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Greetings from Columbus!

Susan Tondera Brown, a friend from my hometown of North Tonawanda, New York, wrote me a while back and made a suggestion that I thought was a good one. She urged me to incorporate into my newsletter some questions I’ve been asked at author events and the responses I gave to those questions. 

For this edition of the newsletter, I’m including two such exchanges. [My responses are lightly edited for length and clarity.] 

1. Were you ever frightened to find yourself in the company of offenders who you knew had committed horrendous acts of violence against others? 

Not so much frightened as wary and, as you might expect, a little anxious. Hyper-alert, too. In many instances, the offenders I interviewed had a known history of hot, impulsive violence – so I knew to tread carefully when our discussion turned to matters that had the potential to trigger powerful negative emotions. I’m thinking of traumatic things they may have experienced during a painful childhood, and also things that happened just prior to their choice to kill their victim or victims. Over time, I gained increased confidence in my ability to successfully navigate those delicate portions of the interview. 

Another factor: many if not most of the violent offenders I evaluated viewed me as someone whose conclusions and testimony had the potential to help them down the line, especially at the sentencing phase of their trial. In all likelihood, that motivated them to be on their best behavior, or something like it. 

I’ll add one caveat: when I spent 20 face-to-face hours with the obviously very violent serial killer John Wayne Gacy, I wasn’t yet a licensed forensic psychologist. I was a graduate student, still pretty green behind the ears. Gacy wouldn’t have perceived me as someone who could help him – but he would have been aware that displaying violence toward me could damage his attorneys’ attempts to get his death sentence overturned. 

That said, I can see in retrospect that I should have been even more guarded than I was during the time I spent with Gacy. There were long stretches when I was seated right alongside him at the table in the visiting room (we were leafing through his photo albums and his obsessively kept logbook), and I can see, looking back, that things could have gone horribly awry. I positioned my feet and legs so that I could move quickly if I needed to – but I was still in a very vulnerable position. I knew it, and Gacy knew it, too. I handled things the way I did because I didn’t want to communicate to Gacy the nervousness I was feeling when he invited me to come over and join him on his side of the table. 

And finally, I think one of my strengths as a forensic interviewer was my ability to establish a genuine, human connection with nearly all the people I evaluated, even the ones who’d committed the most horrific acts imaginable – like the murder of an entire family, or the assault and murder of young children, to cite just two examples. If I couldn’t establish a rapport with such people, then there was no way I could succeed at doing what I was there to do. 

2. How were you able to make your interview subjects comfortable enough so that they were willing to talk openly with you about the most painful aspects of their lives, and about the crimes they committed? 

My approach varied, depending on the individual, and on what I knew about his or her – almost always his – background and offense-related behavior. 

One common denominator was my commitment to establishing a horizontal plane for our discussions, as opposed to a vertical one that would have featured me as the “expert.” For example, I always introduced myself as “Jeff,” not “Dr. Smalldon.” I didn’t need to assert the authority of my degree. The people I was tasked with evaluating could see from my business card that I was a board-certified forensic psychologist; I didn’t need to tell them that. 

By using my first name, I communicated – or at least tried to – my commitment to doing my best to get to know them as people, not just criminals. Also, in ways that were mostly very subtle, I tried to make clear to them my belief that at some level, we shared some things in common. I never wanted to come across as someone who judged them or regarded them as inferior to me in any way. 

I should add that not all forensic psychologists would agree with this approach. Many of my colleagues in the field of forensic psychology believe that it’s important to establish themselves as authorities and professionals – that is, to maintain a certain level of distance and decorum that separates them, at least by implication, from the people they’ve been tasked with evaluating. For me anyway, that didn’t seem like the most effective approach. 

Something else I did as a means of establishing rapport: as part of the interview outline I carried around in my head, I’d always inquire about the person’s interests, hobbies, favorite pastimes, and so on. If something came up that made it possible for me to establish a personal connection, I was fine with pursuing it – which meant departing from my interview outline for a while. 

An example comes to mind. One defendant whose criminal acts were particularly horrific told me that he was a fanatic fan of British singer/songwriter Paul Weller and his bands The Jam and The Style Council. I was a huge Weller fan myself, and I told him so. I also told him that I’d attended a concert by The Jam when I was a student in Dublin during the 1978–79 school year. He was amazed (and impressed!) that I’d seen The Jam in concert, and he couldn’t quite believe that he’d crossed paths with someone who liked Weller’s music almost as much as he did. 

From that point on, there was an easy familiarity about the way we conversed about all kinds of different subjects, including his very troubled childhood and the events that preceded his choice to murder his two young children and his former mother-in-law.

• On May 14th of next year, I’ll be appearing at an author event sponsored by Congregation Beth Tikvah in Columbus. It’s strange to be thinking about May during the front end of November, but spring will be here before we know it. Thanks to Dora Sterling for inviting me and helping to organize this event.

• On Tuesday, January 27, at 7:00, the good folks at the Andrew Carnegie Free Library outside Pittsburgh will be hosting me for an author event. I’m indebted to Library Director Walker Evans for reaching out to me and arranging the event.

• On November 4, I was the featured guest on the excellent podcast called The Murder Sheet, hosted by Áine Cane and Kevin Greenlee. Cane and Greenlee, who are married, recently published an excellent book called Shadow of the Bridge: The Delphi Murders and the Dark Side of the American Heartland. I urge you to check it out if you’re interested in well-written, deeply researched true crime.

• On November 6, I appeared at Blue Couch Bookshop on Grandview Avenue in Columbus to talk about That Beast Was Not Me, answer questions from members of the audience, and sign copies of my book. Thanks to Corinne, Emilie, and the other staff at Blue Couch for greeting and hosting me with such warmth and hospitality!

• On November 8, I was a participating author at the Local Author Fair hosted by the Fairfield County District Library in Lancaster, Ohio.

• On October 28, the Hilliard Branch of the Columbus Public Library hosted me for an author event. It was well attended, the audience members asked lots of great questions, and I signed copies of Beast to round out the evening. Thanks to Jennifer Neruda and other members of the library staff!

• On October 6, I was the featured guest on Mind Full, the podcast sponsored by the Canadian Psychological Association. Host Eric Bollman proved to be a particularly nimble and thought-provoking interviewer. I was fascinated to hear his Canadian perspective on several of the important issues that I take up in my book. If you want to check out the interview, here’s the link

• During the early part of October, I was the featured guest for the first two-hour episode of Grant Sabatier’s upcoming podcast. Grant is the owner of Clintonville Books here in Columbus.

  What a fascinating character! In addition to owning and operating one of the great indie bookstores in the Columbus area, Grant is one of the world’s foremost collectors of Kerouac- and Beat Generation–related works and artifacts.

  Recently, when he came to my house to look over my own considerable collection of Beat-related material, he arrived wearing Kerouac’s own Rolex watch (for which he said Matthew McConaughey has made him a standing offer of close to $400,000) — and toting in his satchel Kerouac’s own copy of On the Road, which he purchased directly from the Kerouac estate. Amazing to this old Beat Generation enthusiast!

  Oh, and by the way, Grant’s also the author of the international bestseller Financial Freedom, which has been translated into 15 languages.

  During this podcast episode, we discussed not only That Beast Was Not Me but my long history of involvement with various members of the Beat Generation – before they passed. I don’t yet have the link to Grant’s and my conversation, but I should have it in plenty of time to include it in my next newsletter.

   

• On October 2, I appeared for an author event at the wonderful Storyline Bookshop in Upper Arlington. After I gave a presentation about Beast, I participated in a very stimulating question-and-answer session with members of the audience, then signed copies of my book. One audience member purchased 12 copies, for me a record. She had me inscribe each one of the books to a different friend of hers. She said her plan was to give copies of the book as Christmas presents.

• On September 6, Tracy Ramey of Clintonville Books hosted me for an author event. For me, as always, the best part of the event was interacting with the book lovers who were in attendance.

I need to establish a context for my engagement with this “found” memoir, drafted by Anne Murphy before her death in October 2024. Murphy was Neal Cassady’s primary girlfriend during the last six years of his life. Cassady died in 1968.

Cassady, sometimes called the “Adonis of Denver,” is known to have been one of Jack Kerouac’s closest friends during the decade of the Fifties. He was the model for the charismatic, unruly hero of Kerouac’s most famous novel, On the Road (OTR). In OTR, the Cassady character is called Dean Moriarty. For those who have read OTR, it’s tough to forget this passage that appears on the book’s final page:

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”

When Cassady first took up with Murphy, he was still married to Carolyn Cassady — who, as it turned out, became a close friend of mine beginning with our initial exchange of letters in the mid-1980s. On one of my wife’s and my two visits to Carolyn’s flat in London, we happened to be present there at the same time as Murphy — who had eventually become friendly with Carolyn — and Murphy’s traveling companion, Al Hinkle, who was the model for the character Big Ed Dunkle in OTR. Hinkle and Neal Cassady had been friends since childhood.

The things I remember most about that visit, with the five of us crowded into Carolyn’s small flat, were Carolyn’s customary grace, Al Hinkle’s laconic nature, and the ease with which Anne Murphy, who was clad in a green warm-up suit, lowered herself to the floor and struck a sequence of yoga poses while we were all conversing. It was a thrill for me to find myself in the same room with Carolyn Cassady, Anne Murphy, and Al Hinkle — all important characters in the saga of the Beat Generation.

So, back to Murphy’s “found” memoir. It’s a rough product — but it’s no less interesting for being rough. Murphy was: as wild as Cassady; by her own admission a “nymphomaniac”; a young woman who, like so many young women before her, succumbed to the chronically unfaithful Cassady’s sexual prowess and abundant charms; a witness to and participant in the Merry Prankster scene presided over by the novelist and performance artist Ken Kesey; a druggie back when being a druggie was still considered hip; a participant in one of the infamous black masses conducted by the notorious Satanist Anton LaVey; a student of Cassady’s wild and ill-fated strategies for gambling on dog races; and someone who, like Carolyn Cassady and Al Hinkle, had known Jack Kerouac.

This book is a rollicking chronicle of Murphy’s life both before and after her path crossed with Neal Cassady’s. I found it an enjoyable, in some ways very illuminating read. Warning: If you’re put off by graphic descriptions of sex, you might want to avoid this one.

Strangely enough, Murphy had requested that her friend Carolyn Cassady look over and help edit her memoir. This was many years after my own meeting with Murphy at Carolyn’s flat in London (1995). Some of Carolyn’s handwritten observations and suggestions are preserved in the published version of Murphy’s manuscript.

My single favorite among Carolyn’s marginal annotations? Murphy had just been describing her awe at the sight of Cassady’s eight-inch-long erect phallus. In the margin, Carolyn wrote, “Did you measure it right there?” Classic.

I wanted to like this Bruce Cockburn memoir more than I did. For those unacquainted with Cockburn’s work, he’s one of the great Canadian singer-songwriters of his generation.

He released his first studio album in 1970, when I was still in high school. I was a relative latecomer to his work. My interest was sparked by the release of his eleventh recording, called Inner City Front (1981). My two favorite recordings of his are Stealing Fire (1984) and World of Wonders (1985).

The song “If I Had a Rocket Launcher,” which appeared on the former record, established Cockburn’s reputation as an angry, at times very strident commentator on events that were transpiring throughout Central America at that time, including in the Guatemalan refugee camps that were set up in Mexico following the counterinsurgency campaign of dictator Efrain Rios Montt.
Here’s a link to that controversial song.

For one thing, I found this memoir — which stretches out over more than 500 pages — overly long. By the time I reached the final third of the book, reading it had begun to feel like a bit of a slog. For another thing, despite the fact that I admire Cockburn for his qualities of authenticity and bravery, I didn’t think he emerged from these pages as a particularly likeable person. He comes across as emotionally distant, highly egocentric, a bit grandiose, sometimes distrustful to the point of paranoia — and yes, a little preachy.

Still, his is a story worth telling, and this is a well-written book. Cockburn felt it was his personal obligation to bear witness to the rampant injustices that were being perpetrated during the decade of the Eighties in such far-flung locales as Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. He’s a first-rate reporter, and one of the finest song-poets of his generation. The stories and scenes he incorporated into his songs stand as a testament to his active engagement with some of the most pressing political issues of that period.

Author Laurence Leamer is no stranger to covering NYC’s high and low social scenes during the decades of the Sixties and Seventies. He’s written about [Truman] Capote’s Women, the Kennedy Women, the Kennedy Men, and the Sons of Camelot.

With this, his most recent book, he trains his attention on Andy Warhol and the many troubled women who were drawn into his circle, only to find themselves exploited by Warhol—used as mere props in his social-climbing strategies and self-indulgent forays into the world of experimental film. Many of these women wound up addicted to the drugs that were an ever-present element of the scene Warhol presided over.

Among the women whose lives Leamer limns in this book are Baby Jane Holzer, Edie Sedgwick, the transgender actress Candy Darling, Nico (an early member of Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground), Ultra Violet, Ingrid Superstar, and Brigid Berlin.

By any barometer, it’s a colorful crew. Leamer’s hardly the first author to probe into the lives and antics of the men and women who comprised it. What stood out for me about Leamer’s rather workmanlike attempt to locate and describe the essence of the Warhol scene was his brutal depiction of Warhol’s exploitative orientation toward the succession of women who gathered around him and helped satisfy his hunger for status and fame. For the most part, he seemed unconcerned with how his relentless drive to satisfy his own needs impacted the fortunes of his “muses.”

I was particularly struck by one passage in Leamer’s book. Describing Warhol’s behavior at a party, Leamer writes of how he was “like a Roomba, constantly sweeping the floor, picking up useful scraps” as he went about trying to burnish his reputation and achieve the stardom that meant as much—or more—to him than his artistic endeavors ever did.

During the 47 years that have elapsed since 1978, the case of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple has been one of my favorite obsessions. Not only have I devoured pretty much every book about the case that I’ve managed to get my hands on, I’ve corresponded with one of the Jonestown survivors and enjoyed a pleasant lunch with a former Peoples Temple member who, along with her husband (Jones officiated at their marriage), was part of Jones’ Planning Commission (PC).

Candace Fleming is mainly known for the books she’s written for young adults and children. One of those, Murder Among Friends, chronicled the 1924 case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, young men who set out to commit “the perfect crime” when they kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks.

I enjoyed Death in the Jungle. Even though I’d read many other books about the saga of Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, the story still felt fresh in the hands of such a gifted storyteller. Fleming never condescends to her readers, and she never attempts to sell a sanitized version of this nightmarish tale.

I was struck by her thoroughness, and by her commitment to the known facts about a story that includes: the many idealistic people who bought into Jones’ vision of a utopian, agrarian community organized around socialist principles; plenty of heartbreaking accounts of children and adolescents who were swept along by Jones’ and their parents’ enthusiasm; subplots involving defectors who became disillusioned and worked hard to break Jones’ spell over their loved ones and bring them home to safety; and the tragedy of the final “white night,” when Jones and his most committed followers orchestrated the deaths of over 900 people in their jungle outpost in Guyana.

If you’re interested in the case of Peoples Temple but not necessarily motivated to devote the hours and hours (and days upon days) that would be required for a real deep dive into the massive literature documenting the Jonestown tragedy, this book is an excellent primer. It’s accurate in nearly all respects, it’s well-written, and it tells a riveting story without resorting to purple prose or melodrama. Highly recommended.

I’ll always remember my involvement in the death penalty case of Willie “Flip” Williams.

Williams was a bad actor, no doubt about that. In 1981, he’d been acquitted of one murder. Then, in the case where I was retained to act as the defense’s psychological consultant, he was found guilty of four counts of aggravated murder.

The murders had occurred in September 1991, less than two years after I became licensed for independent practice. Williams strangled two of his victims and shot all four of them in the head. He’d enlisted the help of three juveniles to carry out these drug-related assassinations. The authorities suspected Williams of having committed at least 10 murders.

Flip was nothing if not audacious. Following his arrest, he escaped through the ceiling of the county jail where he was being held. Then, while he was a fugitive, he and two other men tricked the receptionist at the Mahoning County Juvenile Justice Center, where his co-defendants were being held, into allowing them to enter the facility.

Once inside, Flip held the receptionist and a deputy sheriff hostage while he demanded to see the three juveniles. Later, he would testify that he planned to kill all three of them so that they wouldn’t be able to testify against him. Eventually, he surrendered following the intervention of one of the two attorneys who went on to represent him at trial.

After Williams was found guilty, I testified at the sentencing (or “mitigation”) phase of his trial. Ultimately, the jury decided that he should be put to death.

During my meetings with Flip, he was soft-spoken, deferential, and fully cooperative. I always remembered the response he gave when I asked him who he looked up to when he was a kid. “The mafia guys on the street corner,” he said without any hesitation. “They were the ones with the money, the cool cars, and the girls. I wanted to be like them.”

Later, after he’d been sentenced to death, Flip wrote me from his cell on death row. He told me he was doing “as well as to be expected,” given his situation. He said he’d decided to write me because he was “extremely touched by [my] time and consideration” during the mitigation phase of his trial.

He found it “strange” that I would have tried to understand his life and explain it to a jury, without any concern for whether he was “guilty or not.” He appreciated it that I and his attorneys had treated him like he was “a human being” and not some kind of monster. He felt sure that one day, his conviction would be reversed by the appellate courts.

As it turned out, the State of Ohio executed Flip on October 25, 2005. All he asked for as his pre-execution “meal” was a cup of coffee. When he was offered the opportunity to make a final statement, he said, in part: “I’m not going to waste no time talking about my lifestyle, my case, my punishment.” He told his family members he loved them, and he urged them to “stick together.” His last words to his family? “Don’t worry about me. I’m OK. This all ain’t nothing. That’s it.”

Until next time,

–Jeff

P.S. I always include a couple of song suggestions for those of you who love music as much as I do. Put on your headphones, turn the volume up to high, and settle in to enjoy two great, very different-sounding songs.

Not long ago, I took a tour through the many compilation CDs I curated as a means of preserving some of the hit – or in some cases just remarkable – songs from the Eighties and Nineties. I heard a lot of songs I hadn’t heard in a long time. One stands out as an all-time favorite of mine from that era. In 1981, LA’s The Gun Club released their first album, called Fire of Love. It included “Sex Beat,” a stone cold classic. Band leader and singer Jeffrey Lee Pierce (gone too soon) later said that he was sky-high on speed when the song was recorded. It shows. Listen here.

My second suggestion is the gorgeous and poignant “The Light at the End of the Line,” from Janis Ian’s recording of the same name. Ian was thirteen when she wrote “Society’s Child” and fifteen when she recorded it (1965). That was a mere 60 (60!) years ago. Now, at age 74, she knows she’s entering the final few chapters of a life well-lived, and she’s stopped performing. (Just last night, I saw her at a live appearance in Columbus. She’s as spunky, outspoken, and cool as ever. When she was asked to name a favorite song of hers, she named this one.) Listen here.