“I never saw it coming.”
How many times have we heard these words in the context of a true crime documentary, friends and family members left shocked by allegations against someone they thought they knew. Imagine the terror of realizing you were around, perhaps even lived with, someone capable of doing the unimaginable before returning home for dinner, a kiss on the cheek for family members unaware of a hidden shoebox with photographs and mementos that would change their lives.
Ted Bundy was studying to be an attorney. Many considered him attractive – even charismatic – his ability to put people at ease a weapon equal to the knife he hid among his fake arm cast and rope. Ann Rule’s book The Stranger Beside Me provides a terrifying glimpse into someone’s ability to live two completely lives. Because truth is often stranger than fiction, Rule met Bundy when they were working side-by-side at an overnight Suicide Hotline. That’s right – Ted Bundy talked people through crises while he was murdering innocent women in the upper northwest.
I moved to Kansas City around 2000 and heard stories about a serial killer in Wichita who had never been caught. His self-proclaimed BTK moniker stood for Bind, Torture, Kill, and he was desperate for media attention before going silent for years. I listened to these stories about a person who terrorized a small community, assuming he had died long ago or imprisoned for other crimes. It was comforting to think that way; the alternative is to believe that a serial killer was still walking around, potentially strolling through a park next to children or filling his car’s gas tank next to mine on I-70. Nobody wants to think those things.
A few years later, a new story made the news. Dennis Rader, a family man, church member and Boy Scout leader, led a seemingly quiet life before being linked to ten BTK murders and possibly more. His daughter’s book, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, struggled to make sense of the father she knew with the monster he was. Imagine not only the betrayal but the fear you would develop wondering if anyone in life is really what they seem. He was there – in parks, the grocery store, and pumping gas next to innocent people – and nobody knew. That thought is terrifying.
I love a good scary story, and always have. Starting my weekend watching Friday Night Frights with my mom provided a foundation for the classics; Edgar Allan Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum, Vincent Price’s ability to scare by voice alone, and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein were all appropriately scary for a young girl, yet safe. They weren’t real. Fast forward to today and there are streaming channels devoted entirely to salacious true crime and unsolved mysteries, neighbors who turn out to be murderers and lonely people catfished for the pure and unfathomable joy that it somehow brings to the perpetrator.
Why are we afraid of the dark? Because we don’t know what’s there. Why are jump scares so effective in horror movies? Because we don’t see them coming. Why do we find stories about normal people doing terrible things so interesting? In my opinion, it’s because they’re the equivalent of the monster in the darkness or thing hiding around the corner waiting to pounce. We don’t see them, expect them or understand them, which makes learning about them safe…from a distance.
When I decided to take a detour from writing women’s fiction and take a stab (pun intended) at writing a mystery, I was drawn to the thought of, well, the unthinkable. I decided to write about the unsettling contrast of a beautiful and quiet little town hiding a secret, characters who bring homemade pies to the bake sale who you would never expect to have a dark side. There is something incredibly disturbing in someone’s ability to do something horrible and then simply move on and lead a normal life. We don’t like to think that’s possible, but it happens all the time. Chances are we’ve encountered people in our lives with varying levels of darkness in their past. Our instincts kick in sometimes when we encounter people, an undefinable reaction to keep our distance or even ask for an escort when we walk to our car in a dark parking lot. Instincts are there for a reason. We need to listen to them.
That being said, we like to think that dangerous people come with warning signs – an evil gaze, awkward behavior or suspicious mannerisms that we can be taught to recognize and protect against. An article in Psychology Today, Serial Killers and Their Secrets Lives, focuses on the Gilgo Beach murders and Rex Heuremann’s ability to hide his double life for 15 years. Were there signs? Perhaps. But were they distinct enough to notice? Obviously not. The truth is, many times there aren’t any, or they’re so subtle that only hindsight is enlightening. In those instances, is it our instinct that lets us down or do the perpetrators adopt such genuinely distinct personalities that there’s nothing for our instinct to pick up on? Did Bundy truly care about the callers who reached out to the hotline in the middle of the night? We can never really know.
As a reader, I’ve always been drawn to true crime stories or suspenseful novels that take me on a rollercoaster of plummeting hills and dizzying plot twists that I didn’t see coming. As a writer, I can safely venture into that territory and take readers on a wild ride that keeps them guessing.
Fiction is a safe way to explore the darkness without fear. Real life is scary. Bad things happen. People are capable of horrible things. There really are monsters hiding in the dark. As an author, I write while turning the literal and figurative page, feeling comfort in knowing that I control the story. When, in reality, we really do have to watch out for the quiet ones.
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