Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9308290318
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: reviewed by Lana Whited
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Love's Blood: The shocking true story of a teenager who would do anything for the older man she loved _ even kill her whole family. By Clark Howard. Crown. $22.
Widow's Web: The true story of a Little Rock beauty whose deadly wiles led to two murders and scandalized the entire state of Arkansas. By Gene Lyons. Simon & Schuster. $23.
Forsaking All Others: The real Betty Broderick story, including prison interviews. By Loretta Schwartz-Nobel. Villard Books. $20.
\ Perhaps the only idea worse than our vulnerability to violence perpetrated by strangers is the notion that we might be victimized by those closest to us. These four recent books, all standard true-crime fare, illustrate the nightmare of husbands killed by wives, parents killed by (or with the cooperation of) children, and, perhaps worst of all, children killed by parents.
"Death Benefit" and "Widow's Web" tell stories of unscrupulous women selfish enough to murder family members for money. "Death Benefit"
details the crimes of Virginia McGinnis, whose mother, husband, and three-year-old daughter all died mysteriously while in her care. But it is the murder of a non- relative, McGinnis's son's friend Deana Hubbard Wood, which proves her undoing. Wood's apparently accidental plunge off a Big Sur cliff piques the curiosity of Steve Keeney, Wood's mother's lawyer, particularly after Keeney learns that McGinnis had taken out a life insurance policy on Deana the day before the accident. Keeney's subsequent investigation exposes McGinnis, who had evaded detection for 20 years and likely would have continued to without Keeney's intervention.
"Widow's Web," one of the most aptly named books I've encountered in some time, features Mary Lee Orsini, dubbed in promos "the Little Rock Lady Macbeth." That Orsini shot her husband Ron in the head as he lay sleeping is never in doubt; the book's own subtitle establishes her culpability. Author Gene Lyons is interested in something different: the tangled web woven by Orsini to maintain her friends' and family members' support, a web which involved at least one additional murder. Lyons illustrates why Orsini's ongoing story was the hottest thing going in Arkansas in the early 1980s, as the case became the centerpiece of Little Rock newspaper wars.
"Forsaking All Others" and "Love's Blood" present family murders perpetrated by somewhat more sympathetic characters.
Betty Broderick, the subject of "Forsaking All Others," shot her ex-husband Dan (a prominent malpractice attorney whose four children she reared while he completed both medical and law school) and his wife Linda. The years of mental and physical abuse which Betty Broderick endured are aptly characterized by two details: asked by Betty after nine pregnancies (five of them unsuccessful) if additional children would make him happy, Dan replies, "I don't want more kids, s_t. I don't even want the ones we've got." And at the conclusion of Betty's first trial, which ended in a hung jury, one (male) juror commented, "Yes, she shot him. I just wondered what took her so long." Granted, Betty Broderick's murder of Linda Broderick seems far more cold- blooded, but generally, Schwartz-Nobel presents her protagonist as a victim of the "someday my prince will come generation," which believed that women "needed no self-esteem, no core of individual identity, no personal strength. All we needed was a strong, successful man."
"Love's Blood" is Clark Howard's attempt to explain the circumstances which led to the deaths of Frank and Mary Columbo and their 13-year-old son Michael, crimes for which Patricia Columbo, the victims' daughter and sister, and her former boyfriend Frank DeLuca are currently serving multiple life sentences. Howard maintains that he is the first person with whom Patricia Columbo has talked extensively, and offers, in the "Aftermath" section, an alternative version which presents Patricia Columbo as the victim of both her father's and lover's abuse. "Love's Blood," like the other three books, is a
"whydunnit," not a "whodunnit," and Howard's account of how Frank DeLuca got Patricia Columbo addicted to drugs, alcohol, and himself is painful and sad. Despite Howard's insistence to Patricia Columbo that he was "in it for the book" and, when the book was completed, he would "move on to another one," he is clearly interested in cleaning up his subject's reputation. He succeeds only partially, as he has, by his own admission, a subject who "does absolutely nothing to ingratiate herself to anyone."
There is nothing remarkable about any of these books, although the cases on which they are based will be interesting to readers who like the genre. A person who doubts the value of reading these sordid stories might consider that they should, at least, make most readers grateful for their own families.
\ Lana Whited teaches English and journalism at Ferrum College and recently completed a dissertation about fact-based homicide novels.
by CNB