Ann Rule

Before he was arrested and convicted of the murder of his wife, David A. Brown of Garden Grove collected $835,000 in insurance payments. That was nothing, however, compared with what the author of a book about the case took home. Ann Rule's account of the 1985 crime--a lurid tale involving a teenage girl who killed her stepmother at her father's behest--and subsequent developments in the case became the best-selling "If You Really Loved Me," part of a two-book deal that paid Rule $3.

I was signing my latest crime novel at a bookstore recently when a grandmotherly woman wearing a linen suit and designer glasses came up and asked if it contained graphic violence. I assured her that although my series is sexy and edgy, it's certainly not "slasher" fare. "Oh," said the woman, clearly disappointed. "I love serial killer books. The gorier the better." She is not alone.

The writer of true crime has an advantage over the writer of crime fiction. He or she has no difficulty with conflicting facts, the illogical progression of plot or outrageous, even unbelievable, testimony as long as the reporting is accurate and objective, and the conclusions consistent with the revealed evidence, because the greatest defense against accusations of unbelievability is the truth.

Before he was arrested and convicted of the murder of his wife, David A. Brown of Garden Grove collected $835,000 in insurance payments. That was nothing, however, compared with what the author of a book about the case took home. Ann Rule's account of the 1985 crime--a lurid tale involving a teenage girl who killed her stepmother at her father's behest--and subsequent developments in the case became the best-selling "If You Really Loved Me," part of a two-book deal that paid Rule $3.

It was an item of just a few hundred words that ran in a hometown Seattle paper that autumn day in 1988. But to best-selling crime writer Ann Rule, the tale--and the accompanying photo of a pretty teen-ager named Cinnamon with long, wavy hair--were the stuff of great drama. "Watch this!" Rule scribbled on the wire service story out of Orange County, clipping it from the newspaper and tossing it in an old cardboard box that had the word "possibles" scrawled in crayon on the side.

S uperior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin's eighth-floor courtroom in downtown Santa Ana has a peculiar notoriety: Two of the nation's most sensational trials played out there with shocking, oftentimes gruesome, revelations. In 1989, McCartin sentenced Long Beach serial killer Randy Kraft to death for the mutilation murders of 16 young men.

I was signing my latest crime novel at a bookstore recently when a grandmotherly woman wearing a linen suit and designer glasses came up and asked if it contained graphic violence. I assured her that although my series is sexy and edgy, it's certainly not "slasher" fare. "Oh," said the woman, clearly disappointed. "I love serial killer books. The gorier the better." She is not alone.

If Michael Jackson is acquitted of child molestation and related charges, he'll probably return home to his whimsical Neverland ranch in Santa Barbara County. But if he is convicted of any of the 10 felony counts against him, he will probably land in the most secure prison unit in California, designed to protect famous convicts from attack by other inmates, prison officials say. Corcoran State Prison is set in the middle of America's richest cotton fields, about 50 miles south of Fresno.

The writer of true crime has an advantage over the writer of crime fiction. He or she has no difficulty with conflicting facts, the illogical progression of plot or outrageous, even unbelievable, testimony as long as the reporting is accurate and objective, and the conclusions consistent with the revealed evidence, because the greatest defense against accusations of unbelievability is the truth.

S uperior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin's eighth-floor courtroom in downtown Santa Ana has a peculiar notoriety: Two of the nation's most sensational trials played out there with shocking, oftentimes gruesome, revelations. In 1989, McCartin sentenced Long Beach serial killer Randy Kraft to death for the mutilation murders of 16 young men.

It was an item of just a few hundred words that ran in a hometown Seattle paper that autumn day in 1988. But to best-selling crime writer Ann Rule, the tale--and the accompanying photo of a pretty teen-ager named Cinnamon with long, wavy hair--were the stuff of great drama. "Watch this!" Rule scribbled on the wire service story out of Orange County, clipping it from the newspaper and tossing it in an old cardboard box that had the word "possibles" scrawled in crayon on the side.

Jack Olsen, whose well-researched nonfiction portraits of serial killers, rapists and assorted other criminals and their victims earned him a reputation as "the dean of true-crime writers," has died. He was 77. Olsen died of a heart attack Tuesday at his home on Bainbridge Island in Washington state. A former Time magazine bureau chief and senior writer for Sports Illustrated, Olsen wrote 31 books on topics ranging from bridge to boxing.