is one of them. Twenty years after celebrating the publication of his first novel there, Dave returned to the bookstore this August for another signing—this time with his latest crime thriller, Up North.

Here, Dave looks back on both visits, the people who made them memorable, and why sometimes selling books isn’t even the best part of a book signing.

THANK YOU, one and all!

August 22, 2026, was a glorious day in Minneapolis, Minnesota: beautiful, sunny and warm, mildly hot, but nothing like the scalding heat of weeks past. And I had a book signing at my favorite bookstore in Minneapolis, and arguably anywhere! Why do I say that you might ask?

In 2006, when my first novel, Out of Cabrini, was published by Five Star out of Waterville, ME, we sold a lot of books. Pat and Gary, the original owners of the store, were fabulous people. My mom, dad, sister, wife (now ex), and all my kids were there, though I doubt any of my offspring were old enough to remember. Ron Ryan Sr stopped by, which was very special for me. The book was dedicated to his son, Ronnie, my academy mate, who was killed in the line of duty on August 26, 1994. I still wear a commemorative bracelet bearing his name and end of watch.

And John Sandford (Camp) stopped by.

Perhaps the single most significant result of my good fortune of being published was being able to introduce my mom, one of Sandford’s biggest fans, to her favorite author. How many of us can brag about reducing their mother to the demeanor of a giggling teenager? I can! It was awesome.

Now, in 2026, Pat and Gary are no longer the owners, Devin Abraham is, but she was on a vacation this past weekend. Jesse Chandler, a talented writer in her own right, was working at the bookstore and was an incredible host. There were two other amazing authors joining me to sign books, Julie Holmes and Betty Brandt Passick. They were very gracious and the three of us had a lot of fun.

I must shout out a special thanks to Julianne Case and Marshae Harvey; both were very helpful. And Marshae made an extra-special effort to be there. She’s a police officer and she’d worked the street the night before in a south suburban PD of Chicago and then drove all night to Minneapolis to be on hand for my signing. A part-time model, she also lent me a hand by posing for the cover of Up North, my latest book, which was the featured novel of this signing. I’m sure her pretty face helped sell more than a few copies.

From all appearances everyone had as much fun as I did. I also got to see some people I hadn’t seen in a very long time. My Minnesota buddies Rick Peterson, Layne Lodmell, both cops, and Eric Thompson, a friend from high school, stopped by. Thanks, fellas. And Melvin Carter Jr., a fellow officer of the law (retired) and an author himself, stopped by and reminded me how he supervised my SPPD 1993 recruit class’ sparring matches. Thanks, Melvin. I still remember not to drop my left when throwing an overhand right and to keep my guard up.

I was able to sell a good number of books, but more importantly, I made some new friends, and you can never have too many of those.

I can guarantee you, if Devin will have me, I’ll return for another signing when my upcoming book, Take Down, is released in November 2026.

I hope to see you there!

Until then, take care and stay safe!

Dave

Discover More from Dave Case

From the streets of Chicago to the frozen north of Minnesota, and even the aftermath of the Civil War, Dave Case brings firsthand experience, authenticity, and an unflinching eye to stories of crime, justice, violence, and consequence.

Whether you’re discovering Dave’s work for the first time or have been reading him since Out of Cabrini, there’s more waiting for you.

Explore Dave Case’s books and find your next read.

by Will Johns with Marshall Terrill

Some people grow up listening to rock history.

Will Johns grew up inside it.

His father, legendary producer and engineer Andy Johns, helped shape records by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, and some of the biggest names in rock. His mother, Paula Boyd, was part of the famous Boyd family. Pattie Boyd was his aunt. To Will, Eric Clapton was not an untouchable figure on an album cover—he was a complicated presence in Will’s childhood who would eventually teach him to fish, to fly-cast, and, in more ways than one, how to find his own way into music.

That alone would be enough material for one hell of a memoir.

But Bluesdaddy: Born Into Noise, Raised on Chaos, Saved by the Blues is about much more than the famous names.

It is about the boy standing in the middle of all of them.

Will’s childhood moved between London, Los Angeles, Ireland, and a constantly changing collection of homes and adults. There was glamour, certainly—but glamour could turn dangerous without warning. His father was frequently away. His mother could be brilliant, funny, loving, and deeply unpredictable. Other adults entered his life, sometimes offering safety and sometimes adding to the chaos.

As his aunt Pattie Boyd writes in the book’s foreword, Will saw far more of that adult world than the people around him realized.

And through it all, there was music.

Guitar cases were furniture. Amplifiers hummed in the background. Recording studios smelled like warm electronics, lacquer, old wiring, and possibility.

In a world where the rules could change without warning, music followed rules Will could understand.

Plug something in.

Turn it up.

Make a sound.

If something is broken, repair it.

If the note is wrong, play it again.

That thread runs throughout Bluesdaddy. Music isn’t simply the setting for Will’s story. It becomes the thing he can return to when almost everything else changes.

And plenty changes.

Over the course of the book, Will takes readers from a chaotic childhood into his own life as a musician: the bands that almost made it, the tours, the relationships, fatherhood, loss, financial uncertainty, broken alliances, and the strange mixture of luck, talent, persistence, and sheer stubbornness required to keep making music for a living.

Then came 2020.

Will became seriously ill with COVID. His lungs struggled. His voice—the instrument at the center of his identity—disappeared.

So naturally, he decided to make a blues album.

While still recovering, he began recording the album that would become Bluesdaddy, built around the music of artists including B.B. King and Muddy Waters and an original title track about a father who plays the blues both at work and at home.

Musicians sent in their parts while Will was still too sick to sing. Slowly, his voice returned.

And just as it did, his sixteen-year marriage ended.

Nearly dying.

Losing his voice.

Getting divorced.

Recording an album.

Learning to walk uphill again.

And then watching Bluesdaddy reach No. 1.

If this was fiction, an editor might suggest toning things down.

But perhaps the most fitting moment comes much later.

After all the uncertainty, sacrifices, lonely flights, sold guitars, missed opportunities, and years spent simply finding a way to keep playing, Will finds himself onstage with one of the architects of the music that saved him:

Buddy Guy.

Buddy points at him.

“Take a solo.”

Will does.

No showing off. No thinking about awards, careers, or everything it took to get there. Just playing.

When he finishes, Buddy Guy delivers five words:

“Now that’s what you call the blues.”

It is difficult to imagine a better ending to this particular story.

Because Bluesdaddy isn’t really about growing up adjacent to rock royalty.

It’s about what happens when the noise dies down.

What remains after the famous names leave the room, the bands break up, the relationships change, the money runs out, the body fails you, and life refuses to follow the set list?

For Will Johns, one thing keeps waiting.

The music.

As he discovers across decades of playing around the world, the blues travels remarkably well. It crosses countries, accents, backgrounds, and politics because underneath all of those differences are people doing much the same things: loving their families, losing people, struggling, laughing, sharing stories, and trying to keep going.

That may be the real story of Bluesdaddy.

Not that Will Johns was born into music.

But that, again and again, music brought him back to himself.

Bluesdaddy: Born Into Noise, Raised on Chaos, Saved by the Blues

by Will Johns with Marshall Terrill

From Genius Music Books, an imprint of Genius Book Publishing.

For readers who love the blues, rock history, music memoirs, and stories about surviving the chaos long enough to find your own sound.

True crime is often built around a mystery. Who did it? What clues were missed? How was the case finally solved? But for author Alexandra Kitty, the heart of true crime has always been somewhere else.

“To me, it was always about empathy… it was always about the people who got hurt.”

In a recent conversation with David McClam on True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People, Alexandra discusses the story at the center of her book, Murder in a Sundown Town: the 1968 murder of 21-year-old Carol Jenkins in Martinsville, Indiana.

Carol had arrived in Martinsville to sell encyclopedias door-to-door. It was her first day on the job. Before the night was over, she had been stabbed in the heart.

Her murder would remain unsolved for more than four decades.

But Alexandra’s conversation with McClam goes beyond the question of who killed Carol. It explores another, equally troubling question:

Why was Carol’s story so easy for people to overlook?

The Stories True Crime Chooses to Tell

Alexandra came to true crime first as someone fascinated by mysteries, and later as a journalist and researcher working behind the scenes in true crime television.

That experience gave her a perspective most viewers never see: how decisions are made about which cases become television episodes—and which don’t.

In the interview, Alexandra talks candidly about race, media portrayals, the structure of true crime programming, and the circumstances that can cause some victims and cases to receive attention while others disappear from public consciousness.

Carol Jenkins was a young Black woman murdered in a town where racism was not simply an abstract social issue. It was part of the danger surrounding her that night.

Her case became entangled in racism, sexism, gossip, silence, and ultimately decades of unanswered questions.

Murder in a Sundown Town brings Carol back to the center of her own story.

More Than a Cold Case

One of the most compelling parts of Alexandra’s conversation with McClam is her insistence that Carol should be remembered for more than the terrible thing that happened to her.

That distinction matters.

When true crime is at its best, the victim isn’t simply the opening scene of someone else’s mystery.

They were a person.

They had relationships, hopes, plans, personalities and futures that should have continued.

Alexandra’s work asks readers to look at Carol Jenkins that way—and to examine the social forces that allowed her murder to remain unresolved for so long.

The result is more than the reconstruction of a decades-old crime. It is an examination of whose stories receive attention, whose are forgotten, and why those choices still matter today.

Listen to the Conversation

In this episode of True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People, Alexandra and David McClam discuss Carol’s case, racism, and media portrayals, why the murder received so little attention, the dangers surrounding Martinsville at the time, and the importance of keeping Carol’s legacy alive.

Listen to “Author Alexandra Kitty: Murder in a Sundown Town” on True Crime, Authors & Extraordinary People.

Read Murder in a Sundown Town

In Murder in a Sundown Town, Alexandra Kitty takes an in-depth look at Carol Jenkins’s final hours, the investigation that followed, and the racial and gender politics surrounding a case that remained cold for four decades.

It is the story of a murder.

But more importantly, it is the story of a young woman whose life deserves to be remembered.

Discover Murder in a Sundown Town by Alexandra Kitty from Genius Books.

by James Peinkofer

More than a thousand shoppers were questioned. Witnesses remembered a mysterious woman dressed in blue. Composite sketches were drawn and distributed.

And still, no one could explain what happened to six-week-old Cynthia Ruotolo.

It was Labor Day weekend, 1956, when Cynthia disappeared from an unattended baby carriage at a Sears-Roebuck store in Hamden, Connecticut. What followed was the kind of case that consumes a community: an enormous search, relentless newspaper coverage, countless interviews, and one tantalizing lead after another that ultimately went nowhere.

At the center of it all was the mysterious “woman in blue.”

Several shoppers remembered seeing her near the carriage. Investigators wondered whether she held the key to the disappearance. Her description was circulated, her image appeared in composite drawings, and even a year later authorities were still talking about her.

But Cynthia was eventually found dead in Lake Whitney. And the woman in blue was never identified. Nearly seventy years later, true-crime author James Peinkofer returned to the case with a different question:

What if everyone had been looking in the wrong direction?

A Cold Case Hidden Inside Another Investigation

Peinkofer didn’t initially set out to write about Cynthia Ruotolo.

He discovered her case while researching another Connecticut crime—the story of Virginia Jaspers, which became his book Lilacs in the Rain: The Shocking Story of Connecticut’s Shaken-Baby Serial Killer.

Then he noticed something extraordinary. The Jaspers arrest took place in New Haven. Cynthia disappeared in Hamden, only six miles away. And both events happened during the same Labor Day weekend in 1956.

That coincidence drew Peinkofer into Cynthia’s story. What he found there was even more troubling. Cynthia was not the first Ruotolo child to die.

Years earlier, the family had lost an infant daughter, Ruth. Another child, Gary, had suffered a devastating head injury as a baby and later died. By the time Cynthia was buried in September 1956, Stephen and Eleanor Ruotolo had buried three of their children.

Suddenly, Cynthia’s disappearance was no longer an isolated tragedy. It was part of a much larger—and much darker—story.

Looking Again at the Story Everyone Thought They Knew

In The Woman in Blue, Peinkofer retraces the original investigation, drawing from contemporary accounts and the memories of people connected to the Ruotolo family and the case.

He follows the investigators who questioned shoppers and chased leads. He examines the mysterious woman witnesses believed they saw. He looks closely at Cynthia’s parents, the deaths of her siblings, and details that take on a very different significance when viewed with the understanding of criminal behavior available today.

And ultimately, Peinkofer reaches a provocative conclusion of his own: Cynthia Ruotolo may never have been the victim of a stranger kidnapping at all.

If he is right, the mysterious woman in blue, the figure who captured the attention of investigators and the public for years, may have helped send everyone searching in precisely the wrong direction.

The official mystery has endured for decades. Peinkofer believes he knows why.

More Than an Unsolved Case

For all of its investigation and disturbing questions, The Woman in Blue is also an attempt to return attention to the children whose lives became pieces of a mystery.

Ruth. Gary. Cynthia.

In his acknowledgments, Peinkofer explains that the book was written not simply to uncover crimes from long ago, but to honor their brief lives.

They are, he writes, not forgotten.

For readers fascinated by historical true crime, cold cases, flawed investigations, and the possibility that an accepted story can change when someone is willing to examine it again, The Woman in Blue offers a haunting new look at a nearly seventy-year-old mystery.

The Woman in Blue: A True Crime Investigation into the Unsolved Murder of Baby Cynthia Ruotolo by James Peinkofer is this week’s release from Genius Book Publishing.

And if you’d like to follow the investigation that first led Peinkofer to Cynthia Ruotolo’s story, read Lilacs in the Rain: The Shocking Story of Connecticut’s Shaken-Baby Serial Killer.

Some writers have always seemed destined for a life behind a keyboard.

And then there’s J. Michael Major.

By day, Michael is a dentist in the suburbs of Chicago, where he has owned his practice for more than 35 years. Away from the office, however, his imagination tends to wander into considerably darker territory.

Michael is a member of the Horror Writers Association and Mystery Writers of America, and his fiction moves easily between crime, suspense, horror, satire, and the strange places where those genres overlap.

His family, he admits, has occasionally described his stories as a little weird.

Michael is perfectly okay with that.

From a Short Story to an Award-Winning Novel

Michael’s debut crime novel, One Man’s Castle, began with a question:

Is a man a serial killer if he only kills the burglars who break into his home?

And what if one of those burglars happens to be the man who murdered his wife?

The idea originally began as a short story, but the characters refused to leave Michael alone. Encouraged by fellow writers, he eventually expanded it into a novel.

The result was One Man’s Castle, a suspense thriller about grief, justice, revenge, and the complicated line between victim and criminal.

The novel went on to win the Lovey Readers’ Choice Award for Best First Novel.

It also earned some impressive praise.

Publishers Weekly called Michael a “genuine talent,” while New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger described the book as a “compassionate, complex, thoroughly compelling story of ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances.”

And One Man’s Castle isn’t finished yet.

Genius Book Publishing plans to bring the novel back into print in 2027.

Welcome to the Gallery

Michael’s latest collection with Genius Book Publishing, Specters in the Gallery, gives readers an even broader look at just how far his imagination can travel.

The collection brings together 19 stories spanning horror, crime, satire, suspense, and speculative fiction.

A private investigator follows the trail of a murdered writer.

A struggling artist discovers that ambition can come with an unexpected price.

Ordinary people encounter situations that begin in familiar territory and gradually become something much stranger.

Some stories are unsettling. Some are darkly funny. Some venture into the surreal.

But beneath the horror and twists are very human questions about ambition, justice, regret, faith, revenge, and the choices people make when they are pushed far enough.

Gary K. Wolf, creator of Roger Rabbit, praised Michael’s ability to create compelling scenarios and then send them in directions readers never expect, calling the collection “fast-paced, fiendishly clever, dark, playful, and unsettling.”

That unpredictability is very much part of Michael’s storytelling style.

He has described himself as an outliner—even when writing short stories—but knowing where he is going doesn’t mean he wants the reader to know.

The Man Behind the Macabre

For someone who spends so much time imagining murder and horror, Michael’s life away from fiction is considerably less sinister.

After attending the University of Arizona, he graduated from Northwestern University Dental School, making him, as he puts it, a “double-Wildcat.”

Early in his career, Michael went on a blind date with a pharmacist named Eileen.

That one worked out rather well.

The two are approaching their 35th wedding anniversary and have two grown children, Derek and Colleen.

And although his family has been supportive of Michael’s macabre hobby over the years, they apparently haven’t stopped occasionally wondering exactly where some of these stories come from.

We think that might be a question best left unanswered.

What’s Next for J. Michael Major?

There’s plenty more to come.

Genius Book Publishing will reprint Michael’s award-winning One Man’s Castle in 2027, giving a new generation of readers the chance to discover Walter Buczyno and the question at the center of his story:

When the justice system has failed you, how far is too far?

In the meantime, readers who like their fiction clever, dark, unpredictable, and occasionally just a little weird can step inside Specters in the Gallery.

Just don’t expect everything in the gallery to stay where it belongs.

Discover Specters in the Gallery from J. Michael Major and Genius Book Publishing.

Their music was part of my childhood, long before I ever imagined becoming a writer…. well that’s not entirely true, listening to Paperback Writer did get me dreaming! Decades later, a line written by John Lennon would become the title of my book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.

This month, I finally made it to Liverpool.

I originally shared this story on my personal Substack, Moments of Grace, but it felt at home here too, because underneath the Beatles pilgrimage and my complete inability to behave like a normal 55-year-old woman inside John Lennon’s childhood home 😂, this is also a story about music history, creativity, dreams, and the things that shape us long before we know where they’re leading.

So come along with me to Liverpool...

Fair warning, this is a long one. 😂 But I waited about forty years to get to Liverpool, so apparently I have a lot to say. Grab a cup of tea and come along with me. ❤️

Before I even knew who the Beatles were, I knew their songs. Instead of lullabies, my father would sing “When I’m 64,” “Rocky Raccoon,” and on and on. The Beatles became the soundtrack of my life before I was old enough to understand who they even were.

I was only nine when John Lennon died, but his death rocked me. I remember sitting on our living room floor sobbing.

By seventh grade, my best friend, who I am still friends with to this day, used to laugh and tease me, saying, “Kids our age don’t like the Beatles.”

When I was thirteen, I saw Julian Lennon for the first time on MTV, singing “Valotte,” and I was… in love.

My best friend at the time was in love with Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, so naturally we made a perfectly reasonable plan… when we turned eighteen, we would move to London, find Julian and Nick, and marry them.

How we were going to afford to move to England, locate these two famous men, or convince them to fall madly in love with us were minor details we didn’t bother working out.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. 😂

But the dream of going to England never left me.

In 2010, Curt and I got married. For our honeymoon, we decided to go to Iceland, where his family is from, but I still had that itch to go to England.

I’d had a couple of opportunities to go when I was younger, but something always held me back. Once, my grandpa offered to help finance the trip, but I would have had to go alone, and I was WAY too shy and introverted for that.

Another time, a man I’d met in an online group offered to pay for my trip.

I think we can all agree I made a wise decision turning that one down. 😂

So, since we’d already be relatively close on our honeymoon, we added London, and since we were there, we might as well take the Chunnel to Paris too, right?

While in London, of course we went to Abbey Road. For the Beatles-loving little girl inside me, it was a dream come true.

But Liverpool was still a dream waiting.

Curt is every bit as big a Beatles fan as I am. His record store is named Tangerine Tree, from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Our son is named Jude. My book is titled Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, a title I truly believe was given to me by John Lennon, but THAT is another story.

Liverpool had been on our list forever, and yet somehow, after sixteen years of marriage and sixteen years of traveling somewhere new for our anniversary, we still hadn’t made it there.

Last month we had decided that next year, we’re finally going to Liverpool.

Well...

As John sang, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Because Liverpool was about to happen MUCH sooner.

We had just returned from our big trip of the year, Mexico, and absolutely were NOT planning another adventure anytime soon.

Then I read that Boy George was going to be performing as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar in London.

I’ve been a huge Boy George fan since I was about fifteen, and my mom raised me on Jesus Christ Superstar.

There was just one catch…

Boy George was performing for only three weeks. And only in London.

Curt was upstairs tucking Jude into bed when I read the article. When he came back into the room, I looked at him and said, “Uhm… apparently we’re going to England next month.”

I was only half joking, but even as I said it, my mind was already spinning.

How could I make this happen?

I fully expected Curt to tell me I was crazy. We’d JUST taken a big trip. Our bank account would absolutely disagree with this plan.

Three weeks later, we were in England. 😂

We figured we’d already planned to go the following year. We were simply going a few months early!

And then, while we were preparing for the trip, we found out Boy George had pulled out of the show. 😕

I laughed my little butt off!

Everyone asked, “So… are you not going now?”

Uhm, NO.

OF COURSE WE WERE STILL GOING.

Because somewhere along the way, this had stopped being a trip to see Boy George. This was Liverpool! A place I’d been imagining since I was a kid. And my inner child was absolutely NOT letting me back out now!

We arrived in London late, got to our hotel, crashed for the night, and caught a train to Liverpool the next morning.

I don’t think I fully understood until we arrived that this wasn’t going to feel like ordinary sightseeing. I wasn’t simply visiting places associated with a band I loved.

I was about to step inside the songs that I had been listening to my entire life.

Day One — Liverpool & The Beatles Museum

After a quick stop at the hotel to drop our bags off, we made our way to Mathew Street.

A street that I had grown up reading stories about. I’m pretty sure I was doing more jumping up and down than walking with any semblance of composure. 😂

I honestly had a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that I was really there!

Our first stop was the Beatles Museum. I figured it would be cool, but I was unprepared for the jaw-dropping three floors of Beatles history we encountered!

Everywhere I turned was something I’d seen in photographs, documentaries, or read in books, except now it wasn’t on a page or a screen, it was right there in front of me!

That dress! Seriously. I WANT THE DRESS. 😂

Day Two — The Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles Story & The Cavern

Curt and I were talking just last night about how neither of us has completely processed everything we saw and experienced.

There were so many moments when we’d look at each other with that same expression:

Are we really here? Are we really doing this?

Day Two started with the Magical Mystery Tour.

Is it a little cheesy? Yes. 😂

Did we absolutely HAVE to do it? Also yes.

And I loved every minute of it!

We drove through the Liverpool neighborhoods where John, Paul, George and Ringo grew up, passing their childhood homes and places we’d heard about in songs and stories our entire lives.

And then we went down Penny Lane.

Penny Lane.

There was the barber shop, the shelter in the middle of the roundabout. We both felt like we were suddenly inside the song, or as our guide said… living a day in the life of Paul.

And then we arrived at Strawberry Field.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” has been one of my favorite songs since childhood, and now a line from that song is the title of my own book: Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.

Standing at those famous red gates felt almost like two versions of me had suddenly met each other.

The little girl who grew up listening to John Lennon and the woman standing there decades later, with words he wrote now sitting on the cover of a book I had written myself.

That day we only stopped outside the gates. We’d be coming back the following morning to actually visit Strawberry Field, so for now we climbed back aboard the bus and continued our Magical Mystery Tour.

Next came The Beatles Story.

And once again I find myself thinking...

How do I explain this without simply saying OH MY GOD, BEATLES EVERYWHERE?! 😂

And then, of course, we had to go to the Cavern.

Because really...

How do you go to Liverpool on a Beatles pilgrimage and NOT go to the Cavern Club?

Technically, the Cavern we walked into isn’t completely the original club. The original was closed and filled in during construction work in the 1970s, and the Cavern was later rebuilt nearby using thousands of bricks recovered from the original site.

But honestly, I didn’t care.

You walk down those stairs into that dark, crowded cellar with the brick arches and music playing, and you can almost feel what that world must have been like.

This was the place where the Beatles played over and over again before the screaming crowds and stadiums. Before America. Before they became THE BEATLES.

I’d spent my whole life loving the Beatles, but Liverpool was introducing me to the boys.

John. Paul. George. Ringo.

Four young men walking these streets, playing tiny clubs, writing songs, teasing each other and dreaming about what might happen next.

They couldn’t possibly have known what was coming.

Well... maybe John did! 😂

Because if there was one thing we kept hearing throughout Liverpool, it was that John always insisted he was going to be famous.

Day Three — Strawberry Field & The National Trust Homes

“Let me take you down cause I’m going to…”

The day before, we’d only stood outside those famous red gates.

This day, we went inside.

Strawberry Field today is very different from the place John knew as a child. The children’s home itself is gone, but the grounds remain, along with a museum dedicated to its history, John’s connection to it, and the song it inspired.

John’s childhood home, Mendips, was just behind Strawberry Field, and as a boy he would climb over the wall to play there. Aunt Mimi was NOT pleased with this and was always after him to stop.

John’s response to her was essentially, They’re not going to hang me.

And suddenly a lyric I’d heard my entire life took on an entirely new meaning.

“Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real. And nothing to get hung about.”

All I could think about was that little boy climbing over the wall. Before he was John Lennon, just a mischievous kid hopping a fence to visit a place he loved, knowing full well Mimi was going to have something to say about it when he got home. 😂

And then, later that afternoon...

I walked into the house where that little boy had lived.

Mendips — John Lennon’s Childhood Home

We didn’t enter through the front door because the family rarely used it themselves. It was reserved for “company.”

Instead, we went around the side of the house and entered through the kitchen... the way John would have.

The moment I crossed the threshold, my breath caught. My eyes immediately filled with tears.

I was inside John’s house!

Even now, sitting at home writing this, I feel like I need to pinch myself.

I was standing in the rooms where John was just John.

Before the Beatles. Before Beatlemania. Before stadiums, screaming fans and photographers. Before the entire world knew his name.

This was where he ate breakfast. Where he laughed and cried. Where he got yelled at by Mimi for hopping a fence! 😂

It was also a place that held heartache and grief. His mother, Julia, was killed just outside, after leaving that very house when John was only seventeen.

I thought about that too as I stood there, the grief those walls had witnessed, and the boy who had to somehow keep growing up inside them.

I stood in his bedroom. I walked the hallway he walked. I looked through the windows he looked through.

And I kept thinking about the boy who had lived there. The boy whose music would eventually travel across an ocean and somehow become part of the soundtrack of my own life.

There are places you visit and think: Wow. This is incredible.

And then there are places you feel.

Mendips was one of those places for me.

I wish I could explain the enormity of what I felt standing inside that house.

I don’t think I can.

20 Forthlin Road — Paul McCartney’s Childhood Home

Next we went to Paul’s.

Just as it had when I entered John’s house, the emotion bubbled up and spilled over when I crossed this threshold.

Paul used to refer to Mendips as “the posh house,” but while Aunt Mimi wasn’t always thrilled about John’s friends hanging around, Paul’s dad, Jim, encouraged the boys and their music.

So they came here.

Eventually, all four Beatles walked across these floors.

And knowing that, knowing that I was now walking across them too…

This wasn’t a replica in a museum.

This was Paul’s house!

This was where teenage boys sat around with guitars and started creating songs without knowing people would still be listening to them more than sixty years later.

Standing there, I couldn’t help thinking about another Paul moment I’d had a few years earlier.

Curt and I had splurged on third-row seats to see Paul in Seattle. Before the concert, we happened to be standing on the corner when his car pulled up!

And Paul waved at us.

PAUL. WAVED. AT. US. 😂

I have video evidence of this moment, which unfortunately also means there is video evidence of me screaming, “I LOVE YOU, PAUL!” like a 16-year-old girl in the middle of Beatlemania! 😂

I wrote about that experience at the time and shared the video, so if you’d like to witness me completely lose all sense of dignity, you can see it here. 😂

Paul McCartney!

And now, just a few years later, here I was standing inside the house where he had grown up. Where many of the songs I’ve listened to my entire life were written.

Our guide told us that Paul wrote “When I’m 64” here when he was only fourteen!

“When I’m 64.”

One of the songs my father used to sing to me when I was a little girl.

That one got me.

He wrote “Michelle” in this house. My middle name is Michelle because of that song.

So learning that a song that had literally become part of my name had its beginnings inside the house I was standing in...

Yeah.

That got me too. ❤️

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take many photographs inside Paul’s house, but that’s okay. Some of my favorite things from that visit aren’t things I could have captured in a photograph anyway.

Because just when I thought the experience couldn’t become any more special, our guide gave us one final surprise.

He played us an audio message from Paul himself, a message that can only be heard while inside the house.

So there I was, inside Paul’s childhood home, after walking through rooms where John and Paul had played and written together, listening to Paul’s voice speaking to the people who had come all this way to stand where their story began.

I don’t think my brain had caught up with my heart all day.

I’m still not sure it has yet.

Day Four — The Casbah Coffee Club

Being inside John and Paul’s childhood homes was absolutely the emotional highlight of Liverpool for me, but the Casbah was a very close second.

For those who aren’t giant Beatles fans like me, The Casbah Coffee Club was created by Mona Best—“Mo”—the mother of Pete Best, who would later become the Beatles’ drummer before Ringo.

Mo decided to turn the basement of her family home into a club where teenagers could gather and listen to music. It was where the Beatles would perform together for the very first time.

They became her “house band.”

But first, she needed to get it ready.

John, Paul, George and their friends helped paint and decorate the walls, turning an ordinary basement into a club where they could play.

Long before the Beatles became THE BEATLES, this tiny basement was part of where it all began.

Most people associate the Beatles’ beginnings with the Cavern or Hamburg, and of course both played enormous roles in what they became.

But the Casbah was truly where it began.

Paul has even said, “We helped paint it and stuff. We looked upon it as our personal club.”

And their handiwork is literally still on the walls.

Stars. Dragons. Rainbows. Silhouettes.

And then there’s John…

Because apparently John Lennon could not simply help decorate a wall without also carving his name into it. 😂

He carved JOHN into the wall, Mo caught him doing it and gave him a whack and a good scolding.

Did he learn his lesson?

Nope!

After returning from Hamburg, John decided the wall needed an update.

JOHN I’M BACK. 😂

Mo caught him again, and this time she confiscated his knife.

The Casbah isn’t large. You can see that a bit from the photos, but being there is something entirely different!

Roag Best told us there were nights when they packed as many as 1,200 people into the club, literally shoulder to shoulder.

Eventually Mo had to move them to a larger stage, and even then there were times the lads were playing with their backs practically against the wall because the crowd was pressed right up against them.

Finally, she brought in garden fencing to use as “security gates.”

Standing there, I honestly couldn’t figure out HOW they fit that many human beings into that tiny basement! 😂

I tried to soak it all in, taking myself back in time…

The heat, the noise, the bodies packed together. The music bouncing off those low ceilings. John, Paul and George playing with the crowd practically on top of them.

Oh, how I would have loved to have been there!!!

Day Five — Back to London & Jesus Christ Superstar

Eventually, we had to say goodbye to Liverpool.

We still had Jesus Christ Superstar waiting for us.

Side note: the Beatles made a famous appearance at the London Palladium in 1963, which was watched by around 15 million television viewers.

So yes, even on Jesus Christ Superstar night, I managed to find a Beatles connection. 😂

Jesus Christ Superstar has its own history in my life. My mom introduced me to it when I was young, and I’ve loved it ever since.

I’ve seen several productions over the years, including one with most of the original film cast. That performance will probably always hold the number one spot in my heart.

But this one came in a very close second.

Sam Ryder absolutely took my breath away.

When he sang Gethsemane, the response was electrifying.

If you’re familiar with Jesus Christ Superstar, you know.

If you’re not, the entire show can hinge on this song.

Jesus has to be able to take you there… the fear, the anger, the pleading, the resignation, the humanity of knowing what is coming and asking whether it really has to happen.

If your Jesus can’t pull off “Gethsemane,” something is missing from the entire production.

Sam Ryder didn’t just pull it off.

He absolutely freaking NAILED it.

When he finished, the Palladium erupted.

The applause was thunderous.

And it just... kept going!

I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar enough times to have very high expectations for this show, and I don’t say this lightly, Sam Ryder was phenomenal!

Sitting there in the London Palladium, I couldn’t help thinking about how this whole trip had happened.

A few weeks earlier, I’d been sitting at home reading an article.

Boy George.

Herod.

Three weeks only.

London.

“Uhm... apparently we’re going to England next month.”

😂

And then, Boy George never even made it to the stage!

And yet because of that one article, we’d ended up having an adventure I’d dreamed about for most of my life!

And now I was sitting inside the London Palladium watching one of the best productions of Jesus Christ Superstar I’d ever seen.

All because the thing that originally brought us there... didn’t happen.

There was something wonderfully fitting about that.

Day Six — Abbey Road

We had been there before, 16 years ago, but how many times do you get a chance to visit Abbey Road?

Of course we went again!

And Now I’m Home...

Well, I’m home in body anyway.

I think my heart is still somewhere in Liverpool.

And as I’ve been writing this, I’ve realized something.

It wasn’t just 55-year-old me who took this trip.

That little girl whose father sang Beatles songs to her was there.

So was the nine-year-old sitting on the living room floor crying when John Lennon died.

And definitely the thirteen-year-old who was absolutely convinced she was moving to London and marrying Julian Lennon someday. 😂

And then there was me now, a writer who somehow ended up using John Lennon’s words for the title of her own book.

Maybe that’s why the houses affected me as much as they did.

I wasn’t thinking about John Lennon and Paul McCartney, THE BEATLES, when I stood in those rooms.

I was thinking of two kids, John and Paul, who had no idea what their lives were going to become.

Okay, John apparently thought he did. 😂

But standing in John’s bedroom, Paul’s living room, and that crazy little basement they helped paint, I kept thinking about beginnings.

About being young and having these huge dreams when you have absolutely no idea where life is actually going to take you.

I certainly didn’t.

At thirteen, I thought I was going to move to London, find Julian Lennon and marry him.

That didn’t exactly work out. 😂

But that little girl DID make it to England!

It took her about forty years longer than she planned, and Julian was nowhere to be found 😂, but she got there.

And I think that’s what I love most about all of this.

I had one idea of how that dream was supposed to happen when I was thirteen.

Life had a completely different one.

Hell, I had a completely different idea of how this trip was supposed to happen!

We booked the damn thing because I wanted to see Boy George, and he didn’t even show up. 😂

And somehow, it became so much more than the trip I’d originally planned.

Which makes it pretty hard not to come back to John one last time...

Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. ❤️

A Little Beatles Connection

If you’re wondering about the book I mentioned above, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed takes its title from “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

It’s a meditation book written especially for people who struggle with traditional visualization—including people with aphantasia and ADHD—and somehow that title feels even more special to me now that I’ve finally stood at the gates that inspired the song whose words ended up on my cover.

Available in English… Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

and now available in Spanish here… Vivir es Facil con Los Ojos Cerrados

For Dr. Mark G. Hewitt, that fascination became something much more.

Hewitt spent 11 years immersed in the Zodiac case, studying the crimes, the evidence, the letters, the suspects, and the questions that have remained unanswered for decades. In this video, he explores one of the most intriguing theories surrounding the case:

Could Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber—have been the Zodiac Killer?

Watch the video below as Hewitt lays out his case and examines the connections that led him to take the possibility seriously.

Go Deeper Into the Zodiac Case

If the video leaves you wanting to know more about Hewitt’s investigation—and the obsession that kept him searching for answers for more than a decade—his book, Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer, takes readers behind that journey.

Part true-crime investigation and part personal story, Obsessed follows Hewitt’s transformation from someone intrigued by an infamous unsolved case into a researcher determined to understand who the Zodiac was and whether the mystery could finally be solved.

Ready to go down the rabbit hole?

Get Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer

In this piece, author and longtime law enforcement professional Steve Scarborough examines the extraordinary Anthony Porter case—a story involving not one, but potentially two devastating failures of the justice system—and the case that ultimately made him question the innocence movement.

The Case That Made Me Question the Innocence Movement

By Steve Scarborough

The Anthony Porter case is a prime example of the innocence movement spinning out of control. The case uncovers what happens when overzealous activists within the innocence industry, seeking validation, manipulate the justice system.

A university professor of a journalism school and his students began investigating a death penalty case and decided that a convict who was professing his innocence was wrongfully convicted. The students investigated that case, interviewed a witness, and surmised that Porter was innocent of murdering two teenagers in a Chicago park in 1982. Porter directed the students to other witnesses who said another man, Alstory Simon, was the murderer.

A private detective friend of the professor then obtained a confession from Simon, and Porter was released and exonerated. Simon was convicted and would serve 15 years in prison before an investigation would determine, ironically, that he was innocent and wrongfully convicted.

Porter sued the state for compensation for his incarceration. After the case was reviewed much later, the materials presented by the professor and the journalism students to exonerate Porter were largely discredited. And reinterviews of the original witnesses seemed to confirm that Porter was guilty.

A wrongful conviction and a wrongful exoneration in one case.

In 1982, two people, 18-year-old Jerry Hillard and 19-year-old Marilyn Green, were in a park on the South Side of Chicago, at about 1 a.m., sitting in the bleachers that overlooked the community pool. A man seated near them stood up and shot them. Four other people were in the pool area, and they all saw some portion of the shooting. One man actually saw the shooting, and the other saw the person who shot running toward them. They all said they knew the shooter from the neighborhood.

A responding Chicago officer saw a man running from the bleachers, stopped him, and released him. All of the witnesses, including the police officer, identified Anthony Porter as the shooter. Porter was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to death.

Porter was eventually released after student journalists and their professor, David Protess, at Northwestern University, investigated the case around 1998 and decided that he was innocent. This impression was mainly due to the sightlines around the pool and doubt of the witness testimony. The University and Protess promoted the case, and the media latched onto a new narrative of a wrongful conviction.

The students interviewed Porter and believed him when he said he was innocent. They also interviewed the main witness in the case and saw doubt in his statement and then wrote a statement for him that implied he recanted his testimony. This statement was prepared by a PI working for Protess and completely reversed his court testimony. This information was brought to the media as “the only witness recanted his testimony.”

The witness was later interviewed by investigators, and he denied ever recanting; he believed Porter was guilty and merely wanted to put the whole case behind him.

The Professor and his students eventually brought forward another suspect in the case, based upon a suggestion by Porter. Porter directed them to Walter Jackson, who said Alstory Simon had told him he did the killings. Jackson’s Aunt said that she was there, in the afternoon, not morning, and described two couples in the stands. (Despite all the witnesses saying they saw only one couple, the victims, and Porter. Simon was interviewed by the PI, and the PI showed him a fake video of someone saying Simon had committed the crime. The PI had another intimidating male with him during the interview. The PI also told him about the Jacksons’ statements. Simon confessed in a video recording (Simon later said it was based upon a script the PI had prepared and that the PI had told him he would make money on movie and book deals), and that video was released to the media by Protess.

Protess told the media that Porter was “railroaded,” and that they were objective and unbiased in their investigation. (A student was later interviewed and confessed that they felt the assignment was to “find evidence that would lead to freeing this man.”) The main statement from the professor was that there was an assumption that there was only one witness and that he had recanted, and the media ran with it.

An investigation panel was formed and reviewed information about Simon’s confession, the statements from the Jacksons, the recanting of the “lone witness,” and other statements from the students. The panel decided that Porter was innocent.

Simon was arrested and obtained an attorney, and the attorney convinced him to plead guilty. It was later learned that the attorney shared offices with Protess and the PI.

In 1999, even though Simon’s mother said he was home with her that morning, Alstory Simon was convicted of the murders and given 37 years. He would eventually serve 15 years in prison.

Anthony Porter was exonerated in 1999. Upon his release from prison he told stories about being tortured by police and, in 2005, Porter filed a lawsuit against the state for compensation. The assumption seemed to be that since he was deemed innocent he should be compensated. In defending the lawsuit, the state reinterviewed the witnesses and presented their statements. The jury refused to award Porter any compensation.

A federal inquiry was eventually conducted, and all available witnesses were interviewed, including Inez Jackson. The discrepancies in her account about the genders of the people at the pool and the time of day were exposed, along with the number of shots she heard, and the fact that Inez was Simon’s ex-wife.

They also learned that Walter Jackson had been incarcerated with Porter and that Porter had convinced Jackson to get Inez to help him. Jackson said that Porter had said he was working with Professor Protess, and this would get him out of prison. Jackson later admitted that he had lied, and Inez also later admitted she had made up her story.

When the other witnesses were interviewed, none of them said they saw Simon there, but all said they saw Anthony Porter at the pool that morning, and just one other couple of young people.

In 2014, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez noted the investigation of the case was corrupted, and her office could no longer maintain the legitimacy of Simon’s conviction. Simon was released from prison in October, 2014.

The spotlight then reverted to the journalism school and Professor Protess. The professor and students also came under fire for journalistic improprieties in the Anthony McKinnery case. Prosecutors noticed some inconsistencies in the journalists’ interviews of supposed witnesses. In 2011, Professor Protess was suspended by the university for doctoring internal records.

As a matter of interest, Porter had a criminal record prior to the murders, including robbery, theft, and assault. A number of other people also came forward saying they had been robbed by Porter; one even had been robbed by him at the location of the killings.

Additionally, Porter was arrested in 2011 for stealing deodorant from a Chicago pharmacy. He pleaded guilty to retail theft and was sentenced in 2012 to one year in prison.

Steve is the author of The Innocence Machine: The Innocence System Gone Haywire, an investigative examination of the evolving innocence movement and the distinction between the evidence and the media narrative. The book explores the importance of maintaining objective evidentiary standards while pursuing justice.

Want to Dig Deeper?

If Steve Scarborough’s examination of the Anthony Porter case has you questioning how evidence, assumptions, and competing narratives can shape our understanding of a crime, continue exploring his work.

In True Crime in Real Time, Steve puts you in the detective’s seat. You’ll examine crime scenes, review evidence, question witnesses, and work through real cases as they unfold—deciding for yourself where the evidence leads.

And in The Skeptical Juror’s Handbook, Steve takes a closer look at how we evaluate evidence, recognize bias, and think critically about the stories presented to us in the courtroom and beyond.

Explore True Crime in Real Time

Explore The Skeptical Juror’s Handbook

That may be the wrong question.

Because recognizing danger isn’t necessarily about recognizing a certain kind of person. It’s about recognizing behavior. The tactics someone uses, the boundaries they test, and the moments when your instincts begin telling you something isn’t right.

That idea sits at the heart of this week’s release from Genius Book Publishing, Red Flag Ready: How to Recognize Predator Tactics, Trust Your Instincts, and Live with Confidence, Not Fear by Tye Holand.

Perhaps the most important words in that title are the last two:

Not fear.

Awareness Without Fear

There’s a difficult balance when we talk about personal safety.

Ignore potential warning signs, and we can leave ourselves vulnerable.

Focus too heavily on everything that could go wrong, and suddenly the world becomes something to fear.

Red Flag Ready offers another approach: learn to recognize predator tactics, listen to your instincts, and develop the confidence to respond when something feels wrong.

Because awareness and fear are not the same thing.

Fear can make the world feel smaller.

Awareness can help you move through it with greater confidence.

Trusting the Voice That Says Something Isn’t Right

We’ve probably all experienced it in some form. A conversation shifts. Someone pushes a little too hard. A boundary doesn’t seem to matter to them.

You can’t necessarily explain what’s bothering you, but somewhere inside, a quiet voice says:

Something isn’t right here.

It can be tempting to dismiss that feeling. We don’t want to overreact. We don’t want to seem rude. We tell ourselves we’re probably imagining things.

But Red Flag Ready asks us to take those instincts seriously.

Not as a reason to live suspiciously or fearfully, but as information worth paying attention to.

Experience Behind the Message

Author Tye Holand comes to this subject with a background that gives the message particular weight.

A retired detective and human trafficking rescue operator, Holand has spent his career in a world where recognizing dangerous behavior matters.

Now, with Red Flag Ready, he turns that experience toward a simple but powerful goal: helping others recognize predator tactics, trust their instincts, and live with greater confidence.

The message is summed up on the book’s cover:

“The best time to recognize a predator is before they recognize your vulnerability.”

That isn’t a call to be afraid of everyone you meet.

It’s a call to become more aware of what you see, what you feel, and what you’re willing to accept.

Be Aware. Trust Yourself. Keep Living.

There will always be things in life we cannot control.

But learning to recognize warning signs doesn’t have to make us more fearful of the world.

It can make us better prepared to live in it.

That distinction is what makes the premise of Red Flag Ready so compelling. The goal isn’t simply to recognize danger.

It’s to develop enough confidence in yourself that awareness becomes empowering rather than limiting.

Recognize the tactics. Trust your instincts. Live with confidence, not fear.

Red Flag Ready by Tye Holand is this week’s release from Genius Book Publishing.

Meditation, mindfulness, and the value of giving children a little space to simply be

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about meditation and children, and especially about what simple meditation and mindfulness practices could look like in schools.

My friend C Simone has seen this from inside a school setting. She has seen what it can look like when children are given small, simple practices during an ordinary school day.

Even more than that, she also experienced meditation herself as a student, at an age when life can feel loud, emotional, confusing, and full of pressure.

When C shared her experiences with me, there was so much that stayed with me.

Meditation in the Classroom

The year before C left teaching in schools to move abroad, she worked in a school that opened its doors to mindfulness projects.

One of them was called “The Big Think,” which included meditation in a class she shared with a colleague. They were the pilot class for the school.

The program aimed to help children relax and connect with themselves through meditative practices before a series of group and individual tasks associated with critical thinking and English.

C said it was fantastic for the children. They particularly enjoyed sitting on the carpet with closed eyes, listening to the chime of a triangle or a singing bowl until its echo stopped.

It went so well that a video of the project was developed to encourage other schools to take on the practice.

But this wasn’t C’s first experience with meditation in school. For that, we have to go back to when she was thirteen.

A Loud Stage of Life

When C reflects on where meditation first began for her, she says it honestly came at the right time in her life.

She was thirteen and at a stage of school where students had to make choices about which subjects they would take for their final two years before completing their GCSEs.

There were also family difficulties at the time. Some family members were no longer speaking, and as is often the case for children and teenagers when adults aren’t getting along, it affected her too.

School wasn’t exactly peaceful either.

There was a rivalry with another secondary school, where students came to attack other students. At one point, it resulted in a lockdown for students who were normally allowed to leave the school grounds at lunchtime.

As C put it, it was quite a chaotic time.

Her class had an array of characters: the quiet ones, the loud ones, the fighters, the creatives, the organizers, the leaders, the followers, and more.

There was singing and dancing. There were arguments, jealousy between friends and the usual complications of being a teenager.

And amidst all of that noise, one teacher introduced them to meditation.

The funny thing is, this wasn’t necessarily a beloved teacher.

Years later, C asked some of her old classmates what they remembered about her. Their memories included that she could be harsh, had favorites, was obsessed with Diet Coke and changed her name five times, to the point that most of them couldn’t remember which name they primarily knew her by.

Her lessons were apparently pretty boring too!

Yet beyond all of that, C remembers one thing this teacher gave them.

She opened the door to meditation.

A Moment to Just Be

One day, after the students settled into their seats, the teacher announced that she was going to do something different. They were going to meditate before each main lesson with her.

C had never done group meditation before and doesn’t remember anyone else having done it either.

Before playing soothing music, the teacher told the students to make themselves comfortable.

And I love this part, she gave them permission to choose. They could lie or sit on the floor, remain seated in their chairs, lay their heads on the table, or do whatever felt right to them, as long as they were silent.

C remembers that something changed in the room.

This class full of different personalities learned to honor each other’s space. For a moment, grudges and unsettled arguments were put down. They listened to the music and settled into the quiet together.

C remembers feeling peaceful. She felt relaxed and calm. She didn’t feel as though she was sitting in a classroom filled with rules and learning objectives.

In fact, none of them wanted the meditative moment to end, and they often asked the teacher to do it again at the end of the lesson.

All these years later, that memory is still with her.

I Remember the Pause, Too

Reading C’s reflection also brought back a memory from my own childhood here in the States.

When I was in elementary school, I remember teachers sometimes turning out the lights and having the whole class put our heads down for “rest time.”

We weren’t meditating in any traditional sense. No one called it mindfulness. No one guided us through breathing or asked us to connect with ourselves.

But looking back now, I can see that it was still a pause.

A quiet moment in the middle of the school day. A chance for the room to settle. A chance for our little bodies and minds to stop for a few minutes before moving on to the next thing.

I asked my son Jude, who just finished third grade, if they still do anything like that in school.

He told me they did in first grade, but mostly when the class was having a hard time or getting in trouble.

So in that case, it may have felt more like a time-out than a mindful practice. But even then, underneath it, wasn’t the hope still the same? To bring the room back to calm. To help the children pause. To invite a little peace.

And that is what makes me think there is so much value in bringing meditation and mindfulness into classroom settings with more care and intention.

Not as punishment, but as a simple, supportive tool they can begin to recognize as their own.

Because if a pause can help a classroom reset, imagine what might happen when children are gently taught how to find that pause inside themselves.

This article was adapted from an original post by Andrea Thorfinson, written in collaboration with writer and former educator C Simone. You can read the original post, including C’s full reflections, here… Meditation for Children, Part Two: What Happens When Children Are Given a Moment to Pause at School

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Want to Explore Meditation for Yourself?

My book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, grew from my own experience with meditation and aphantasia and from realizing just how many ways there are to meditate that don’t require visualization.

It explores simple practices using breath, sound, movement, gratitude, and more. While it was written for adults, many of the practices can also be adapted and shared with the children in your life.

Get your copy of Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed.

From an unsolved 1874 family murder to the sole survivor of a supermarket massacre, veteran journalist Bob Cyphers revisits the cases that stayed with him.

Some crime stories end with an arrest, a conviction, and an answer.

Others stay with you.

Veteran CBS reporter and true-crime author Bob Cyphers spent decades covering stories most of us only encounter in headlines. In a recent conversation on the Fireside Podcast, Bob takes listeners behind several of the haunting cases featured in his book 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest.

Among them is the 1874 Saxton family murder, a case that has remained unsolved for more than 150 years.

There’s also the bizarre mystery surrounding Ricky McCormick, whose body was discovered in a Missouri field in 1999. Investigators found two pages of coded writing in his pockets—notes so puzzling that even the FBI has been unable to decipher them.

Bob also discusses the disappearance of Gina Dawn Brooks and other cases that remain frozen in time, leaving behind unanswered questions and families still waiting for answers.

But one story had a very different ending.

The Survivor Who Helped Solve a Massacre

In 1987, two gunmen entered a National Supermarket in St. Louis and forced employees into a back room.

What followed was horrific.

Seven people were shot.

Only one survived.

Harold Meyer had been shot twice in the head, yet somehow he lived—and ultimately helped investigators identify the men responsible for the massacre.

It is one of the extraordinary stories Bob recounts in 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed, and in this interview, he shares what happened that night and the clue that helped bring the killers to justice.

Watch the Conversation

Bob joins hosts Seth Rosczewski and Rich Little on the Fireside Podcast to talk about these cases, his decades in journalism, and what it means to revisit crimes that have never truly been put to rest.

Watch the full interview below:

Read 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed

For decades, Bob Cyphers reported on murder, mystery, and crime from the front lines of television journalism.

In 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest, he returns to some of the most unforgettable cases he encountered—twenty-five mysteries that remain unsolved and one remarkable case in which a survivor helped bring the killers to justice.

If the stories in this conversation leave you wanting to know more, step inside the cases with the reporter who covered them.

Get your copy of 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest.

Four Decades of Journalism, Unsolved Crimes, and Stories That Refuse to Be Forgotten

For more than forty years, journalist and author Bob Cyphers has pursued some of America’s most significant—and unforgettable—news stories.

His career has taken him from the rescue of Baby Jessica to the unrest following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, as well as presidential visits, championship celebrations, and countless stories unfolding in communities across the country. Bob has worked in newspapers, radio, and television, spending thirty-five years as a senior editor at KMOV-TV in St. Louis.

But some stories do not end when the cameras stop rolling.

Bob’s investigation into the still-unsolved I-70 serial killings became the award-winning television series “Chasing the I-70 Serial Killer.” The series earned an Edward R. Murrow Award—one of journalism’s most prestigious honors—and helped bring national attention back to crimes that had faded from the headlines but never from the lives of the victims’ families.

That same commitment now drives Bob’s true-crime books.

With a journalist’s attention to evidence and a storyteller’s compassion for the people behind the cases, Bob revisits murders, disappearances, and unanswered mysteries that continue to haunt families and communities. His work is not about turning tragedy into entertainment. It is about preserving the victims’ stories, examining what is known, and keeping alive the possibility that someone, somewhere, may still hold the missing piece.

Today, Bob and his wife, Alison, live in Normal, Illinois, where they spend their days chasing a very different—and much happier—group: their grandchildren.

Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer

In 1992, a series of seemingly motiveless murders occurred in stores located near Interstate 70. The victims were shot in broad daylight, yet little or nothing was stolen. As investigators connected cases across Missouri, Indiana, and Kansas, the media gave the unknown gunman a name: the I-70 Serial Killer.

He has never been caught.

Decades later, advances in DNA technology inspired law-enforcement agencies from several jurisdictions to unite for another attempt at solving the crimes. Bob Cyphers and his KMOV-TV team were invited to follow the task force as investigators traveled from city to city, reexamining evidence and searching for the breakthrough that had eluded them for years.

Dead End takes readers inside that investigation, revealing evidence and details that had not previously been made public. More importantly, it ensures that the victims—and the search for justice—are not forgotten.

The task force may have closed, but the case is not over. Follow the investigation, examine the evidence, and help keep the victims’ stories in the public eye.

Order Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer here:
https://genius-books.myshopify.com/cart/47672825807127:1?channel=buy_button

25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest

Across the Midwest, families are still waiting.

They are waiting to learn what happened to a missing daughter, who murdered a mother near her own home, and why promising young lives ended without justice. Some cases have remained unsolved for decades, frozen in time while investigators and loved ones continue searching for answers.

In 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed, Bob Cyphers revisits twenty-six unforgettable crimes from Missouri, Illinois, and surrounding communities. Twenty-five remain cold. One demonstrates what can happen when persistence, evidence, and the right detail finally come together.

Drawing upon decades of journalistic experience, Bob examines the facts while never losing sight of the human beings at the center of them. These are not merely case files. They are stories of lives interrupted, families forever changed, and communities that have never stopped wondering.

Enter the heart of twenty-six haunting Midwestern cases—and discover why even a mystery frozen for decades may still have a chance to thaw.

Order 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest here:
https://genius-books.myshopify.com/cart/51615774015767:1?channel=buy_button

California: Surf, Sand & Murder

California is known for golden beaches, Hollywood dreams, palm-lined streets, and endless sunshine.

But beneath that familiar beauty lies a darker history.

In California: Surf, Sand & Murder, Bob Cyphers travels town by town through the Golden State, revisiting real murders, disappearances, serial predators, and cold cases that continue to leave families searching for answers.

The journey includes infamous crimes such as the murder of Elizabeth Short—the Black Dahlia—as well as lesser-known victims whose names and stories deserve to be remembered. From Los Angeles and Anaheim to Santa Cruz, San Diego, Bakersfield, San Francisco, and beyond, each chapter reveals another place where ordinary life was shattered by violence.

Some of these mysteries are legendary. Others have nearly disappeared from public memory. Bob brings them together not to sensationalize tragedy, but to restore attention to the lives behind the headlines—and to the possibility that time, evidence, or one person’s memory may still lead to justice.

Look beyond California’s postcard-perfect image and discover the haunting true stories still waiting beneath the surf and sand.

Order California: Surf, Sand & Murder here:
https://genius-books.myshopify.com/cart/52557059916055:1?channel=buy_button

Stories Remembered. Questions Reopened. Hope Kept Alive.

Throughout his career, Bob Cyphers has understood that journalism is not simply about reporting what happened. It is about asking what remains unanswered, remembering who was lost, and refusing to allow important stories to quietly disappear.

His books invite readers to look beyond the crime-scene tape and newspaper headlines to see the victims, families, investigators, and communities left behind.

Because every cold case was once someone’s whole world.

Explore Bob Cyphers’ true-crime collection and help keep these stories—and the search for justice—alive.

More than 150 books. 125 authors. And a wonderfully unconventional journey through the history of mystery fiction.

Mystery fiction has never been particularly good at following the rules.

For more than 150 years, writers have been reinventing the detective, turning familiar formulas upside down, devising impossible crimes, crossing genres, experimenting with form, and finding new ways to surprise readers who thought they knew exactly what a mystery was supposed to be.

That spirit of invention is at the heart of Michael Cohen’s new book, Uncommon Mysteries: A Chronicle of Unconventional Storytelling.

And, fittingly, the book itself didn’t begin in quite the usual way.

An Accidental History of Mystery Fiction

After retiring from college teaching, Cohen approached WKMS, the Public Broadcasting radio station at Murray State University, with an idea: he would record short commentaries about the mysteries he was reading.

But he wasn’t necessarily interested in choosing the classics—or even his personal favorites.

He wanted to talk about the books that caught his attention because there was something different about them.

Something exceptional.

Something odd.

Something worth talking about.

Those brief radio pieces eventually grew into dozens of commentaries. Cohen continued writing about unusual mysteries even after the radio project ended, occasionally publishing them on his blog.

Years later, when he looked back at what he had accumulated, he discovered something unexpected.

He had written about more than 150 books by 125 different authors, spanning works published from 1868 to 2022.

Without intending to, he had created something of an alternative history of mystery fiction—told through the books that stood apart from the crowd.

That became Uncommon Mysteries.

From Wilkie Collins to Louise Penny

Arranged chronologically, Uncommon Mysteries begins in the nineteenth century and travels through more than a century and a half of crime and detective fiction.

Along the way, Cohen explores works by writers including Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Anton Chekhov, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Jorge Luis Borges, Ian Rankin, Margaret Atwood, Louise Penny, and many more.

But this isn’t simply a tour of the genre’s biggest names.

That would miss the point.

Cohen is interested in the books that did something unusual—whether through their detective, their setting, their structure, their approach to the crime, or even the form of the story itself.

There are whodunits and locked-room puzzles. Hard-boiled detectives and police procedurals. Cozies and historical mysteries. Thrillers, capers, literary experiments, and stories that stubbornly refuse to fit into any category at all.

Some are classics.

Others have been largely forgotten.

Some are ingenious, some eccentric, and some imperfect but fascinating.

What connects them is that each, in its own way, challenged an expectation about what mystery fiction could be.

Continuing a Fascination with Detective Fiction

Uncommon Mysteries is Cohen’s second book with Genius Book Publishing.

His first, The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finder’s List, explored the extraordinary explosion of detective fiction that followed the success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand Magazine.

Rather than focusing only on Holmes, Cohen introduced readers to the remarkable collection of detectives who followed in his wake—including lady detectives, scientific detectives, occult investigators, rogues, rivals, imitators, and writers who deliberately tried to create detectives who were nothing like Sherlock Holmes.

With Uncommon Mysteries, Cohen widens the lens.

The result is a journey from the earliest mystery novels through the Golden Age, hard-boiled fiction, police procedurals, literary mysteries, modern crime fiction, and beyond.

It’s history—but history told through the exceptions.

The strange ones.

The experiments.

The stories that made a reader stop and think, Well, I haven’t seen that before.

For Readers Who Like Wandering Beyond the Usual Suspects

If you love mystery fiction, Uncommon Mysteries may introduce you to books and writers you’ve never encountered.

If you’ve been reading mysteries for decades, it may make you reconsider some old favorites.

And if your favorite books tend to be the ones that bend the rules a little?

You may feel particularly at home here.

Uncommon Mysteries: A Chronicle of Unconventional Storytelling by Michael Cohen is this week’s release from Genius Book Publishing.

Discover the mysteries that dared to do something different.

A quick note for mystery lovers: Cohen does his best not to reveal too much, but some mysteries simply can’t be discussed without giving away part of the solution. Those entries are clearly marked with a SPOILER ALERT—so consider yourself warned!

Uncommon Mysteries: A Curious Tour Through Noteworthy Mystery Fiction by Michael Cohen arrives tomorrow, August 14.

We can’t wait to share this wonderfully unconventional journey through more than 150 years of mystery fiction with you.

In the meantime, why not start with Michael Cohen’s first Genius Books title?

The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finder’s List explores the remarkable detectives, rivals, rogues, and innovators who emerged in the wake of Sherlock Holmes.

GET YOUR COPY OF THE GOLDEN ERA OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Perhaps you arrived here because of an unsolved murder.

Perhaps it was a forgotten moment in music history, a new journey into the world of Sherlock Holmes, a dark story that followed you long after you finished reading, or a book that invited you to see yourself differently.

Whatever brought you here, welcome.

This is Genius Unbound, the Substack publication of Genius Books—an independent publishing house with a wonderfully varied catalog and one important thread connecting it all:

Stories worth telling.

More Than One Kind of Story

It would be easy to place Genius Books into a single category.

True crime is certainly an important part of what we publish. Our catalog includes investigations of unsolved murders, missing persons, disputed deaths, historic crimes, cold cases, and the people who continue searching for answers long after public attention has moved elsewhere.

But that is only one shelf in the Genius library.

Genius also publishes books about music history, Sherlock Holmes, fiction, horror, self-discovery, personal growth, photography, memoirs, ships, and subjects that do not always fit neatly into conventional publishing categories.

You may encounter a thoughtful examination of a decades-old crime one day and a book tracing the roots of jazz the next.

You might follow Sherlock Holmes through a new mystery, enter a fictional world filled with darkness or wonder, or discover a book that encourages you to look inward and question what you believe about yourself.

The subjects change.

The curiosity behind them does not.

True Crime With a Human Center

True crime can easily become focused on the crime itself: the clues, the suspects, the theories, and the unanswered questions.

Those things matter. But so do the people.

Behind every case is a life interrupted, a family left searching, a community altered, or a question that has never been satisfactorily answered.

The strongest true crime stories are not merely about how someone died.

They are also about how that person lived, who still remembers them, and why the search for truth continues to matter.

Here on Genius Unbound, we hope to take readers deeper into those stories. We will revisit cases, introduce the authors who investigated them, and remember the people whose names deserve to be known.

Music as History, Culture, and Human Experience

Music is another significant part of the Genius catalog.

These books explore artists, musical eras, cultural movements, performances, mysteries, and moments that helped shape the sound of a generation.

Some focus on the musicians themselves. Others examine the places, people, and events surrounding the music. The catalog also includes photographic histories that preserve performers and performances as visual records of their time.

Together, these books examine music not simply as entertainment, but as history, craft, culture, memory, and human expression.

Because behind every familiar song is another story.

There are the people who created it, the world that shaped it, the listeners who carried it with them, and sometimes mysteries that have remained hidden for decades.

At Genius, those stories deserve a place on the shelf too.

The Enduring World of Sherlock Holmes

Few fictional characters have shaped mystery and detective storytelling as profoundly as Sherlock Holmes.

More than a century after his first appearance, Holmes continues to inspire new mysteries, fresh interpretations, scholarly exploration, and generations of devoted readers.

The Genius catalog includes books that continue and examine this enduring literary tradition. Some invite readers into new adventures, while others explore the character, the canon, historical context, adaptations, and the lasting influence of the world’s most famous consulting detective.

Whether you have studied Sherlock Holmes for years or have only recently stepped onto the fog-covered streets of Victorian London, there is always another clue to follow and another mystery waiting to be solved.

Fiction That Leaves an Impression

Not every Genius story claims to be true.

Our fiction shelves include dark fiction, lighter fiction, horror, psychological stories, mysteries, crime fiction, and collections of short works.

Some stories disturb.

Some entertain.

Some carry readers into unfamiliar lives or impossible situations.

Some are brief enough to read in one sitting yet sharp enough to remain in the mind much longer.

Good fiction does not have to be comfortable.

But it should make us feel something.

It can frighten us, challenge us, surprise us, make us laugh, or encourage us to see the familiar from an entirely different angle.

Books That Turn the Reader Inward

Some of the most important journeys do not lead into the past, across an ocean, or toward the answer to a mystery.

They lead inward.

Genius also publishes books centered on self-discovery, personal growth, and the questions people ask when they are trying to understand themselves and their place in the world.

These books may explore identity, purpose, creativity, awareness, healing, or the beliefs that quietly shape our lives.

They do not promise that every answer will be easy.

Instead, they invite readers to become curious about their own stories.

A good book can reveal a forgotten history, solve a mystery, or introduce us to a world we have never seen.

Sometimes, it can also help us recognize something within ourselves.

The People Behind the Books

Every published book begins long before it reaches a reader.

It begins with an idea, a question, an experience, or a subject that refuses to let the writer go.

Then come the years—or sometimes decades—of research, writing, revision, doubt, discovery, and persistence.

Behind every Genius book is an author who cared enough about a story to remain with it.

There are investigators who kept asking questions when answers were difficult to find. Historians who searched archives for details that might otherwise have disappeared. Musicians and photographers preserving the creative worlds they witnessed. Fiction writers who built entire realities from imagination. Writers who turned inward and transformed personal reflection into something that might help another person along their own path.

There are also editors, designers, proofreaders, publicists, researchers, and others helping transform a manuscript into the book a reader eventually holds.

Genius Books was founded by Steven W. Booth, an author, artist, publisher, and entrepreneur who works alongside his wife and business partner, Leya. As an author, Steven’s own work includes fiction and books centered on self-discovery and personal growth.

Together, Steven and Leya have helped build Genius into a home for a wonderfully varied collection of authors and books—from true crime and music history to Sherlock Holmes, fiction, self-discovery, and stories that do not always fit neatly into a single category.

But Genius is ultimately larger than any one person.

It is a growing community of authors, readers, researchers, storytellers, and curious minds.

Why Genius Unbound?

A book description can tell you what a book is about.

It cannot always tell you why the author needed to write it.

It cannot show you every discovery made during the research, every unexpected path the story followed, or every fascinating detail that could not fit between the covers.

That is where Genius Unbound comes in.

Here, we can go beyond the catalog.

We can introduce you to the authors behind the books.

We can share excerpts, interviews, forgotten histories, true crime cases, music stories, literary mysteries, reflections on self-discovery, publishing insights, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the work that turns an idea into a finished book.

We can return to people and events that should not be forgotten.

We can explore fictional worlds, examine enduring characters, and shine a light on books that may lead readers somewhere entirely unexpected.

And we can create a place where curious people discover stories they might never have thought to search for—but are very glad they found.

There Is Always Another Story

At Genius Books, you never quite know what you will encounter next.

A cold case that continues to trouble investigators.

A musician whose contribution was nearly lost to history.

A mystery hidden inside a familiar song.

A new adventure featuring the world’s most famous detective.

A disturbing work of fiction.

A book that invites you to look more closely at your own life.

A story that has waited years for someone to tell it.

That variety is not an accident.

Curiosity rarely stays confined to one subject, and neither do the best readers.

So whether you came for the true crime, the music, Sherlock Holmes, fiction, self-discovery, or simply the possibility of discovering something unexpected, we are glad you found us.

Welcome to Genius Unbound.

The next story is waiting.

Explore Genius Books

Visit the Genius Books website to browse the complete catalog, discover new releases, and explore books devoted to true crime, music history, Sherlock Holmes, fiction, self-discovery, and more.

Browse the Genius Books catalog

Join Us on Genius Unbound

Subscribe to Genius Unbound for author introductions, true crime stories, book excerpts, music history, Sherlock Holmes features, self-discovery, behind-the-scenes stories, and a closer look at the people and ideas behind Genius Books.

Find your next read at Genius Book Publishing

And tell us in the comments:

What brought you here—and what kinds of stories would you most like us to explore?

Her brutal death captured the nation’s attention, inspired countless theories, and produced more than 150 suspects. Yet nearly eight decades later, the identity of her killer remains unknown.

Read this haunting chapter from California: Surf, Sand & Murder and step beyond the palm trees and movie premieres into one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved mysteries.

LOS ANGELES

“.... All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. I’ve been for a walk, on a winter’s day. I’d be safe and warm If I was in L.A….”

Even the FBI has given up on solving the case of “The Black Dahlia.”

“The murderer has never been found, and given how much time has passed, probably never will be,” says their website.

There was no shortage of suspects in Elizabeth’s murder, as more than 150 of them emerged for one of the most popular ladies in Tinseltown. She was a 22 year old aspiring actress. She had spent the day with Robert “Red” Manley, married man, in San Diego on January 9, 1947. Back in Los Angeles, she had dinner with a sister who was visiting from Boston, and then she disappeared, her beaten nude body discovered a week later, in a vacant lot near Leimert Park, home of famed singers Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald, on the city’s southside.

Her body had been cut in half, drained of blood, and scrubbed clean. And then there was her face: Her mouth was cut from its corners to her ears, in surgical precision, leaving a “Glasgow smile,” a signature wound that had become legendary in Scotland. And her body was placed, perfectly, in plain sight, for everyone to see. Autopsy reports say she had only been dead for about 10 hours. From where her body lay you could look up and see the giant Hollywood sign hanging over the city.

Ten days after the murder, the case took a bizarre twist, as the banner headline in the Los Angeles Examiner screamed “Dahlia Killer Mails Contents of Missing Purse to Examiner!”

The newspaper had received a manilla envelope that contained Short’s birth certificate, photographs, business cards, various names written on pieces of paper, and an address book. To make matters more bizarre, everything in the envelope had been cleaned with gasoline, just as Short’s body had been cleaned. Police contacted every name in the address book, including some 75 men, all of whom claimed they never had any type of relationship with Short.

Police then began looking at suspects with medical knowledge, perhaps butchers. The FBI interviewed students at the University of Southern California Medical School, which was close to the homicide scene. Eventually, some 150 suspects came and went and the case went cold.

Police early on focused on a man named Leslie Dillon. He was a bellhop and a former mortician’s assistant, knew details about the case, and had ties to someone who knew Short. Famed gangster Bugsy Siegel was a suspect for a time. A homicide detective would later write a book and claim his father was the killer. And now, some 70 years later, a retired detective who worked on the case has come forward and named a suspect: a surgeon whose estranged wife lived just a block away from the crime scene. Over the years, hundreds of people have confessed to the killing. Police do not believe any of them.

Time magazine listed the case as one of the most infamous unsolved cases in history. It remains one of the oldest and most famous in Hollywood, and in 2006, it hit the big screen, The Black Dahlia directed by Brian DePalma and starring Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank.

Continue exploring California’s darkest true-crime stories in California: Surf, Sand & Murder. Get your copy today.

From paratrooper and police chief to award-winning storyteller

Some writers imagine danger. David Dean spent much of his life encountering it firsthand.

Before becoming an accomplished author of crime, suspense, supernatural fiction, and historical thrillers, David served as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division and spent twenty-five years in law enforcement, rising from patrolman to Chief of Police. Those experiences gave him an intimate understanding of human nature, the consequences of split-second decisions, and the unsettling truth that danger often hides in seemingly ordinary places.

Yet David’s love of storytelling began long before he wore either uniform.

Growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood in Columbus, Georgia, he found an escape from the world around him through books. A third-grade teacher introduced his class to stories such as Black Beauty and The Secret Garden, planting the seed for a lifelong love of reading. He later devoured the works of Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Flannery O’Connor, and Graham Greene.

His path to publication, however, was anything but direct.

David left home at sixteen and spent the next decade pursuing acting in Atlanta, New York City, and Los Angeles. He appeared in regional theater, Off-Off Broadway productions, and a small number of television and film roles before realizing that acting was not where he belonged. Writing would eventually offer him something acting could not: the freedom to practice his craft without waiting for someone else’s permission.

The assignment that changed everything

David did not seriously begin writing until 1989, while attending a night class during his police career.

For his final assignment in an art appreciation course, he was required to create something of artistic merit. Following the familiar advice to “write what you know,” he wrote a short story about a police officer pursuing an increasingly violent burglar.

The story earned an A-minus. More importantly, his professor gave him a simple piece of advice:

Submit it to a publisher.

David did.

In 1990, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine published “The See-Through Man,” beginning a relationship that would continue for decades.

Since then, David’s short fiction has appeared regularly in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and in anthologies including The Best American Mystery Stories. His work has earned a Derringer Award and four Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Readers Awards, while other stories have been finalists for the Shamus, Barry, and Edgar Awards. His story “The Duelist” was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2020.

Stories shaped by a remarkable life

It is easy to see how David’s varied experiences have found their way into his fiction.

His years in law enforcement lend realism and insight to his crime stories. His military service and time in West Germany provide a convincing foundation for Cold War intrigue. His early fascination with Poe, Bradbury, and Lovecraft can be felt in his darker tales of terror and the supernatural.

Across novels and short-story collections, David writes about people confronted by danger, misunderstanding, betrayal, violence, and the consequences of choices they cannot take back. His stories may begin in quiet neighborhoods, family homes, small towns, or familiar workplaces—but beneath those ordinary surfaces, something troubling is often waiting.

His work moves easily between police procedurals, psychological suspense, supernatural horror, historical thrillers, and tales of children who may be endangered, dangerous, or both. Whatever the setting, readers can expect carefully drawn characters, escalating tension, dark humor, and stories that rarely travel in the direction they first appear to be heading.

Finding a home with Genius Books

David’s relationship with Genius Book Publishing began with The Thirteenth Child.

After numerous submissions, he had decided to self-publish the novel and contacted Genius for editing and e-book preparation. Instead, publisher Steven Booth called and asked whether David would consider allowing Genius to publish it.

Fortunately for readers, he said yes.

That novel became the beginning of a growing body of work with Genius Books—one that now includes full-length novels and several themed collections drawn from David’s decades of acclaimed short fiction.

Explore David Dean’s books

David Dean’s titles available through Genius Books include:

• Tomorrow’s Dead and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense

• The Wisdom of Serpents and Other Stories of Tragic Misunderstandings

• Her Terrible Beauty and Other Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

• Shadow Lane and Other Tales of Dangerous Children

• The Thirteenth Child

• The Purple Robe

• The German Informant

Whether you prefer crime and suspense, Cold War espionage, supernatural terror, or short stories with a sharp and unexpected turn, David’s collection offers plenty of dark territory to explore.

Meet David Dean through the unforgettable characters, mysteries, and dangerous worlds he has created. Explore all of his available titles at Genius Books.

Explore David Dean’s Books