Homicidal mania

Like many people, I have a perverse relationship with my work. It’s not that I bite the hand that feeds me — though that is something writers often do — it’s more that I prefer bad news to good news. Not badly reported news, but news that reports bad things: innovative murders, strange crimes of passion, inept embezzlement attempts, fruitless trespasses. When I fan through my Sunday Times, I’m not looking for Arts & Leisure, Business, or even Sunday Styles; I’m looking for the New York Report: specifically, the shorts on the front page that measure out subway suicides and basement evidence incinerations in potent 200-word capsules. It’s the stuff of life, and now I’m stuck chasing the dragon, always wanting just a trace more police tape in my crime-scene photos, a pinch more athlete in my assaults, a splash more ignorance in my tragedy.

Only, where can one get the pure stuff, the stuff uncut by sobering stories on politics, legislation, and — downer of all downers — zoning? Dominick Dunne only writes about rich people who die. The glossies only cover Hollywood people who die. Isn’t there a more democratic vendor of bad news? Fox Television doesn’t count because Jennifer Love Hewitt dilutes all of its bad news. CyberSleuths (www.cybersleuths.com), however, has all it takes to be a leader in this growth industry. This website, which gets updated several times a day, compiles only the most gruesome stories from the headlines of America’s leading dailies. The result is an exhaustive yet current catalog of crime news.

Besides the headlines at CyberSleuths’ homepage, the site index includes a searchable archive of past stories, a crime forum for armchair detectives, a post for freelance crime writers to exhibit their work, a chat room that features Moxley Monday and Ramsey Wednesday specials, and an archive devoted entirely to the JonBenet case.

Because of its unrestricted medium, CyberSleuths is able to go into the kind of detail that the avid reader of crime news craves. The typical newspaper story leaves too many questions unanswered — mainly, the hows and the whys. But a page featuring the true-crime writing of Bill Kelly, a prolific author of books and articles on gunmen and gambling, demonstrates the dangers of too much information. Kelly has posted here his unpublished book Homicidal Mania: The Fifteen Most Horrific Murder Cases Ever to Shock America. To be fair, the author does warn visitors, “I might as well confess that I am obsessed with people who have twisted desires and rob, rape, mutilate, and kill people without any human feelings for their hapless victims — especially if the case has strong sado-sexual overtones. I don’t admire them, but I wonder what makes them tick.” Kelly’s book purports to document “the most barbarous and grotesque cases of human violence ever reported,” and I’m afraid that that’s exactly what he did. I was intrigued at first by the chapter titles — “Carl Panzram: America’s Most Monstrous Killer,” “Donald ‘Pee Wee’ Gaskins: Pee Wee’s Last Walk,” and “John Gaylen Davenport: Murder with a Stake” — but was nauseated by the stories, which include the murder of Amy Sue Seitz in Ventura and the torture of Lake Elsinore prostitutes by William Suff, a “killing genius,” according to the author.

Kelly’s gruesome stories remind readers that newspaper crime reporting is so seductive because it holds back so much. In this case, the adage that what we don’t know can’t hurt us makes perfect sense. The best feature at Cyber-Sleuths, it turns out, are its numerous clippings from city dailies. Here we can either cringe at the headlines alone or choose to read the whole story. In some instances, the headline is enough: “Richmond man shoots wife and daughter, then kills himself’ or “Judge Eyed Porn on Net.”

Other headlines at the site require a little follow up: “Carruth arrested on murder charge,” for example. Rae Carruth’s case represents the best athlete scandal since O.J. Carruth, a Carolina Panthers wide receiver, was arrested in December by the FBI in Tennessee. He was charged with first-degree murder following the death of 24-year-old Cherica Adams, who on November 16 was shot four times in her car. Mr. Carruth, the story informs us — demonstrating a propensity for graceless flight equaled only by O.J. Simpson — “was found hiding in the trunk of a car belonging to a woman friend who had registered at a motel.” “Second woman dies on French night train” is my favorite CyberSleuths headline in months. “French police,” we learn in this December BBC story, “have reassured rail passengers after a woman was found stabbed to death on a train, two months after a British student’s body was discovered by a railway line. Police in Orleans investigating the death of 20-year-old Birmingham University student Isabel Peake will be working closely with colleagues in Dijon who are investigating the murder of Corrine Caillaux on Monday.” Now that’s intrigue — exchange students, trains, Dijon!

Commander Daniel Baude of Orleans is the plainspoken investigator. “I don’t want to be fatalistic, but unfortunately, we have had two deaths in quick succession and both have happened to be on night trains.” He adds, unconvincingly, “People should not become obsessively fearful of traveling on trains.” Too late. I’m never riding a night train in France again.