Showing posts with label Gregg's Posts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gregg's Posts. Show all posts

A Quickie with Gregg Olsen

April 2, 2008


By Michelle Gray with Special Guest, Gregg Olsen


Gregg Olsen is a masterful storyteller with an acerbic wit and a wickedly evil and twisted imagination. And that has never been more apparent than in his newest novel, A Cold Dark Place. Darkly atmospheric and vividly detailed, A Cold Dark Place is a multi-layered tale of love, murder, obsession and the family ties that bind. Taking serial killers and the girls who love them to a whole new dimension, this sinister and suspense filled thriller draws the reader in and holds them by the throat until well past the last turn of the page. Warning: you’ll never look at those fast-food ketchup packets the same way again.

To celebrate the release of this, his second novel, a bunch of us have asked Gregg to drop by our little corner of blog heaven and participate in a progressive interview. Gregg will be dropping in on several of his friends today and answering a question on each of their blogs. Each blog will contain a link to the next blog with the next question. Follow the links until you reach the end and then just like at the bottom of a box of Cracker Jack, you might just find a Little Orphan Annie secret decoder ring.

Gregg was gracious enough to agree to answer whatever questions we wanted to throw at him, even the personal ones. Now, when Gregg Olsen opens a door only a fool is going to say, “No, thanks.” So baby, I got personal. Okay, not overly personal, but damn it, I know there’s a whole lot of Gregg Olsen fans out there who’ve noticed the same thing I have. Someone’s got a tattoo… And it’s proudly displayed on the inside back cover of A Cold Dark Place. Now, since we all know that true crime readers are primarily women, all I have to say is this: "girls, we like tattoos, don’t we?" Well, some tattoos. If it was on his face then I guess he’d be this guy…

M.G.: So, Gregg, what’s the story behind your now infamous tattoo, and do you have any others? Enquiring minds want to know…

G.O.: I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for awhile when I went to Slave to the Needle in Seattle a few years back. I toyed with having something done to commemorate the men who’d died in the Sunshine Mine fire (the subject of my book THE DEEP DARK), but nothing seemed appropriate. I didn’t have the biceps for a pick and shovel motif, to say the least. I decided on a simple band with the names of my wife and daughters woven into it.

People say tattoos and names are a bad idea, but hey, I know that I’ll never have any more kids and I know that I’d never marry again if Claudia dumped me. There are spaces for grandchildren, too. I might add them in. That is, if I’m so lucky.
Now, if you thought my question wasn’t quite what you might have expected, then wait until you see what Gregg and Brian Lindenmuth are talking about at Brian’s place. Something about spaceships, conspiracies… and gregg salad sandwiches?

Gregg Olsen is a New York Times best selling author. His newest thriller, A Cold Dark Place, is available online at Barnes & Nobel, Amazon and Borders. Gregg can also be found blogging at Crime Rant, a true crime web site he runs with partner M. William Phelps.

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The Pedophiles’ Husbands Club -- Florida’s Lafavorite Teacher

October 21, 2007

By Gregg Olsen

[Note: Today's Washington Post is running an AP story (Sexual Misconduct Plagues US Schools) that's well worth the read...and it reminded us over at Crime Rant about some of our favorite teachers of the last few years, Debi Lafave, Mary Kay Letourneau, Pam Rogers, the list goes on and on.]

Losing your wife is bad enough. Losing her to a teenaged boy is insult on injury.

Christopher Turner, Steve Letourneau, and Owen Lafave – all three men have found themselves as the husbands of teachers-turned-convicted pedophiles. Each has endured the gossipy jokes and unwanted media scrutiny that accompanies such scandals: He must be gay, a zero in bed, a louse of man to have his woman go off with a teenager.

With the exception of Steve Letourneau, the men-behind-the-woman-behind-the-boy have been pretty silent. The baggage handler who lost his wife to Vili Fualaau in the famed Seattle case was a fixture on talk shows trying to tell his side of what happened while complaining that the focus was on his ex-wife and her boy-lover.

The husband Crime Rant has wondered about most is Owen Lafave. His wife, Debi, then 25, was a reading teacher at Greco Middle School in sunny Temple Terrace, Florida. In 2004, she was arrested and charged (ultimately settled with a plea bargain) for having sexual relations with a 14-year-old. They did it in the classroom, her home, the backseat of her car while a cousin, 15, drove the vehicle. She did all of this, and more, behind her unsuspecting husband’s back.

Debi and Owen recently divorced. Signing the papers to sell their house last year was the last time they saw each other. If he ever sees her again, it will be too soon.

Crime Rant talked with Owen Lafave recently about Debi, the scandal, and the book that he’s written, GORGEOUS DISASTER. A commercial lender, now 28, Lafave is a thoughtful man who’s finally come to terms with what happened.

“Writing the book was somewhat of a healing process,” he says. “It answered a lot of questions about what happened in our relationship, why Debi did what she did, and frankly, I wanted those answers.”

Oddly, it was viewing a show about another teacher sex abuse case in which those answers began to crystallize. On an episode of MSNBC’s Headliners and Legends, Lafave saw disturbing parallels between incidents in his wife’s life story and Mary Kay Letourneau’s.

“There was alleged sexual abuse in both cases, feelings of being abandoned by their fathers – literally and emotionally – and the tragic death of a sibling. Mary Kay lost a brother in a drowning; Debi lost a sister to a drunk driving accident. The parallels were astounding.”
And there was more.

“Of course, both used bipolar disorder as a defense,” he says, still upset at the use of a mental illness as a cover for actions that he says are just not acceptable. “There are plenty of people who are bipolar who don’t sleep with kids.”

Learning more about Letourneau’s life helped him better understand the path Debi might have been on, too.

“I was kind of stunned,” Lafave says, “I was captivated by Mary Kay’s story and saw it as a blueprint in some ways to Debi’s own.”

Lafave has taken the high road on Larry King and a few other shows he’s done. He’s refused to throw Debi under a bus – she’s done a good job of that on her own. But his book will detail for the first time her battle with anorexia (and all the deceit that accompanied her illness), her molestation by the family friend (she talked about it often), her heartfelt (though apparently phony) plea for understanding when she finally told him about the sex with the boy.

Crime Rant asked him, as a man on the frontlines of the story, why did he think these women are doing this? Pamela? Mary Kay? His wife?

Lafave admits he’s no psychologist, but he is a keen observer and he was able to take a long hard look at his wife and the other women who prey on little boys.

“This is about power,” he told me. “Sure, these women are beautiful and use that beauty to control men, but deep down I wonder how much of their self-worth, self-esteem, is hampered by being told how gorgeous they are. I wonder if you are constantly told how attractive you are when growing up if you have some kind of fear as you get older that you might lose that. You lose your beauty, you lose your power.”

These women, at least as Owen Lafave sees it, become involved with boys so they can still hold that power over them. They put their wants and desires over what’s right and wrong and find the victim that will fill all their needs.

Lafave wonders how much society has lost in this deluge of female teachers who can’t stop themselves.

“It really is a travesty to our school system,” he says. “Our educators are in a position of authority. In a way, they are acting as stand-ins for parents. What these women have done is sad, dangerous, and unforgivable.”

Debi remains defiant, unable to accept full accountability for her actions. She now foists all of it off to BP, an excuse that her ex-husband finds insulting to those who truly suffer from mental illness.

“I don’t think she’s taken responsibility for anything. She’s blamed the illness. She’s blamed the media. She apologized to me after it came out, but she never really seemed to grasp what she was apologizing for. She gave me every reason in the book to justify what she did.”

Even so, he doesn’t see Debi as a true predator. But he does think she has a compulsion that she might not be able to allay.

“I still worry a little about her,” he says. “I realize now that everyone tells her that it’s wrong, but if she’s put into a similar situation she could end up going with her urges. She’s not going to seek it, but if the opportunity comes up, it could happen again.”

Given where Debi Beasley (she’s taken back her maiden name) is today, just maybe she’s erring on the side of caution.

Florida’s most scandalous teacher is a waitress in a cafe in Sun City – a retirement community – where the average age is closer to sixty than sixteen.

[Note: For more info about Gregg Olsen’s book about Mary Kay Letourneau see his site: http://www.greggolsen.com/

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Diane Downs Dad: She Didn’t Do It

August 21, 2007

By Gregg Olsen

Most people know the story from Ann Rule’s bestseller, Small Sacrifices, (and the Farrah Fawcett TV miniseries based on the book), but Wesley Frederickson, 76, knows it from another angle.

He’s Diane Downs's father.

Diane was a rural mail carrier in Springfield, Oregon, and was thrust in to the national spotlight when she was charged with shooting her three children more than two decades ago. Cheryl Downs died, Danny was paralyzed and Christie, seriously wounded. Diane blamed the shooting on a shaggy haired stranger. The police didn't agree. After the murder trial, prosecutor Fred Hugi adopted the children.

Like a lot of family members of those who are convicted of serious crimes, Wes Frederickson has created a web site he hopes will prove his daughter is innocent.

Wes and I chatted by email over the weekend. Among the more interesting bits here is the revelation that the daughter Diane had in jail has contacted the Fredericksons, his desire to see his grandchildren (whom he feels were brainwashed against him and their mother) and how he doubts she'll ever get out of prison despite the fact that she's been before the parole board already.

Gregg Olsen: The elephant in the room when it comes to you and your daughter are the allegations of sexual molestation. They’ve followed you since Ann Rule’s Small Sacrifices. What’s the truth?

Wes Frederickson: Ann knew she shouldn't publish some things. She's pretty smart and a pretty good writer if you like fiction. The funny thing about fiction is you can weave in some truth and make the whole thing sound authentic. Diane has publicly -- on a Portland Oregon TV station -- denied the allegations and the false charges and I haven't changed my answer from day one.

Gregg Olsen: You've devoted your life to presenting the facts that speak to Diane's innocence. You wrote the book, Best Kept Secrets, and now the web site. Why are you doing this?

Wes Frederickson: Actually, I didn't write the book, Best Kept Secrets. I formed a corporation to publish the book because I figured no publishing company would touch it because of the negative publicity Diane received. The whole purpose in my doing this is to help educate people to what really happened. Diane was not the shooter of the gun that hurt her family. Our new web site has only a little of what you feel proves she didn’t shoot her children.

Gregg Olsen: What is the single most compelling piece of evidence that supports Diane’s innocence?

Wes Frederickson: Putting a web site together was a totally new experience for me. I am a rank amateur and have made a lot of mistakes in putting it together and that has concerned me. The most compelling evidence that supports Diane's innocence is threefold, but if you take the spray they put on her hands that night, it should have shown she held a gun. Gun shot residue should have been all over her clothing and in her hair. It wasn't. She should have had blood spatter on her clothes and in her hair. She didn't. There's more, but that's a start.

Gregg Olsen: Do you think the public’s perception of her had any role in convicting her?

Wes Frederickson: After the shooting, when they had taken the children and made them wards of the State, Diane came to live with us. She went to the grocery store to make a purchase. While in the store, a small boy ran to tell his mother: "Mom, that lady who shot her kids in the store." I tried to get a change of venue for Diane, but all to no avail. Public perception was everything.

Gregg Olsen: Why did you move to Texas?

Wes Frederickson: We live in Texas by choice. The State sued us for publishing the book. They won the first round after which the assistant to the Attorney General advised me he was going to pierce the corporate armor of Danmark Publishing and bankrupt the corporation and then bankrupt us. We won the second round under appeal and were awarded damages of $250.00. That made a down payment on the attorney fees. I checked the laws in Texas and decided to fight the State of Oregon from here.

Gregg Olsen: If you could speak to your grandchildren, what would you tell them about their mother that they might not know?

Wes Frederickson: First things first. Thank you for recognizing that Christie and Danny are our grandchildren. Fred Hugi sent us a letter saying they were not our grandchildren. My wife and I love our grandchildren and their mother loves them, too. That's what I would tell them.

Gregg Olsen: Why do you think Christie and Danny haven't contacted you?

Wes Frederickson: Christie and Danny lived in a controlled environment. Like Christie said when she was talking to Dena Reinhardt, "Joanne [Hugi] had a cow after the Oprah Winfrey show when Christie said she wasn't sure her mom shot her." More therapy.

Gregg Olsen: Who is Dena?

Wes Frederickson: Dena Reinhardt is a woman who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dena called Christie when she was going to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. On the first phone call she did not record the conversation, but found Christie willing to talk. She called Christie again and recorded the conversation. One of the things Christie said on that tape was, "I really don't know who shot me. I just said what they wanted me to say." There's much more that went on behind the scenes the world hasn't heard about yet, but they can wait till the time is right.

Gregg Olsen: What did you and Diane think of Small Sacrifices by Ann Rule?

Wes Frederickson: A well written book of fiction.

Gregg Olsen: Forgive me if I have this wrong, but I remember that Diane had a baby after the trial. Did you ever get to meet her? Does she know that she had grandparents out here?

Wes Frederickson: Diane had a baby while she was in jail in Eugene. She named it Amy, but that's not the name she goes by. She lives in Oregon and has given me my first known great-grandson.

Gregg Olsen: So you’re in touch with her?

Wes Frederickson: "Amy" just contacted me in the last few months. I still haven't met her personally yet, but expect to soon. Until then she will just have to remain "Amy” We expect to see our granddaughter for the first time very soon.

Gregg Olsen: How often do you see your daughter?

Wes Frederickson: We make it a point to try and visit Diane every year. Whenever the mood hits us we visit with her.

Gregg Olsen: So how is Diane holding up these days?

Wes Frederickson: Not good in my opinion. Diane keeps hoping that someone will come and rescue her, but I'm concerned she doesn't realize the brutality of the system. She recently received a letter from the parole board asking to fill out forms for parole. She did that, but once again reaffirmed that she did not shoot her children, which will just keep her in prison.

[Be sure to pop over to http://www.dianedowns.com/ and see what Wes has to share, then come back here or over to Crime Rant and weigh in].

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You’re Stupid and So is Your Book

July 20, 2007

Full disclosure here. I’ve had had my share of bad reviews. People despise me. Hate my books. Wish my mother had miscarried.

They hate my covers. Think I can’t spell. Can’t write. Don’t know a pronoun from a proctologist. Every now and then, they post on the internet book review sites just what they think about me. Sometimes I wince and wonder if they think I ran over their cat.

But I love cats and would never do that.

But this isn’t about me.

Today, I’m going into the literary dustbin we call Amazon.com. You know the place where every man is a reviewer and every writer should have known better? I’m all for discussion, reviews, book clubs, and other means of communicating a book’s shortcomings and value. But anonymous reviews sometimes smack of one-upmanship and envy. Who knows, I could be wrong. There could even be an altruistic reason for their typed ire.

Here are some of my favorite vigilante reviews of my ICB pals:

First up, M. William Phelps, who goes by the name of Matt and not William, for some strange reason. Here’s what Amy Vrescak of PA said about his book about Diane O’Dell, a murderous mom in Sleep in Heavenly Peace:

This story had a lot of potential to make for a fascinating read, but the author completely blows it. The writing is confusing and boring. I didn't feel that the author was very successful in getting into Odell's state of mind. Much of the writing was merely a report of others' findings without any additional insight or discussion.

OMG. Much of the writing is reporting others’ findings? That’s what journalism is, dear. Reporting. If you want discussion, Amy, start a scrap booking group, for goodness sake. Seriously, I’m of the opinion that it is nearly impossible to “get into the mind” of another human being.

Do you know what I’m thinking now? Of course not. You never really can KNOW.

Lisa, town unknown, has this to say about Aphrodite Jones concerning her book on the Michael Peterson murder case. She headlined it: Unreliable, ill-conceived, and badly written.

Another ghoulish ambulance chaser capitalizing on the grief of this poor family. It wouldn't be so bad if the book contained facts, if it really tried to investigate what happened the night of Kathleen Peterson's death. But it doesn't. Jones has decided that Peterson is a sociopath and only includes information that she believes proves it. She doesn't mention ever speaking to Michael Peterson, or to any of the people who knew him well. She has only spoken to those who had a reason to dislike him and believe him guilty. She contradicts herself so frequently that I have to believe she didn't understand what she was talking about. The details she highlights from Peterson's life also contradict so frequently with the other book in this vein, Diane Fanning's "Written in Blood" that I scarcely know who to believe. They both show such obvious bias that I tend not to believe either of them. I hope Michael Peterson is guilty, and deserves the treatment he's been given. It's just too horrible to think of an innocent man being persecuted in this shabby way.

A decade or so ago, Aphrodite Jones was the hottest young writer in True Crime. She’s beautiful, smart, and has a great flair for the dramatic. She’s been a lot of things (author, lecturer and producer) but I can assure you, she’s never treated anyone shabbily. I have no clue if her book is trash, but I doubt it. Sometimes I doubt whether or not the reviewer READ the book, or if they were just part of the story and were mad they were shoved off the pages.

And then there’s this little winner posted by some coward named “A Reader.” Mr. or Ms. Reader takes on Dennis McDougal’s masterpiece In the Best of Families. The headline: Blah, Blah, Blah.

The review:
This book is AWFUL. Don't waste your time or money. The writer is horrible, he's all over the place, never keeping to the story, going off on adventures and subjects that have ZERO to do with the story AND is EXTREMELY BORING. I stopped reading 1/2 way through the book - maybe when I got nothing else to read on a rainy day I'll finish it, or should I say, skip through the remainder as I did thus far. Horrible, horrible writing - don't publish anymore books by this author!
Mr. Reader will be sorry to know that McDougal’s writing career has been just fine, thank you. Apparently, publishers are not so picky. And thank goodness they didn't rely on you for marketing advice.

If there’s a better writer on this blog, I’d be hard-pressed to name him or her. Carlton Stowers has never written a dog (and most of us can cop to at least one). K. O’Brien of New Haven, CT, hated his Edgar Award-winning book, Careless Whispers.

I found this book generally interminable and sometimes incomprehensible, with poor pacing and organization, and it’s hero-worship of the detective became downright annoying. I read it many years ago, long before there was a public outcry over the convictions (and execution), but even then felt that the case was a reach. My advice is to avoid it, particularly since even the factual basis for the book is questionable at this stage.

It is hard to argue against one point made by KO. The facts changed. But what didn’t change was the riveting tale created by Stowers in Careless Whispers. The pacing was perfection.

I’d never even heard of Steven Long before coming to ICB. But from what I’ve been reading about him, his work, I doubt that this review is anything but a diatribe born of a too tight girdle. The reviewer is Kristen and she lives in Washington, DC. The book is Out of Control.

So is the review.

Very, very disappointing. I actually was happy to finish. I would have preferred some character background as most true crime books extensively cover the character. This had NONE! Horrible, scattered writing. I was having to flip back pages to see who was who. Very disappointing, especially since I was truly intrigued by this story. Pass on this book...

Now, now, if you haven’t posted a negative review, haven’t you at least clicked on the “was this review helpful” button? I have. Have I ever posted a negative review just to hurt someone? Nope.

You know maybe I should? Maybe I’ll feel better if I turn into a vigilante reviewer warning reviewers of books they should avoid. No I figured it out. They don’t want me dead. They’re trying to save the world from bad writing. Maybe save some trees.

Al Gore, are you listening? Bad reviews mean fewer books. Fewer books mean more trees.

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