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Happy Spring!

It’s hard to believe, but St. Patrick’s Day is now in the rearview mirror. For me anyway, probably because of the fabulous year I spent – almost five decades ago! — as a student at Trinity College in Dublin, the day of celebration and remembrance always prompts me to revisit events from the decade of the ‘70s.

This year, a surprise discovery brought a new sharpness to some of my musings about the past.

The discovery came in the form of an incoming news flash about Charles Manson, the first mass or serial killer to whom I turned my attention — almost a decade before the idea of becoming a forensic psychologist entered my mind for the first time.

Manson’s been dead for eight years now, but he continues to cast a long shadow, even from the grave.

Recently, a close friend said of my decades-long pattern of nibbling around the edges of the story surrounding the crime spree that gave rise to Manson’s infamy, “It never ends! For you anyway, the Manson saga just seems to go on and on.”

She wasn’t wrong.

When I first opened a Facebook account, some seven or eight years ago, I instantly became aware of an active on-line community of people who collect “murderabilia,” a catch-all phrase that stands for artifacts associated with, or that call to mind, the crimes committed by notorious serial and mass killers.

I joined several Facebook groups whose members collect such things. Mostly, I wanted a close vantage point from which to familiarize myself with murderabilia culture. But I also had an interest in someday testing the market value of the serial and mass killer letters, drawings, and paintings that I’ve amassed over a period spanning five decades.

In due time, I became casually acquainted with several of the more serious murderabilia collectors. One of them reached out to me in late-February of this year.

More specifically, he messaged me a photograph showing my name and address on a piece of white paper. The address – 220 Sheetz Street, Room H, West Lafayette, Indiana – came to me as a blast from the past. It called to mind the years 1975-76, when I was at work on my masters degree in English at Purdue. I immediately recognized the handwriting; it belonged to Charles Manson.

“Is this you?” asked the collector who’d messaged me the photograph. “Indeed it is,” I wrote back. “That was my address back in the mid-70s, when I was studying at Purdue. I can tell it’s Manson’s handwriting – but where did you get this?”

He explained that not long before, he’d managed to get his hands on the Bible that belonged to Manson during his many years in prison. Manson had apparently tucked inside the Bible a sheet of paper on which he’d written a number of addresses, mine included. Among the other addresses were those belonging to Sandra Good (check out chapter 3 of my book!) and Patricia “Katie” Krenwinkle, a co-defendant of his in one of the most notorious murder trials of the 20th century.

So, ever since being made privy to the startling news that my name and former address had occupied a small space inside Charles Manson’s Bible, apparently for the better part of five decades, I’ve been struggling to make sense of what it all means.

One thing the news did was trigger a memory of something Dennis Patrick O’Donnell, Manson’s neighbor and close buddy at Folsom State Prison, had written to me back in the mid-70s. Shortly after we’d become acquainted, O’Donnell shared with me this news: “Charlie is walking in Christ’s big footsteps.”

I remember thinking, “He is?”

Regardless of where Manson walked, and regardless of whose authority he decided to recognize after his death sentence was converted to life in prison without parole, it appears that for a very long time, he owned a Bible containing my name and address.

I flashed back to the way John Wayne Gacy had ended one of his many letters to me. “Always your buddy, John,” he wrote. And now this.

Did Charles Manson try to position himself as an intermediary between me and God?

• Recently, I was the featured guest on an episode of the podcast Murder Unscripted. The interview was recorded in mid-January, and the episode actually dropped on January 28. Interested readers can watch the You Tube version here. It’s also been posted on my own You Tube channel

• During the last week in January, hosts D.P. Lyle and Dr. Katherine Ramsland interviewed me for an episode of the podcast Criminal Mischief. We traded memories of our visits to sites associated with the Manson case, discussed my decades-long investigation into the minds and motivations of some of the most infamous killers of our time, and talked about how my dad’s work as an FBI agent affected me during my years growing up. The episode dropped several weeks ago. You can watch the You Tube version of it here –or else catch it on my You Tube channel.

• On May 17, I’ll be one of the participating authors at the Newark Book Fest in Newark, Ohio. I’m told by authors who attended the event last year that it was extremely well-organized (by Steph Loughman) and very well-attended — so I’m looking forward to it.

• On June 10, I’ll be talking about my book at the Wheeling Public Library in Wheeling, West Virginia. I’m especially happy about this invitation because the venue where I’ll be appearing is just a short drive from the prison in Moundsville where Charles Manson’s mother did time as a very young woman. Manson visited her there. It’s the place where he imbibed the atmosphere of a state prison for the very first time in his life.

• In February, I was notified of my selection as one of the featured authors for the two-day Columbus Book Festival, which will be held in and outside the main Columbus library on July 12 and 13. The featured author designation means that I’ll be given the opportunity to speak about my book and sign copies afterward. It also means that I’ll be slotted in as a participant in one or more panels, each involving a number of other featured authors. It promises to be a fun and very busy event.

Here are some books I’ve enjoyed during the past 4-6 weeks. If you’re so inclined, I hope you’ll check them out.

Robert Greenfield’s biography of Sam Shepard certainly isn’t the first. It won’t be the last either– in part because there’s plenty of ground that hasn’t yet been covered.

Until his death from ALS in 2017, Sam Shepard was a true American maverick. He wrote plays, screenplays, short stories, essays, and memoirs. He was an actor, too, a good one. And he drummed for The Holy Modal Rounders.

He won ten Obie Awards, the most by any writer or director. In 1979, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Buried Child. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff.

He and actor Jessica Lange were married for more than twenty-five years. Early during his years in New York City, he was a close friend and lover of the groundbreaking singer, poet, and performance artist Patti Smith. In her eulogy for Shepard, published in the New Yorker, Smith recalled how the two of them sometimes stayed up all night, talking until dawn “like two beat-up tenor saxophones, exchanging riffs.”

On a personal note, I have particularly vivid memories of seeing Shepard in the visually stunning Terrence Malick movie, Days of Heaven. That movie came out in 1978, some forty years before Shepard’s death.

What I hope for in future biographies is a more probing, more in-depth psychological portrait of Shepard: his complex, haunted relationship with his alcoholic and often absent father; his itinerant lifestyle; his lifetime of womanizing; his uneasy relationship with his own mortality; his fascination with outsiders of every kind; his devotion to the work of Samuel Beckett; his intense fear of flying (even though he played Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff); and his alcoholism.

Some of those subjects and themes warrant more attention than Greenfield gave them. Even so, the book’s an informative and entertaining read. I recommend it to anyone interested in the life and loves and adventures of one of the most fascinating American artists of the last half century.

The Mailman is Andrew Welsh-Huggins’ second novel since The Mysterious Press added him to its legendary roster. Previously, Welsh-Huggins, who calls Columbus home, published eight novels in the popular Andy Hayes mystery/suspense series, as well as a book called No Winners Here Tonight that’s widely regarded as the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio, with an imprint of the Ohio University Press. In addition, he served as editor of the short story collection, Columbus Noir. In his spare time, he carved out a career as the legal-affairs reporter for the Associated Press in Columbus.

Already highly respected for his work as an author, journalist and editor, Welsh-Huggins has upped his game since signing with The Mysterious Press. His first MP novel, The End of the Road (2023), landed on many years-end best fiction lists. Now, in 2025, comes The Mailman, which is the first book in a planned series featuring delivery-man-extraordinaire Mercury Carter.

The Mailman is a fast-paced thriller that features a vividly drawn cast of memorable thugs and victims. Mercury (“Merc”) arrives just in time to find himself at center stage in an extraordinary sequence of events where the challenges confronting him include dispatching bad guys when they need to begotten rid of; exercising a level of resourcefulness, poise, and ingenuity that might well cause others to brand him The King of Nonchalance; demonstrating a master’s skill at connecting more dots than this reader was sometimes able to count; defying the odds over and over again; and steering the ship containing his rag-tag band of accomplices into a safe harbor where they’re finally able to catch their breath, take stock of everything that’s happened (a lot!), and gather their wits.

The book’s a rollercoaster of ups and downs, and all of them occur within a remarkably compressed timeframe. If you’re up for a rollicking ride and a whole slew of secrets that remain secrets right up until the very end, I strongly recommend that you reach for The Mailman. You won’t regret it.

I’ve had this book on my “to read” list for a very long time. It was published almost a decade ago, in 2016. When I first caught sight of the book jacket, featuring a photograph that shows two very young men — Bob Dylan and John Sebastian — seated on a motorcycle at an intersection in a rural New York town called Woodstock, I knew I’d get around to it eventually.

As it turns out, the book might very well contain more details than many readers will want about Woodstock and its inhabitants, beginning in the mid-60s and continuing for the next several decades. Still, it’s a fascinating account. Hoskyns exhaustively chronicles the comings and goings of such luminaries as Dylan, the Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Butterfield, Todd Rundgren, and a whole host of other artists and characters who made their marks on the popular music scene of the 60s and 70s.

Looming large over the Woodstock scene was the magisterial presence of Albert Grossman, who made his name by managing the early careers of Dylan, as well as Peter, Paul, and Mary. By turns mercurial, narcissistic, greedy, persuasive, generous, withholding, and hyper-controlling, Grossman was a force to be reckoned with – and that’s an understatement. He’s at the very center of Hoskyns’ account.

One other thing: If you’re interested in learning more about what happened to Dylan in the aftermath of the legendary 1966 “motorcycle incident” that set in motion his period of voluntary self-exile, Small Town Talk is as good a place to start as any.

No one who knows me will be the least bit surprised to learn that I ordered A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage immediately upon its publication in the United States. With a title like that, it was as irresistible to me as catnip is to a cat. (BTW: I stored my copy of the book in places where I didn’t think my wife would look.)

At first, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Once I got underway, I realized that what I’d gotten myself into was a hers-then-his-then hers (and so on) account of a married couple whose primary bonds are their shared devotion to their daughter — and their shared desire for a life of murder.

A particular kind of murder. They’re united in their determination to rid the world of as many abusers of women as they possibly can.

Sound familiar? The book clearly takes its central premise from the TV series Dexter. The female half of this murderous duo explains toward the end of the book, “We weren’t, you know…bad serial killers. No chasing after innocents. Just administering justice to those who deserve it.”

Through a series of plot twists and reversals, the pair eventually becomes a trio, and by book’s end the trio is envisioning a new campaign of murder that they’re certain the authorities will be unable to solve. The prospect delights them.

Much of the book is intended as black comedy, obviously tongue-in-cheek. There’s not much subtle about it. However, along the way readers will pick up some useful information about the psychological makeup of people who choose to embark on a career of killing.

It’s true that many repeat killers rationalize their actions by deciding that when all’s said and done, they’ll land on the side of goodness and righteousness. Haze, the wife in Asia Mackay’s story, tells herself that she’s “providing a service” to mankind when she kills her victims. Also, and it’s another key to how serial killer’s act and think, she knows how important it is that she be able to maintain the persona of a chameleon: “I could be anything, and I excelled at it. I was the master of adapting to what I needed to be.”

Repeat killers tend to experience themselves as being at a remove from most of the people around them. Often, this tendency begins in childhood. The husband in Mackay’s story, who goes by the name Fox, says at one point, “Even though everything about me should’ve fit in, I’d always known I was different….I tried many paths, but nothing felt right….I was a lost boy without a calling, and then I was a lost man without a home.”

And then there’s the killer’s sense of existing on some sort of elevated plane, apart from “ordinary” people. At one point, Fox thinks to himself, “Even I could not have predicted how naturally I would take to killing, from that first time to the many that followed. It made me feel special….There was no doubt in my mind that eliminating evil was what I was put on this earth to do.”

And so on. In a book that is fundamentally intended as a satire, it’s still possible to learn a few things about how real serial killers think and act.

On one of my earliest death penalty cases, something happened that served for me as a lesson in how the distribution of sympathy needn’t occur in accordance with the rules of a zero sum game. The man who commits a vicious crime might still elicit a measure of sympathy when the layers of his developmental history are uncovered and communicated to members of a jury. And the surviving casualties of his crime are also deserving of sympathy — for all the obvious reasons.

The case I’m referring to involved the highly publicized execution-style murder of a teenage couple behind the restaurant where they worked. Almost as soon as the police arrested the man they suspected of committing the double homicide, the defendant’s attorneys contacted me and requested that I serve in the role as their psychological consultant.

As I prepared to begin work on the case, I felt secure in the knowledge that if I worked hard enough, I’d eventually uncover things about the defendant’s life history that would help me when I faced the challenge of having to educate members of the jury about developmental factors that may have played an important role in shaping the personality and outlook of the person who’d committed such a horrible crime.

Then, several days later, I received an unexpected phone call from a woman I knew well because she’d been the director of public relations when two women were murdered in a department I had administrative responsibility for during my tenure as a young administrator at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus. By the time of her call, she’d left the hospital and established her own business as a private consultant.

Just days before she contacted me, she’d been hired to arrange crisis counseling for the restaurant employees who’d been close friends with the two individuals who’d been murdered.

She asked me if I could help. I explained that I couldn’t because of the obvious conflict of interest. She was disappointed, but she understood.

I’ve never forgotten how I felt that day. First of all, humbled. But I also realized that if I hadn’t already been consulting on one “side” of this death penalty case, I could very well have ended up on the other side, as someone trying to help the surviving victims of the crime. I told myself there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to distribute my sympathy –broadly defined — to everyone in a case such as this one.

It was an important lesson, one I never forgot.

Don’t forget: baseball season is about to begin. Go Tigers! Thank you for your support.

See you soon.

–Jeff

P.S. In previous newsletters, I’ve always added a couple of song recommendations, intended for readers who love music as much as I do.

The other day, a consultant I’m working with challenged me to come up with a playlist of songs that had “played on repeat” and formed a kind of soundtrack to my life. I took the challenge seriously, and I no doubt came up with way more songs than she could ever use.

Here are two that I chose because I view them as such important parts of the soundtrack I’ve been hearing in my head for years: Townes Van Zandt’s “Flyin’ Shoes” and the Byrds’ “Wasn’t Born to Follow.”

What songs would be on your “played on repeat” playlist? If you care to share them, shoot me an email.