I conducted more than five hundred interviews for this book over six years. Many of the interviews were face-to-face. Some were on the phone, and some were face-to-face and on the phone, via Skype. This was all in an effort to triangulate or rectangulate (or further polygonize) people’s disparate and sometimes conflicting recollections into a coherent narrative of the events of a single day thirty-plus years in the past. That meant reaching people, and often reaching them again, challenging them on details, sometimes requesting proof, almost always hassling them about minutiae. Alas, some of these people and their stories didn’t make it into what you are reading. I apologize to them, thank them for their cooperation, and cringe in fear of their online vituperation, which will be warranted.
I know there are mistakes in this book; I just don’t know what they are. Any work, however conscientious, that partially relies on people’s memories (and an often incomplete historical record) is going to get some things wrong. I believe these instances have been minimized through the help of some amazingly skillful backstops. I have had the assistance of one of the world’s greatest librarian-researchers, Julie Tate, who, in the Washington Post newsroom, is more associated with Pulitzer Prizes than Joseph Pulitzer is. And I am lucky enough to count among my closest friends the world’s funniest copy editor, Pat Myers. Pat doesn’t just find illiteracies, which are unfortunately all too common in my work, and she doesn’t just correct errors and fix grammar and syntax and word usage and such. She brings to her work an encyclopedic knowledge of wildly eclectic subject matters: say, seventeenth-century Flemish art, NFL football, the classification of goldenrod species, Judaic history, cooking with garlic, and so forth. Pat negotiated her services to me in exchange for a nice dinner. (So she’s not a great businesswoman. That’s not why I love her.)
I relied, at least initially, on hundreds of contemporaneous newspaper and TV accounts, and because of my love and respect for journalism, I will not reveal here the disturbingly high percentage of them that had serious errors of fact; the expression the first rough draft of history, commonly used to refer to journalism, should emphasize rough. Many of these pieces, however, were extraordinarily well researched and crafted, not the least of which was Steve Salerno’s excellent coverage in the Los Angeles Times of the events following the murder of Cara Knott. Among the many books I relied on for research material, two were particularly helpful: Getting to Ellen, by Ellen Krug, and Badge of Betrayal, by Joe Cantlupe and Lisa Petrillo.
I am particularly indebted to my friend and colleague David Von Drehle for his wisdom and guidance, and specifically for a profound observation of his that I flat-out stole. He won’t remember it, which is just as well.
I thank Chris Manteuffel for the chapter I did not write.
I am grateful for able research by Arlene Reidy. Celia Ampel contributed valuable reporting suggestions. At Dutton, Katie Zaborsky and Cassidy Sachs provided intelligent, sensitive editing. Also I am indebted to Rachel Manteuffel, for her Herculean efforts, mostly successful, to keep me sane and focused during the dreadfully overlong time it took me to complete this book—four years past the contracted deadline. My capable literary agent, Gail Ross, was more than essential in these tricky matters.
Speaking of four years overdue, if you are an author you know how startling it is to have a publisher with the forbearance, confidence, and sheer decency to make allowances they were not required to make. I was lucky enough to have not one but two of this rare breed of intellectual mensch: David Rosenthal, now of Houghton Mifflin, who initially purchased the book and ushered it through much of the initial writing, and John Parsley, of Dutton, who took it over seamlessly, and continued showing extraordinary patience, encouragement, and support.
And finally, there is the awkward matter of Tom Shroder. Tom is my good friend and villainous nemesis. He has been my principal editor at the Post and has edited most of my books. He has the sensitivity of a corduroy condom. (In my columns I have bestowed on him the sobriquet “Tom the Butcher.”) Here is his modus operandi: He will receive my latest chapter, which he knew was written by a man under enormous pressure, in iffy health, fighting personal demons, losing brain cells by the thousands per day, out of time and energy, sapped of will, exhausted by anxiety, defeated by life, pathetically succumbing to it all.
Tom will weigh all these things, carefully consider his human duties to me as loyal friend, and inform me that I have botched everything and need to have a rewritten chapter to him by Monday at the latest, and it had better address his problems or there will be Hell to Pay.
I absolutely hate Tom and fully intend never to talk to him again—until I need him, which will be soon, because, damn, he is the best.