anassarhenisch:The Kill Jar - J. Reuben AppelmanIn brief: A history of the Oakland County Child Kill

anassarhenisch:The Kill Jar - J. Reuben AppelmanIn brief: A history of the Oakland County Child Killer serial murders. An analysis of the webs of crime and corruption in the Detroit area in the late 1970s. A memoir of obsession, family, and failed marriages. A portrait in snapshots.Thoughts: This. Was. Wonderful. If by wonderful, you mean creepy and disturbing and compelling and liminal and lovely. I think this might be a true crime to equal I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, at least for me. It’s got that same fragmentation and self-analysis and exploration of the era, but in the case of The Kill Jar, it’s a whole lot darker. Appelman has personal demons he’s trying to excise, goes more intensely into his obsession with the case than McNamara does, and holy hell was Detroit not a safe place to be a kid in the 1970s. I really liked the way Appelman told the story, to be honest. It’s intensely non-linear, poetic without being pretentious, and captures people and places in key moments. Here is the guy who ran a “summer camp” for boys. Here is the night I learned my wife was cheating. Here is what the police didn’t report about the bodies. Here is the day someone tried to abduct me. Here is the final day of a victim. Here is a mysterious “suicide”. The non-linearity makes it a little hard to follow at times, it’s true, but it builds a sense of growing horror at the web of everything, from the ways the victims and suspects were potentially connected, to the possible motives for a police cover-up, to the multiple child porn rings operating at the time, to the victims’ families fight for justice, to Appelman’s own childhood (and adulthood) and what that might reveal about the mind of the killer. It’s almost haunting the way it all ties together and I’ve got my shoulders up just remembering it to write this. But it’s not just about the OCCK case and the other crimes detailed in the book. This book is very much also a memoir, not only of Appelman’s research into the case, but also him trying to reconnect with his father, exes, and other family, to make sense of his own past and flaws, and to come to terms with himself all while he’s delving into police records and microfiche and visiting crime scenes. That’s about as compelling and disturbing as the rest of the book because Appelman is not a well man, not by any stretch.In a way, this book is as much about flaws and brokenness and corruption and a lack of answers as it is about the child murders and Appelman’s life. We’re never going to know what really happened. We’re never going to know if there was a cover-up. Like the victims’ families and Appelman himself, we’ve just got to become comfortable with uncertainty, with not knowing key truths, with dealing with the darker sides of the world. The whole reading experience is profoundly liminal, in so many ways, and I think it’s going to stick with me a while.To bear in mind: This story is very concerned with pedophilia, so if anything surrounding that topic is going to trigger you, this might not be the book for you. There is also discussion of possible police corruption, corruption in general, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. Oh, and serial killers, for obvious reasons.9/10 -- source link

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