Kerrie Droban: Running with the Devil

By Kerrie Droban (Guest blogger)

KERRIE M. DROBAN heads a private law firm, specializing in criminal defense and capital litigation. She is an award-winning poet as well as author of the novels In the Company of Darkness and The Watchman’s Circle, which won the Daphne duMaurier Award for suspense writing. Her true crime book, Running with the Devil: The True Story of ATF’s Infiltration of the Arizona Hell’s Angels, is available in hardcover and will be out in paperback this fall. Critics have compared Kerrie’s writing to Patricia Cornwell and Tami Hoag and have described her novels as "riveting, compelling and shocking" tales filled with "heart-stopping action" and at times "terrifying characters" who “will live in our thoughts for a long time to come." She has participated in over 30 felony jury trials and authored over 50 legal briefs, one of which, State v. Ring was heard by the U. S. Supreme Court and resulted in the remand of over 180 death penalty cases nationwide.

At times we all wish the truth was fiction. It might be more palatable. After all, imagination is a kind of frontier without borders or restrictions; with true evil, at least we hope there is definition, limit and some moral barometer. And if there isn’t . . . we search for explanation, excuse, and even justification. And if we don’t find any . . . then we look for motivation, for clues in a person’s childhood, for that toxic cocktail that transformed them into a monster, for brutal figures who influenced them, used them, abused them and ultimately erased what made them human. And if we don’t find those factors . . . then we’re left with the untenable hypothesis that there really are natural born killers.

Why else would a Phoenix woman who had been “happily” married for eight years to a devoted and wealthy arts dealer decide one day to throw his body into a freezer, defrost him, dice him up and put his remains into a large garbage bag? Or, a father conclude that it was okay to keep his daughter hostage in a makeshift cellar for twenty-four years so that she could gratify his sexual urges and bear his children? Or, a woman slice up her boyfriend to drink his blood in a perverse vampire love ritual?

Every day as I stand in the courtroom and defend against this kind of pathology I search for a way to mitigate my clients’ horrific choices. The challenge is to find a kernel of good, to convey to the judge and the jury that something about them is worth salvaging because our knee-jerk reaction is to warehouse them in cells or exterminate them like rats. My real life experiences have fueled my desire to write true crime because I don’t want refuge or respite from the real stories or the real macabre. I want to understand. Writing is a kind of catharsis for me, a way to process savage behavior with a goal toward inspiring change in the social institutions—schools, families, prisons—who house and guide these sad individuals.

My goal, in many ways, is to do what the operatives did in my book, Running with the Devil -- to journey through the darkness in order to understand the criminal mind, its violence, rage and purpose. The undercover operatives lived for eighteen months as outlaw motorcyclists in order to infiltrate another vicious gang, the Hell’s Angels. They lived a triple life as outlaw bikers, ATF agents and family men. And the stress nearly destroyed them.

Their goal was to cripple the Hell's Angels, chill the club’s criminal exploits and enlighten the public about the gang’s activities. In the end few of the criminal charges against the bikers held and the ATF operatives were rewarded with fear of reprisal from the Hell’s Angels without government protection or, sadly at times, even government interest. But the operatives’ efforts were not entirely in vain. The Hell’s Angels’ public persona was tarnished and the club’s reign as lord of the flies has diminished. But what may have died as a news story lives on in Running with the Devil. With both of their secret lives exposed—the operatives’ sacrifice and bravery and the gang’s savagery and pathology—the public cannot forget what happened or why it happened.

That’s the real goal for me in writing true crime, to preserve a moment in time and to hopefully learn from the experience so that we can effect change through information and knowledge.

Visit Kerrie’s web site at www.kerriedroban.com.

Real Life Crime

By Lonnie Cruse

During the recent Superman Celebration a reader stopped by my signing table to chat. Since my books are set in the real Metropolis, IL, readers often want to know if they feature true crime and real people rather than fictional. The characters are fictional, but I confess, I often get my ideas from news reports. I do change things around. No use inviting lawsuits, is there? But trust me, people, authors can NOT create anything as wild as what happens in real life. Nobody would believe us if we did.

As the reader and I chatted, he asked me about real crime in Metropolis, IL, and I had to stop and think. This is a small town where pretty much everyone knows everyone else. Sneeze at one end of town and in seconds someone will bless you from the other end. Have an affair? Not unless you want it known to all and sundry within minutes. But sure we have crime here. Not like a big city, but we have our share. The Planet newspaper lists arrests, trials, etc, and as a writer, I read the paper for information and inspiration. Sometimes the arrest notes are humorous, (as in how could anyone be that dumb?) and sometimes they make me want to cry, if the crime is against a child, a woman unable to defend herself against a stronger man, or a defenseless animal.

While we don't have all the perks of a larger city, like malls, theaters, freeways for faster speeds, we also don't have as high a crime rate. Like I said, everyone knows everyone else, so the possibility of being "ratted out" is extremely high here. And we live very near the Bible belt. Say what you will about organized religion, the truth of the matter is, those who are taught to obey the Golden Rule generally tend to live it. Not everyone, of course. I'm not that much of an ostrich. But a satifying number of people do live it. So there's something to be said for living in an area where everyone knows everyone else's business and folks treat others the way they'd like to be treated.

But before you write us off as boring, just let me share with you the story of one local crime. A female resident was reported to the police department for target practicing with her pistol, in her back yard, dressed in, um, well, actually she wasn't dressed in anything at all. By the time former Planet newspaper editor and photographer, Clyde Wills, arrived on the scene, the woman had wrapped a tablecloth around herself. Clyde snapped what has to be my all-time favorite newspaper photo: the woman holding the tablecloth closed around her body with one hand, the other raised in the air, signaling submission. A few feet away, two extremely serious police officers aimed their firearms at her while they assessed the situation (as in, hey, does she have that pistol hidden underneath that tablecloth? If so, is it still loaded? How willing is she to fire it again? At us?)

Truly, Clyde Wills deserved a Pulitzer for that picture. The officers deserved a medal for restraint, given the situation. And the woman? I never found out whether she was charged or arrested or what the outcome of the case was, but she obviously deserved something. Jail time? Chocolate? New clothes? Beats me. But just don't assume that because we're small, we're boring. Not when it comes to true crime.

And be careful out there. This woman could have moved into your neighborhood.

You Couldn't Make This Up

Sandra Parshall

True crime story #1: Guy walked into a bank, handed the teller a note that politely informed her this was a robbery and asked her to please put all the money into his bag. The note was signed with the full name of the bank robber, who was apprehended soon afterward.

True crime story #2: Guy walked into a bank, handed the teller a note ordering her to give him all the cash. She pointed out that he didn’t bring a bag with him and asked with some irritation if he really expected her to go looking for a bag to put the money in. Flustered and embarrassed, the would-be robber fled, only to be apprehended within minutes.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

And even though it really happened, you’d have a hard time using such an incident in fiction because nobody would find it believable. Writers with names like Hiaasen, Evanovich and Leonard can get away with these scenarios because readers don’t expect to find their stories believable. They’re praised for their vivid, over-the-top imaginations, although many of the wild and crazy things they write have actually happened out there in the real world.

I find all this very puzzling.

Why do we apply tougher standards of believability to fiction than we do to real life? I often watch a horrifying event on the evening news and declare, “I just don’t believe this.” But the press has the tape or pictures to prove it really happened. If I read about something similar in fiction, I might have a harder time taking it seriously.

True crime story #3: A couple broke into the home of a sheriff’s deputy, stole $10,000 worth of his possessions, among them his badge and several guns, threw the loot into the deputy’s truck and absconded. Before long the fleeing burglars felt an overwhelming urge to express their affection for one another. They pulled to the curb on a nice residential street, quiet and deserted in the very early morning, and left the engine idling while they expressed their affection. By coincidence, the newspaper carrier was making his rounds at the same time. He took one look at the crammed-full truck bed (but apparently didn’t glance into the cab), assumed a burglary was in progress, and called the cops.

This is not something you could use in fiction, unless you’re writing farce. Coincidences happen in real life all the time, but they’re anathema in fiction, especially crime fiction, because they make things too easy. We want characters to struggle all the way to the end and triumph or fail due to their own efforts, not because a coincidence brings matters to a conclusion. I can understand this. The writer has to tell a good story, and using coincidence is simple laziness. That isn’t what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the kind of thing that makes every writer say, “Oh, that would be great in a story... but nobody would believe it.” We have to tone down reality to avoid accusations of melodrama.

True crime story #4: A burglar was found dead in a Miami store, dangling from the blades of a large ventilation fan. Police speculated that the man had been trying to crawl through the fan, which was shut off for the night, and accidentally flipped the switch.

Hiaasen, maybe Leonard, could write a scene like that. I don’t think Evanovich would touch it.

True crime story #5: According to the FBI, a person (gender unknown) has been sending threatening letters, some containing powdered insecticide, to TV networks and college athletic departments since 2004. Failure to comply with his/her demands, this person warns, “will cause 88 people to be assaulted and shot at.” Any writer has to love the specificity of “88 people.” A detail, if you’ll pardon the expression, to die for.

This would appear to have the makings of a thriller plot. Unfortunately, the story is rendered ridiculous and unusable in fiction because of the would-be killer’s motive: she/he doesn’t like the “disrespectful” way women’s sports are covered.

Some outrageous real events teeter on the brink and need only minor tweaking to push them all the way into the “Yeah, I’d believe that in a novel” category. Here’s one:

True crime story #6: A man badgered his reluctant wife into joining a sex club with him. She liked it more than she expected and, in fact, fell in love with one of her new fun-and-games partners. The husband was not happy with this turn of events.

What makes this story unsuitable for fiction is the husband’s method of dealing with the situation: he sued the other guy for alienation of affection (and won, by the way). Absurd. Put a gun in his hand, though, and red-hot revenge in his heart -- voila, you’ve got a mystery that anybody would find believable.

Crazy things happen around us -- or to us -- every day. Next time you give up on a mystery or thriller because you think it’s unrealistic, go turn on CNN and watch for a few minutes. Then ask yourself what the definition of “believable” is.