My Chance.

The environment around you can determine your interest. I am a proud believer in this; I feel my parents have shaped my interests. I’m a big classic rock fan; The Beatles, Three Dog Night, and Bob Dylan were always playing in my house. Our vacations were mostly educational; historical Boston, Massachusetts, Colonial Virginia, even at Disney we took a tour about Walt Disney. They molded us into history buffs, into cultured people. Every time I see a late-night show where they quiz the public on basic history about our country, I am impressed with how much my mother and father taught me.

Reading was another big thing in my house; mostly nonfiction history books are my parent’s top pick. On the table in front of their bed, there are a number of great books about some great people; Parkland, the hospital that tried to save JFK’s life, Biographies about Geroge Washington, JFK, and Abe Lincoln. Passing that trait onto me, I fell in love with Fiction; James Paterson, Stephen King, and Jodie Picoult. As I dug deeper, memoirs, became a thing, like The Glass Castle, Educated, Running with Scissors, etc. I can finish a book in a day and a half; I spend more money on books and coffee than any other item a girl my age, twenty-eight, would buy.

The final thing that they passed on to me is my love for writing. I really don’t know where that came from, other then, my father wrote a short story about the day I was born. My parents always told me to dream big, they allowed me to play rather than watch tv or indulge video games. Maybe that’s where I got it from, my mom forcing me to go outside and create my own reality, to keep me busy while creating stories about princesses, castles, and villains. I can come up with stories, conflicting situations, and love triangles. I have been writing since I was young; creating stories about haunted houses, about my friends. As I became older, I moved onto teenage love. I had a blog to post my short stories. I was obsessed. I even went to school for creative writing.

But where and when did I fall in love with True Crime? Where did I get the drive to read about serial killers, gruesome murders, and to solve a missing persons reports? The adrenaline that races through my body when I read about Joel Rifkin, or East Area Rapist, or now known as, thanks to my most favorite DIY Detective, Michelle McNamara, The Golden State Killer. I love it when my breath disappears hearing about the profile of a killer; how they felt when they had cornered their next victim. I have no idea why it interests me, but it does.

My mother is a business teacher; she taught law for a while, but she rarely showed interest in serial killers or small local crimes that involved murder. Somehow on the other side of things, I was the one that became obsessed with it.

What I think made me fall in love with true crime was the two big cases that had happened in my backyard. The Long Island Serial Killer, and Kyle Underhill a former classmate of mine being murdered.

When I came home from college after my first semester, something big was happening. The coast of Fire Island was lined with police cars, K9s, and detectives. They had found the remains of four girls over two days. I knew the area; I lived on the mainland, but I spent all my summers and even some off winter days on Fire Island, soaking up the sun or reading on the sand. I know the parkway, each little beach with each little community. The island became scary after December 2010. Bodies were turning up in marshes.

One of the marshes, I would tailgate with friends near the parking lot of Gilgo beach. He could have been there; the creature of the night, stalking its next prey. Maybe there were too many teenagers grouped together, always staying together. Nobody strayed out by themselves. The beach was dark; if you left the headlights of our cars you could barely see your own hand in front of your face. He could have been watching our shadows in the spotlights, how they would lean back, laughing, or how we tipped back our heads to take another sip of beer. He could have heard our dreams and fears. He could have heard our deepest secrets.

After that died down a little before it was launched into madness because of Mari Gilbert (one of the mothers of one of the missing girls,) Kyle Underhill was killed and found in the woods.

It was Thanksgiving break, 2011, I was headed back to my hometown to visit friends and family. This was my third semester, my second year in College. As I was on my way home, my Facebook timeline was covered with a classmate. All the posts were the same. “R.I.P Kyle.” “I can’t believe you’re gone, R.I.P Kyle. ” I knew Kyle, as a classmate in high school. A year below me, he hung out with a few of my friends. I didn’t have many friends in my class, but I was accompanied by classmates from the class below and above me. I wasn’t popular or seen much with my class of 2010. I was looked at differently, never spoken too unless there was a class project, or someone needed help with an assignment. I liked to read, I dressed in all black, and my music taste was probably a little too harsh for most people. I was different, and still am.

They had found Kyle on Brook Street in the woods. A few feet from the local elementary school. Half buried in mud, dirt and pond water, and sticks stuffed down his throat. He was beaten to death. It was a sick way to be killed; tortured; some say he was still alive after the murder left him.

My whole town was shaken up. Anyone who lived close had pictures of the cops closing down the street, and officers lining the where the victim was found. People looked at each other differently; all his friends, and friends of friends were looked at. Any of his enemies were looked. I was conflicted with my friends; they could know something, they could be lying.

As I went back to school I stayed with the story. I called my mom regularly to talk about school, how things were going, and any information that she gathered from any of her friends. Which she did. One of her friends knew a cop on the case. He said that dispatch had a call the night that Kyle was estimated to be killed from a scared mother, that her son was covered from head to toe in blood. Once an officer showed up to the house, the mother refused to let him in. It was dropped. The mother and son were locals to the town, but they were never named to my mother.

That was the last thing I heard about the case until the day I actually almost got hit by a car. I got a call from a friend. He sounded scared, and in disbelief. Once he told me that Thomas, one of my closest friends had surrendered to the police for the murder of Kyle. I stopped in the middle of a busy intersection. My friend thought I got hurt when he heard screeching tires and honking horns. He called my name over and over until I got to walking again.

Thomas, I’ve known him since he was in elementary school with me. He and his twin sister were a year below me, we went to catholic school together. Their birthday is only a few days away from mine. I spent weekends partying with them at their house, in the backyard. The bonfire going, the drinks flowing, and joints being passed around. We would drive in Elaine’s convertible Volkswagon Beatle to the beach. We shared cigarettes, beers, and memories. Thomas was the protective one and so was the guy I was dating. It was a wall of muscle with both of them side by side. They would protect us while we went out or if we were just sitting on their stoop chain-smoking and some stupid high school kids were messing with us. He was kind-hearted, protective, and always was there to listen. He was a good friend to all of us.

My friends began to separate; people took sides. Everyone was afraid of the family; they wouldn’t talk to them, or even make eye contact. For over a year they protected their son. When Kyle first was found, I reached out to Elaine, asking where Thomas was. Apparently, he was upstate on a construction project. It was a family business and he went up to help. Again, this is what I was told by friends, people who actually were in town.

With all this going on, I followed both cases; the digging, and finding out new information. I started reading about Joel Rifkin, and Son of Sam. I started watching Criminal Minds, Law and Order: SVU, Ted Bundy Tapes, etc. I loved it, every minute of it.

Then, I started writing about true crime; I made a blog, and got hired by true crime blogs to write about local stories in New York. I love researching about cases I don’t know about; The Baby Hope case, The Allentown Four, etc. I can get lost in these cases, every case.

I stay up late at night reading about scary people, and the hideous things they did to people. I scare myself into checking doors and windows at my place. I look over my shoulder more when I am out alone, I keep my keys between my knuckles ready for anything. It has changed how I look at people, how I read people on the street. What have they done in their lives? What is their deepest secret? It drives me crazy. Think about it: you could walk past a serial killer on the street, forget his face, forget his strut, and when you see that they caught him on the local news, you have no idea who he is.

I wish I could be more like Michelle McNamara; she is a hero of mine. How she was a full-time mother, and wife, and spent most of her nights in front of her laptop digging for the serial rapist, The Golden State Killer. When she died in 2016, I was shocked, upset, and angry. Her true crime blog was one of the things that got me through the day. Reading her take on different crimes, different profiles. I listened to every podcast she was on, every true crime discussion shows her, and Billy Jenson was on. Then he was caught, The Golden State Killer was caught by DNA. All I could think about was, “Michelle must be smiling right now.” I wish she was alive to experience what we all did when they arrested him.

Her book, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” is a masterpiece. It is my favorite true crime book, that I have highlighted, written in, and post-it noted. It looks like a colorful mess of chaos. I go back to that book all the time, read different excerpts. It helps me with my writing. It helps me connect myself with the case.

True crime writing can go either two ways:

1. Bland, just a bunch of facts with no emotions, and,

2. Descriptive, full of emotion, and connection to the writer.

All my writing is filled with emotion. All my writing has a connection. The best kind of stories is the ones you can relate too, the ones that you can put yourself inside their shoes and understand why they did what they did.

I feel True Crime is my future, I don’t know how, and in what context, but I think it is. I hope it is. I can go back to my nine to five job after this pandemic, but I’d rather not. I’d rather do what I went to school for; what I am passionate about. Writing is my passion, and true crime is another one.

I am going to make this my career even if it is the last thing I do. So here is my journey, you can jump on the train or watch it pass by. This is my chance.