Author's Note

 

 

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Readers may want to know a thing or two about how I researched and wrote this book. Events in some of the early sections had already been extensively reported long ago. Recasting facts using literary techniques—imagination excepted—is an illuminating process central to this work (I don’t think a writer’s sentences and “the facts” are really two different things at all), but it would be wrong to pass off somebody else’s investigative work as my own. So I’ve tried to be clear when I lean heavily on another person’s research. This is notable with the series of Sacramento Bee articles on the Williams brothers’ case, most of them by Sam Stanton and Gary Delsohn, as well as with an essay the pair wrote for Salon. It’s also true for an ABC News 20/20 broadcast and a Frontline documentary, both on the murder of Billy Jack Gaither. My brief account of the Schmitz/Amedure case relies entirely on very widespread newspaper reporting at the time and on the former Court TV’s coverage of subsequent trials. I had issues of interpretation, and even fact, with all of these reports (and many more), but it wouldn’t be right not to disclose that the major news-gathering work had been done before I came along. That said, I wouldn’t have included the stories unless I had something new and substantial to add beyond my words and sentences.

More recent events didn’t get nearly as much attention. Though I still read everything I could, I had to collect most of the information myself. Except for places in Northern California and Idaho connected with the Williams case, I’ve visited every significant locale mentioned in the book. Every quotation and every other detail is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Whenever I’ve speculated at obscure moments in the narrative, I’ve been clear about it.

Occasionally, when a sense of inner life seemed necessary, if only for the sake of basic understanding, I also allowed myself some clearly identified speculation. Otherwise, whenever someone “thinks” or “feels,” it’s because they later stated that they did, usually to me.

Sources are listed extensively, by name when possible, in the acknowledgments at the end of the book. Anyone curious to see a small sample of the material I used in my research can go to americanhonorkillings.com, or to my website, davidmcconnell.com, where I have posted, along with commentary, a dossier of photographs, links, and documents to accompany each chapter.