True Crime Library Bulletin No. 376 • July 7th, 2016
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Welcome to bulletin 376.
If you like our new look, why not visit our new, easy-to-use website?
All your favourite functions are still there plus a few new ones, making it quicker and easier to get to what you want.
We hope you like it – why not let us know?
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This week's new magazine is True Detective August. Inside you'll find a fascinating selection of stories with titles that sound not unlike the synopses of screenplays rejected by Alfred Hitchcock: Actor's Double-murder Put Him On Death Row; Name On A Banknote Sent Brothers To The Gallows; Psychic Finds Dead Boy In His Own Back Garden.
But of course, these and the wide variety of other reports inside – however curious they sound – are all true stories, real crimes. And this preview offers a chance to sample another case with echoes in the movie world...
How Sex in Prison Led To “Shawshank” Killers’ Escape
The two convicts, both of them doing life for brutal murders, winked knowingly at the prison’s sewing instructor, Joyce Mitchell. “We’re going to do a breakout,” they said. “We need your help to get some tools.”
 Richard Matt and David Sweat had been softening up Joyce for some time. Her job was to teach convicts how to use sewing machines. Now 51-year-old Joyce, married with a family, was herself learning something that wasn’t on the prison curriculum.
Despite his viciousness, Richard Matt possessed a certain cunning charm, especially on the rare occasions in prison when there were women around. He had worked his powers of persuasion on Joyce Mitchell and befriended her. In turn, she had kissed him and performed oral sex on him, which was a rare experience for a lifer.
One of the wonders of it all was how Joyce ever fell under the charms of hard-staring Richard Matt, who was an easy man to dislike. He had earned his life sentence for killing and dismembering his former boss with a hacksaw. In 1997 he kidnapped 76-year-old William Rickerson, his former employer, and beat him savagely before driving him around in the boot of his car for 72 hours. Then he snapped his victim’s neck with his bare hands and chopped his body into pieces before throwing it into the Niagara River.
Joyce liked both men, she confessed. They were “nice” to her, she would later say. She was never in a sexual relationship with David Sweat, but she passed him notes of “a sexual nature,” that included photos of herself in the nude.
Now her two cons wanted her to fetch tools to help them escape, and to be their getaway driver. She listened to their plan, which included a detail like killing her husband, with incredulity and enthusiasm, imagining a whole new life appearing from over the horizon. And for Joyce it was game on.
After they had busted out, they told her, she would wait at the exit point in her car. They would then drive to her home and kill her husband Lyle – “The Glitch,” they called him – and that done they would flee with her across the border to safety in Mexico...
It sounds like a movie – but what happened next was all too real. Read the rest of this extraordinary case report in True Detective August – out now!
COMPETITION #376
WIN INJURED PARTIES
On November 9th, 1966, popular GP Dr. Helen Davidson was battered to death in dense woodland while birdwatching and exercising her dog a few miles from her Buckinghamshire home. Her body was found the next day, her eyes having been pushed into her skull.
"She had binoculars round her neck, spied illicit lovers, was spotted, and one or both of them killed her," surmised Detective Chief Superintendent Jack "Razor" Williams of New Scotland Yard. He had received 50 police commendations in his career, yet not one for a murder enquiry. Unsurprisingly, within weeks the police operation was wound down, Williams retired, and another cold case hit the statistics.
Fifty years later, amateur sleuth and author Monica Weller set about solving the murder – without the help of the prohibited files. As she sifted the evidence, a number of suspects and sinister motives began to emerge; it was clear it was not a random killing after all. She uncovered secret passions, deep jealousies, unusual relationships and a victim with a dark past. Her persistence and dedication were dramatically rewarded when she uncovered the identity of the murderer – revealed here for the first time.
To win a paperback copy of Injured Parties (published by The History Press; ISBN 9780750966955; £9.99) by Monica Weller answer this simple question:
Buckinghamshire is one of the main locations for which British television detective drama?
A. Cracker
B. Inspector Morse
C. Midsomer Murders
D. Bergerac
For your chance to win, email your answer, along with your postal address and your phone number, to philip.morton@truecrimelibrary.com, using the subject line Bulletin 376 Competition. Our winner will be picked out of the hat on July 14th, 2016. Best of luck!
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COMPETITION WINNERS
BULLETIN #375 COMPETITION WINNER
To win a paperback copy of Poison Panic – Arsenic Deaths in 1840s Essex by Helen Barrell (published by Pen & Sword History; ISBN 9781473852075; £14.99), we asked you to answer this simple question…
Arsenic – The "King of Poisons" – has which chemical symbol?
A. As
B. Po
C. Tl
D. Au
The correct answer was A. and the winner was Geoff Leone. Congratulations!
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WEBSITE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS COMPETITION WINNER
To win a paperback copy of Unprepared to Die: America’s Greatest Murder Ballads and the True Crime Stories that Inspired Them (published by Soundcheck Books; ISBN 978-0992948078; £16.99) by Paul Slade, we asked you to answer this question:
Which California prison gave Johnny Cash the blues in his famous 1955 song (Lyrics included the classic: “But I shot a man in Reno / just to watch him die“)?
The answer was Folsom Prison (the song was Folsom Prison Blues) and the winner is Sonia McNally. There is a new prize to be won on the website now – why not enter?
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