Jes Jewell | Missing Minutes

Missing Minutes | True crime with purpose. Advocating for missing persons and unsolved cases — because silence should never be the final chapter.

Guest writer Jes Jewell is an RN with a Master of Science in forensic psychology and the creator of Missing Minutes, a true crime newsletter focused on missing persons and unsolved cases. She began her career in TV production at a CBS affiliate before becoming a radio operations manager and news director. She wanted to help people directly and became a nurse. She worked as an RN for a decade before pursuing her master’s degree out of a need to find out the “why” behind crimes and the people who commit them—a motivation I understand very well. She focuses closely on cases connected to Eastern Kentucky.

I asked Jes if I could repost this as a guest blog because we’ve been discussing a True Crime Report edition I published in early August this year, “Alone Together: Five Older Couples, Five Unsolved Double Homicides.” As I said in that post, I can’t assert that all the cases were connected. But Jes and I have both found ourselves chewing on the commonalities, which is why she called my attention to the post below just after she published it. You can check out her original article here.

Upcoming: I’ll be writing a new in-depth report on the Karen Solomon case, as I’ve heard more from people who knew Solomon and who were able to provide additional insight into the couple and their murder-suicide.

Roy and Wanda Campbell, a well-known Hazard-area couple, were found shot to death in their Perry County, Kentucky, home on November 26, 2010—the day after Thanksgiving. The case remains unsolved more than 15 years later.

Roy Campbell, 81, was a prominent Perry County land developer and former coal operator. He started as a bread truck driver and salesman, later acquiring land and developing residential areas, the Hazard Village Shopping Center, and property that facilitated major commercial growth, including sites linked to Walmart and Lowe’s. He donated land for the local hospital, Appalachian Regional Healthcare, a Veterans Affairs center, and various churches. Friends and competitors described him as a tough negotiator and visionary who was happiest operating heavy equipment like bulldozers.

Wanda Feltner Campbell, 79, was a longtime nurse’s aide at Mary Breckinridge Hospital in the town of Hyden in Leslie County, Kentucky, for more than 30 years. She was known for her kindness and caring nature. The couple had been married only about three years, since 2008. Both had been widowed earlier. Roy’s first wife was Mildred Campbell; Wanda’s first husband was A.B. Feltner, and the two pairs of spouses had long been friends. After A.B. Feltner’s death from lung cancer, Wanda briefly moved to Michigan to be near her children and grandchildren before returning to Kentucky at Roy’s encouragement.

Discovery of the Bodies

Family members grew concerned when they could not reach the Campbells. Blinds remained drawn, which was unusual for them, and no one answered the door or phone. Around 8:55–9 p.m. on Friday, November 26, Perry County sheriff’s deputies responded to a welfare check at the couple’s home in the Brownsfork community. Deputies forced entry by breaking a window and found Roy and Wanda dead of gunshot wounds, still seated in their living-room recliners in front of the television. Roy’s chair was reclined; Wanda’s was upright. Autopsy information reported by the family indicated both had been shot in the back. The doors were locked, and nothing appeared to have been taken, including more than $1,000 in cash, leading investigators and family to describe the killings as a targeted assassination rather than a robbery. Kentucky State Police took over the investigation, treating it as a double homicide. The Campbells had been seen alive that morning.

Investigation and Unsolved Status

No arrests have ever been made. Kentucky State Police have investigated tips and identified persons of interest over the years, but evidence has not been sufficient for charges. The case went cold relatively quickly. Detective Clayton Stamper, who was at the scene and later assigned the case, has publicly noted the locked doors, lack of theft, and tragic nature of the crime while urging anyone with information to come forward. Family members, particularly Wanda’s daughter Shirley Justen, have long maintained that Roy may have been the primary target due to business conflicts related to his development work, with Wanda killed because she was present.

Shirley has kept public attention on the case through media interviews, billboards, a reward reported at one point as $20,000, and a Facebook page, “In Loving Memory of Wanda Feltner Campbell”. She has repeatedly said someone in the community knows something and that the weight of that knowledge needs to become heavy enough for a person to speak. Holidays, especially the anniversary falling near or on Thanksgiving, remain particularly painful for the family.

As of the most recent detailed public reporting, around the 10- and 11-year anniversaries in 2020–2021, Kentucky State Police indicated no new leads sufficient to advance the case to arrests. No subsequent major public developments or resolutions appear in available coverage through later years.

Anyone with information about the murders of Roy and Wanda Campbell is asked to contact the Kentucky State Police, Hazard post at 606-435-6069. The family continues to seek justice and closure.

A Home Should Be the Safest Place

Home is supposed to be where the outside world stops. A place where elderly couples can spend quiet evenings without fear and families build memories over decades. For Roy and Wanda Campbell, that safety was destroyed.

Advocacy is not about turning rumor into fact; it is about refusing to let unanswered questions become an excuse for forgetting. The verified public record establishes that Roy and Wanda Campbell were killed. The identity and motive of the person or people responsible remain unresolved in the cited reporting.

Someone may know why. Someone may have heard or been told something and chosen to remain silent. Those are possibilities, not established facts.

What Happens to Families When a Murder Is Never Solved?

An unsolved murder does not end when the investigation goes quiet. It can continue through birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and family gatherings marked by an empty chair.

For Shirley Justen and the Campbell family, the anniversary of the murders is tied to the holiday season. They have been left with questions such as: Who did this? Why? Was there something they missed? Does someone know? Will anyone ever be held accountable?

Without a verdict or sentencing, the family remains without the legal resolution that a conviction and sentence could provide.

Eastern Kentucky Cannot Afford to Forget

In Appalachia, community is often measured by memory: the families we know, the places we share, and the names we carry forward. Roy and Wanda Campbell’s names should not disappear simply because their case remains unresolved. Remembering them does not require speculation. It requires accuracy, compassion, and a willingness to keep their story in public view without turning uncertainty into accusation.

A Concise Appeal for Information

If you have information about the deaths of Roy and Wanda Campbell, contact the Kentucky State Police or another appropriate law-enforcement agency. Even a detail that once seemed unimportant may be worth reporting. Do not confront or accuse anyone yourself; let investigators evaluate what you know.

The family has waited years for answers. The public record still has none.

We Remember

Roy Campbell and Wanda Campbell were more than an unsolved case. They were spouses, family members, and people whose lives mattered before their deaths.

They deserve to be remembered by name: Roy Campbell. Wanda Campbell.

If you know something relevant, speak to investigators. If you do not, you can still help by sharing their names accurately and refusing to let their story disappear.

Their family is still waiting for answers

Editor’s Note: Again, check out Missing Minutes (below) and give Jes a follow. Tell her Steve sent you.

Jes Jewell | Missing Minutes

Missing Minutes | True crime with purpose. Advocating for missing persons and unsolved cases — because silence should never be the final chapter.

First: I spoke to Adri Pray of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for her insightful, well-written article published today, “How Solomon family tragedy became a case study in true crime obsession.” Please check it out. I’m grateful to Adri and T&G web editor Mike Elfland for the link back to this site.

While I’ve been exclusively following a story that’s local to me, in which Worcester writer and mental health advocate Karen Solomon killed her police officer husband before committing suicide—my most recent post is here: “Blue Hell: Another Side of Karen Solomon”—this seemed like a good time to remind both longtime and new subscribers that this is not a single-case true crime newsletter.

I’ll follow the breadcrumbs (or Reese’s Pieces, if you’re E.T.) on any story that grabs me. And I have a deep and abiding interest in unsolved and historical cases. I welcome tips on those and on any breaking story.

Though I expect to collab with other true crime writers and, in the future, feature guest posts, right now I’m just one guy: an independent writer, researcher, and journalist with more than twenty years of professional on-the-job experience. I’m also a dad, partner, and brother with important responsibilities at home, which means I can’t churn out “content” (I hate that word) the way I was expected to when I was writing for publications like the Observer (US) or MAXIM magazine. But what I do cover gets my full attention, hence the deep dives you’ll find in my posts about Karen Solomon.

A flurry of new editions each day probably doesn’t work well for a publication that’s newsletter first and blog post second, anyway. I know I struggle to get to inbox zero daily, and I’m sure many subscribers do, too. I don’t want to add to the “clutter.”

Thank you for subscribing and for reading, and for spreading the word when you can. Social media sucks for getting eyes on your work lately, but I do have an active presence on Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, and I welcome new friends there.

Previous articles:

• Worcester Police Seek Karen Solomon in Connection With Cop Husband’s Murder

• The Hunt For Karen Solomon Continues

• Karen Solomon’s Missing Niche

• ‘Community Hero’ Karen Solomon Still Sought in Connection With Cop Husband’s Death

• The Hunt for Karen Solomon and ‘True Crime Brain’

• Update on the Search For Karen Solomon and a Re-Introduction

UPDATE, 8/28/26: MassLive reported Friday that one rumor floated about Kurt Solomon’s cause of death was true. Karen Solomon slit her husband’s throat. From the report: “On the section of the death certificate where it says, ‘describe how injury occurred,’ the document states: ‘cut by other.’”

Another article on Heidi Harper (see below) is coming in the next week or so.

UPDATE, 8/27/26: I heard back from Heidi after publishing this. More later.

Before Karen Solomon was found dead by suicide on August 24, 2026—a week after she killed her police officer husband, Kurt—she wrote extensively about the psychological burdens faced by members of law enforcement. She authored and co-authored two books on the subject, several articles for various websites, and many posts on her personal blog, The Missing Niche. Beyond her writing, though, friends who contacted me after reading previous coverage (see links above) universally felt that Solomon’s greatest legacy was the launch of Blue H.E.L.P., also known as First H.E.L.P.

Solomon co-founded the organization in 2015. Blue H.E.L.P.’s original mission, per documents posted online, was to help “ensure that no law enforcement officer sees suicide as a solution” and to honor “the service and sacrifice of law enforcement officers who died by suicide.” It also sought to “help surviving families of law enforcement [officers] we’ve lost to suicide.”

On the day Worcester police found Solomon’s remains, I received a tip about her and Blue H.E.L.P. It led to videos—posted online six years ago—which altogether suggested that behind her public image as an eloquent, urgent voice for a particular group of civil servants, there was a woman who, beyond whatever issues she may have had in her marriage, was struggling with serious personal instability.

Extreme domestic violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People rarely go from zero to homicide overnight. It would be several steps too far to suggest anyone could have seen this coming, but it does seem clear now that Karen Solomon had some demons that showed up in other ways.

Heidi

In 2017, Boston’s NBC affiliate highlighted a conference on police suicide held in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. At the conference, five widows shared stories about losing their husbands. One of them was Heidi Harper, whose husband, Jesse Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy, committed suicide on October 20, 2016. Heidi also sat for an interview. The full-length clip is here; I’ve embedded a short excerpt above. 

Harper’s pain after her husband died was compounded by the way her community handled—or in this case, didn’t handle—the loss. From NBC Boston:

“At [Peterson’s funeral] service, there were a lot of deputies that went up to my children and would get down on their knees and tell my kids, ‘I know your daddy’s gone, but you still have a dad in all of us here at the sheriff’s office,’” Harper said. “After the casket was closed, they were gone.”

In one year, there was not one phone call nor one letter to her or her children.

In a way, Harper seemed to understand. “It’s their own uncomfortableness,” she told reporter Karen Hensel. “They know very well it could be them. By the grace of God, their doorsteps haven’t been darkened by this, this hell. They don’t know what to say.”

Later in the article, Karen Solomon explained the founding of Blue H.E.L.P. She said that after hearing a story from one widow, she “just decided we need to do something.”

Solomon referenced a conference attendee who said their partner "had a heart attack and that was caused by the job.”

“Well, that’s a line-of-duty death, right?” Solomon continued. “So why isn’t the trauma to your mind?"

9658186 Strategicplan 2018 2021 1643665320416

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Under “Board of Directors” in a Blue H.E.L.P. “Strategic Plan” for 2018 through 2021 (PDF above), Karen Solomon was listed as president and co-founder. Heidi Harper, a “Suicide Widow, 2016,” was a board member.

I reached out to Harper via email for this article. She didn’t respond. I’d hazard a guess that she doesn’t check the account anymore, since it was specific to the channel and she posted the address on YouTube in 2020. That, or she has already said all she wanted to say about Karen Solomon.

Blue Hell

My source referred to this link as a “rabbit hole to go down.” That was an understatement.

https://www.youtube.com/@bluehell1038

“10-38” is standard police ten-code for a suspicious vehicle stop.

Heidi Harper apparently created the channel on August 18, 2020.

According to an archived edition of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Karen Solomon married her first husband, Richard Piergustavo, on August 18, 1990.

She murdered her husband, Kurt, on August 18, 2026.

A specific date appearing three times like that doesn’t feel like a coincidence. To me, it suggests that even if Harper’s creation of the channel on that day was coincidental, Karen Solomon may have deliberately chosen the date of her final acts. But if she left any indication of whether that was the case, like a note, that hasn’t been made public.

I’m going to embed all four of Heidi Harper’s YouTube videos. I’ll make copies in case she decides to take them down. To keep this edition of the newsletter to a reasonable length, I’ll focus mainly on the fourth and first videos.

I also want to emphasize that Harper was talking about Blue H.E.L.P. as it existed six years ago. I’ve no doubt there have been many changes in the organization since then.

My source first linked me to the last video, “Karen Solomon—I’m Sorry,” posted December 11, 2020.

Heidi Harper wasn’t sorry.

After a short introduction, Harper said, “It has been brought to my attention that I have harmed Karen Solomon with some of my previous… videos and posts. Today, I’m going to take this opportunity to formally apologize to Karen and some of her colleagues...”

She continued, “I recognize that speaking my truths and the truths of others like me have impacted Karen’s mental health. For that I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” Harper said, “that she hasn’t figured out that if an online non-fictional account of her behavior is impacting her children…to act appropriately and protect them from these results. I wish to offer my most sincere apologies, Karen Solomon, leader of Blue H.E.L.P.”

Harper’s tone intensified. “I’m sorry you couldn’t shield your children from viewing the truths regarding their beloved mother.”

“Additionally, I am equally sorry that reliving what you have done to so many has impacted your already frail mental health as adversely—as you described to your children, husband, brother-in-law, nephew, and stepbrother.”

Then Harper switched gears. “I’m also sorry that Karen’s actions have finally come back to bite her in the ass, thus impacting your lives, as she states in her most recent mass-emailed complaint regarding my Blue H.E.L.P. account and my truthfully made posts.”

Harper detailed some of those “actions” in her first video, posted August 19, 2020. “I want to talk to you guys today about, um, something I call, ‘my Blue Hell,’” she said.

While she initially addressed Blue H.E.L.P. as a whole, it was clear as she continued that Harper’s strongest anger was directed at one person.

“I am also a victim of Karen Solomon,” she said, “the president and co-founder of Blue H.E.L.P., a national not-for-profit organization that ostensibly helps officers and families of those who are suicidal in need. Officers who are saying that they’re suicidal…[Blue H.E.L.P. is] supposed to help them. When I started with Blue H.E.L.P., it was because I needed to do something with the pain that I had.”

Harper went on to say that when she signed up for Blue H.E.L.P., it had created “a project called the Honor Boxes. And the idea was that for every officer who took his life, we would send that family a care package, which sounds silly. It’s the small thing, you know — they get some snacks and soaps and toilet paper, what have you, and it’s catered to the family, so if they’ve got five kids, we’re gonna make sure there’s enough for five kids.”

She described how good it felt to take part in Blue H.E.L.P.’s project before segueing into the subject of Karen Solomon’s use of the organization’s funds.

“In September of 2017,” Harper said, “we were gearing up for our very first conference, and Karen was $6,500 short of the funds she needed to make this happen. So what did she do? She came to me. She asked me for a loan for $6,500.”

“... I trusted her,” Harper continued. She believed Solomon was “good for it.”

“I was supposed to get it back the next month,” she said, “and that was in September. I got it back in April... and that wasn’t until after I resigned. In an email that I had sent [Karen] on April 17th, I said, ‘Hey, did you find out about that check? I thought you said it came in.’ She said, ‘Remember? I had to go to the bank and cash it to get a check made to use Saturday to mail you should have it soon.’”

According to Harper, Solomon asked her, “‘What, did you quit your stripper job? hard up for cash?’ Karen said that to me. ‘You quit your stripper job and are hard up for cash.’”

Heidi Harper said she resigned from Blue H.E.L.P. a few days later. She admitted that Solomon eventually sent half of the money owed, telling her, “I don’t want you to go hungry.” It seemed clear Harper took this as an insult.

Harper also described what she thought was a poorly handled situation at a Blue H.E.L.P. event, in which an attendee expressed possible suicidal ideation. Karen Solomon, who had no counseling credentials, took it upon herself to walk the man “around the parking lot [for], I don’t know, probably a half hour, until she said ‘Yeah, he’s good.’ All while another board member—or advisory member, I’m not sure what he was at that point—went up to this officer’s room [and] removed his firearm.”

Later, Harper said, “I asked Blue H.E.L.P. a couple days ago, um, if they had been in contact with this individual, knowing already that they hadn’t, because I’ve been in contact with them. “

“Not once,” said Harper, “not one time did anybody from that organization reach out to that officer after removing his firearm from him.” She indicated she felt he had not been rendered “appropriate care.”

Heidi Harper then said she thought the reason no one else in Blue H.E.L.P. had addressed this was “Karen is a bully. She’s aggressive. She acts on emotion. She’s not a leader. She, she…is mean.”

In her second video, which she posted on August 25, 2020, Heidi Harper admitted she was “saying this kind of cavalier and real quick and all that.”

About four minutes in, she got to her point. “I'm angry at the president of the organization Blue H.E.L.P.”

“I helped her build this organization.” Harper continued. “She used my story. She used my children. She used me for money.” Solomon, she said, “lied to me; she manipulated me. And I’m not the only one.”

At just over ten minutes into the video, Harper said, “Karen, you did, you helped me. You made me better. You made me stronger. Thank you.”

She wasn’t done. “You’ve opened my eyes to not be so damn naive and believe just because it has a blue stamp on it.”

“I believe you have been able to manipulate and con your way into all these people’s lives,” Harper said, “and for what? To boost your level of narcissism.”

Near the end of the video, Harper was unequivocal. “Karen hasn’t even denied anything except for the misappropriation of funds. Which is really funny, Karen, because you know I got you on recording saying it.”

“Yeah, I’m bitter,” she said moments later. “Bitter that you were not just backing down and saving these families by backing down.”

Harper’s third video was over 16 minutes long. She posted it on September 15, 2020, and covered much of the same territory. Then around nine minutes in, she said, “…Karen Solomon said she was willing to help me, and that she understood me; she was there for me. [It’s] very apparent that those are just empty promises and words used to get your story, gain your trust, and further her agenda.”

Later in the clip, she repeated her accusations that Solomon “misappropriated funds.” Then, near the end, Harper said, “We’re able to weed out the individuals like Karen Solomon in law enforcement. We question everything. We do background searches. [Psychological] evaluations. We do everything to vet the authenticity… and the capabilities of the officers we hire in the departments… Why aren’t we doing that with Karen Solomon?”

Questions

In announcing the recovery of Karen Solomon’s body, Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier pointedly said they knew of no history of domestic violence in the Solomon home. I wondered why he emphasized that, as it appeared to tacitly acknowledge the online commentariat. The Worcester PD, as an organization, doesn’t have a strong recent record of seeming overly concerned with public opinion (many police departments can’t always afford to care too much about constant online critiques if they want to fairly enforce the law, but some are much more concerned with PR than others).

Since then, a few people have messaged me to say that, while they never knew conclusively of any abuse, discussing the case with others has led them to piece together hints Solomon seemed to drop, perhaps implying something was going on. But if there really was that level of domestic discord at the home on Wildwood Avenue, there is no official public record. People can make what might feel to them like logical assumptions to them in Facebook comments or Worcester-related subreddits; those still don’t constitute facts.

I also feel obligated to emphasize that, right now, we only have Heidi Harper’s portrait of a bullying, “narcissistic” Karen Solomon, and while that might be in line with someone going on to commit acts of violence, it stands in stark opposition to the words of shocked friends and acquaintances who could not begin to grasp what Solomon did. And Harper, by her own admission, began her association with Solomon during a time of tremendous personal strain. The death of a loved one is always shattering, but suicide is a special kind of hell because it doesn’t just bring sadness but a wealth of anger and hurt, greatly clouding your perceptions of others and your level of trust. And I don’t know what to make of the fact that, as far as I could find, there's only the YouTube channel, and she seemed to abandon it after December 2020. It’s also hard to find any recent sign of her online, though she may have remarried and taken her new spouse’s name.

“Massive loss”

One of my goals in restarting true crime coverage has been to bring more focus on victims. I’ve been remiss with officer Kurt Solomon—in part because, like many people in law enforcement and many men my age (Solomon was 57, a year younger than me), he didn’t have much of an online profile. Whatever he was like in life, he died a terrible and tragic death, and coverage of his funeral showed that his family was devastated.

His funeral took place on Wednesday, August 26, at Our Lady of Angels—an austere and beautiful Catholic church on Worcester’s Main Street. As a classically trained tenor, I have cantored for services there at the behest of the church’s phenomenally gifted organist and music director, Leonardo Ciampa. I am sure he helped make it a moving memorial. Even to a nominal Protestant with only a threadbare amount of faith like me, OLA offers the kind of space that inspires silence and reverence.

Worcester Telegram & Gazette reporter Craig Seamon quoted Niklas Solomon, one of the couple’s two college-age sons, who told the mourners that his father “worked as a police officer, but he was never a cop to me or to my brother, nor to the rest of my family.”

Kurt Solomon’s brother Eric spoke as well. “My mother, brother, and my two nephews,” he said, “should not be here today. And you, my dear friends, should not be here today. And yet here we are, standing at the edge of one massive loss. But we cannot allow that loss to overshadow the life of a son, a father, a brother, and a friend.”

Eric Solomon also lashed out at “the sad, pathetic comments of the parasites on social media.”

“We will write the narrative,” he said, “all of us here.”

As Seamon noted in his report, there was “no clear mention” of Karen Solomon.

Edited to add: For a different and much more purely local angle on the Solomon case, check out “Black Helicopters” in Bill Shaner’s cynical, blunt, and sometimes hilarious newsletter, Worcester Sucks and I Love It.

Previous articles about the search for Karen Solomon:

• Worcester Police Seek Karen Solomon in Connection With Cop Husband’s Murder

• The Hunt For Karen Solomon Continues

• Karen Solomon’s Missing Niche

• ‘Community Hero’ Karen Solomon Still Sought in Connection With Cop Husband’s Death

• The Hunt for Karen Solomon and ‘True Crime Brain’

Some background on the True Crime Report and me.

UPDATE 3: In a 4 pm press conference, Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier confirmed that investigators believe they have found the body of Karen Solomon. An interesting quote: “At no time did the Solomon family have any history of domestic abuse.”

UPDATE 2: There are now additional social media reports that police have found a body. The source is Reddit—the very definition of a hit or (usually) miss resource.

UPDATE: Spectrum News reported via Facebook that Worcester Police will hold a 4pm press conference about possible new developments in the case.

While someone watching the area posted photos in a Worcester Facebook group, suggesting investigators may have found something just after noon on Monday, there had been no formal announcement of any breakthroughs in the case as of 1 pm.

Karen Solomon called 911 the morning her husband died. Citing “police radio transmissions,” the print edition of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Monday that “a call came in from a female res­id­ent of 217 Wild­wood Ave. around 5:30 a.m., report­ing a ‘male laid out in her back­yard, unknown breath­ing.’”

According to the T&G’s Rachel Gow:

Upon arrival, officers dis­covered a man deceased with blood in the home, accord­ing to the radio trans­mis­sions. The house was oth­er­wise unoc­cu­pied, the archived audio reflects.

The dis­cov­ery promp­ted an imme­di­ate switch­ing of gears, as respond­ing officers called for crime scene units and backup. Ref­er­ences were made to to “evid­ence pre­ser­va­tion,” accord­ing to the audio.

Sus­pi­cion quickly coalesced around the ini­tial caller, first iden­ti­fied as a female res­id­ent of the home and later as Karen Solomon.

The search quickly intensified and included a county-wide BOLO before investigators concluded Solomon left home on foot.

In a separate roundup (may require a subscription), T&G web editor Mike Elfland reported that the search continued early Monday, August 24. State and local police resumed their investigation of Coes Pond, a recreational area within easy walking distance of the couple’s home:

The city announced that it is closing Coes Pond parks and Stearns Tavern until further notice due to the search for Karen Solomon.

The closure affects Coes Pond Beach, also known as Binienda Beach; Columbus Park, including the Columbus Park Boardwalk; Knights of Columbus Park; and Coes Park Playground adjacent to Stearns Tavern.

A city contour map shows that Coes Pond is 12 to 16 feet at its deepest point, and the Worcester Parks website states that the Coes Reservoir area covers almost 21 acres. There are bike and walking trails, a beach, and a multi-use athletic field. 

That’s a lot of ground to cover, especially if investigators aren’t seeking public assistance with the search—as they might in the case of a missing person who is not suspected of committing homicide.

It is summer, though, and at the risk of getting a little graphic, dead bodies are easier to find in warm weather, as heat hastens decomposition, causing animal activity and distinct odors familiar to people working in law enforcement. Additionally, a person who disappears in a body of water is more likely to float to the surface after a few days unless weighted down.

If you’re new to this newsletter and want some background on what it is and who I am, read on.

About the True Crime Report and me

When a social media user gets a big influx of new followers (particularly on Meta’s Threads), they often write a reintroduction just so people know what they’re getting into. After (happily) acquiring a lot of new subscribers over the last two months, I figured a little “About me and this publication” was in order.

I launched the True Crime Report in 2008 for Village Voice Media. I was the sole editor and writer at first, but the name and blog were Billy Jensen’s brainchild. Billy, who went on to become a certified true crime celebrity and who assisted Patton Oswalt and Paul Haynes in finishing Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark after her death in 2016, was a head editor for VVM at the time.

I think VVM still owns the original truecrimereport.com URL, and I probably couldn’t afford to buy it from them at the moment, so I locked down the Substack subdomain.

Billy contacted me in 2007 because after I’d launched a true crime blog on my own in 2004 (the blogosphere at the time was boringly overloaded with political punditry, so crime coverage was a wide-open field), I was surprisingly successful at scooping legacy news organizations—using OSINT research skills I’d learned from my wife, Dr. Dana Huff, a genius educator, writer, and genealogist. This led to paid work for publications like Court TV’s Crime Library and TV appearances on cable news channels, Dateline NBC, and CBS’s 48 Hours.

I’ve covered some of what happened after that in a previous edition of this newsletter. I managed to boost the original blog from a few hundred views a day to 20 million hits a month before burning out on crime stories and pivoting to work with more general interest publications. It wasn’t in my best interest, money-wise, but I’ve always struggled with depression and ADHD, and after losing my brother to suicide in 2000, I knew I had to prioritize my mental health, no matter what.

I went on to write for publications such as RADAR magazine (in its original incarnation under current Hollywood Reporter EIC Maer Roshan) and the Observer, and eventually became Deputy Digital Editor for MAXIM magazine. I’ve covered cybercrime, pop culture, disasters, politics, men’s health, and technology in general. I returned to true crime for a while in 2018, writing a weekly true crime column for Inside Hook, but I wasn’t really ready yet and returned to mostly tech blogging after that.

Around the time I began my Inside Hook column, I also returned to something I thought I’d left behind when my crime blogging took off: singing opera. I went to college for classical voice and have performed as a chorister and in secondary and lead tenor roles with the Knoxville (TN), Atlanta, and Greater Worcester Opera companies. An opera gig falling through prompted the creation of my first true crime blog. I still regularly sing in churches in the Greater Boston metro area.

I debated with myself for a very long time about doing this again. I’m 21 years older. My kids are grown, though two are in college and still live with me. But as I mentioned in a recent newsletter edition, I’m also fit and generally much more stable and healthy than I was in 2005. I didn’t want to start with a podcast; the true-crime podcast world is absolutely glutted and has also been the subject of some justified criticism. And I knew that the investigative methods I’d once used to get the jump on entire newsrooms in the early 2000s were now common knowledge.

Then I remembered some wisdom offered by true crime author Gregg Olsen in an email exchange years ago. I’m paraphrasing, but Gregg basically said it doesn’t matter if other people are writing (or podcasting/TikToking) about it. What matters is that you bring your best reporting and writing to the story.

In the years since I first started searching for a murder suspect’s LiveJournal, I have gained a lot of valuable on-the-job training as a journalist and wisdom about writing in general. That’s what I hope to bring to bear in this newsletter.

So—if you've gotten this far, thank you for subscribing.

For breaking cases like this, by the way, comments are open to both paid and free subscribers (otherwise, you have to pay to play). True crime discussions can go astray in some terrible ways, but they can also enlighten, inform, and lead to new story leads, angles, and background info.

The True Crime Report is an evolving publication, and I’m still a mercurial host who loves experimenting with narrative and prose. But I guess I’m back in the groove now and ready to see where this goes.

Previous articles about this case:

• Worcester Police Seek Karen Solomon in Connection With Cop Husband’s Murder

• The Hunt For Karen Solomon Continues

• Karen Solomon’s Missing Niche

• ‘Community Hero’ Karen Solomon Still Sought in Connection With Cop Husband’s Death

The following is as much a personal essay as a news report. Still, 21 years of professional training demands a proper lede: As of Saturday, August 22, Massachusetts authorities were still looking for Karen Rodwill Solomon, a 58-year-old writer and mental health advocate for first responders and their families. Worcester Police announced a warrant for her arrest Friday, charging her with “assault and battery with a dangerous weapon with serious bodily injury.”

Police Chief Paul Saucier also indicated investigators believe Karen killed her husband, Officer Kurt Solomon, age 57, with a “sharp object”—giving some credence to rumors spread by local independent journalists that Officer Solomon’s throat was slit.

Read on for a mea culpa from me and, more importantly, for insight into Karen Solomon provided by friends who reached out to the True Crime Report to talk about the case. If you want to skip me yammering and name-dropping and just read what I have to say about my conversations with these folks, click here.

The True Crime Industrial Complex

In July 2025, I wrote a post in this newsletter titled “I Hate True Crime.” Obviously, the title was a joke. Still, as a nonfiction genre, true crime really exploded between 2010—when I started branching out and covering a much wider variety of subjects after six years of nothing but crime left me burned out and depressed—and today. In the process, it evolved in ways that get on my nerves.

We’ve got what I think of as the “True Crime Industrial Complex.” Conventions are held around the world where you can buy murderabilia. Where smiling moms in sensible shoes can have photos made with cutouts of their “favorite” serial killers (ew). Events where podcasters get the full-blown celebrity treatment.

There are at least three all-crime cable channels that I know of, and of course, more podcasts than anyone could listen to in a year or more—many of them bad. 

All this blows my mind in too many ways. After all, I can recall an exchange with a bestselling true-crime author in 2009 in which he essentially wrote the genre’s eulogy. He’s a perceptive dude. At the time, I agreed with him.

My many objections to true crime as it exists today aside, I’m glad we were wrong. And so far, I’m glad I returned to covering the subject once I realized I’m physically and mentally healthy enough to handle it. I’m also more confident in my work, and my interest in the study of crime and the insight it provides into human nature has never faded.

But—as hard as I work to maintain careful objectivity about what I’m doing and to follow best practices learned from writing for major publications over the last two decades, I am still as prone as anyone to falling prey to “true crime brain.”

With my previous post about Karen Solomon, that was on full display.

I don’t know who coined the phrase, but a four-year-old Reddit thread provided a pretty good description of “true crime brain” while referencing domestic violence allegations against actor Johnny Depp:

…{I] came here to talk about the true crime brain rot. People have been brainwashed into thinking that every inconsistency is a clue or a conspiracy; every case has a shocking twist, etc., when the reality is that... sometimes the most ‘boring’, ‘predictable’ answer is the right one. Sometimes (often!) people’s memories are flawed, or they make mistakes, or they don’t quite know what they’re talking about.

“AHA! This photo is the same one but DOCTORED! Amber Heard EXPOSED!” No, Brenda, it’s just a boring old iPhone HDR duplicate. The ‘expert’ who claimed that it had been processed using image editing software failed to clarify that this is just the iPhone photos app. It’s not glamorous. It’s not shocking. There’s no dramatic twist. It’s all horribly, bleakly mundane. It’s just an aging movie star with substance issues abusing his wife, and people trying to sort through the messy detritus almost a decade later in search of what evidence remains.

I could’ve written something like the quote above, minus the references to Depp or Amber Heard. Even 20 to 25 years ago, this problem was endemic to true crime forums. I’ve always worked to avoid it.

Low-key fame or something like it

When I found the “Hugs For Karen” Facebook page, it triggered my version of “true crime brain.” I saw it through a personal, subjective lens.

After I started writing professionally in 2005 for sites like Court TV’s Crime Library, I began receiving invitations to guest on various cable news shows. I accepted every time. I was too bemused and sometimes too flattered to question what was happening, so I rolled with it. Meanwhile, I was also making friends with people like one of my idols, Ann Rule—author of the definitive book on Ted Bundy—the brilliant “Crime Lady” Sarah Weinman, and legendary True Crime Diary blogger Michelle McNamara, the late author of the bestselling I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, about the hunt for the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo. All that attention and exciting new connections had me on the receiving end of some hate and weirdly committed trolling.

I am not naive. I still think I should’ve expected that. I didn’t. And I didn’t expect to see how much work some people will put into giving you shit online.

I mean, in 2005 or 2006, someone made an entire Blogger-hosted site dedicated to ripping on me. I’ve always had a pretty good idea of who wrote it, as I eventually recognized the writer’s voice in emails and social media posts. But once I learned more about that person, I realized the whole thing was their problem, not mine. I didn’t call them out; I just felt sorry for them.

Though my main reaction to the blog was surprise laced with confusion, it put me on notice that such things do happen and upgraded my radar to better identify trolls, catfishing attempts, or straight-up cons. Occasionally, my radar was overclocked, and I sometimes felt a paranoia that only added to the burnout I mentioned earlier.

With that history, it might be easy to see why, when I first took a look at “Hugs For Karen,” I read the snark as hateful and spun stupid theories from that.

That’s what losing objectivity and succumbing to “true crime brain” will get you if you’re not careful. Another lesson learned.

Something else I’ve learned since Friday: When it came to “Hugs For Karen,” its subject was in on the joke.

“A wicked sense of humor.”

Three sources contacted me to talk about the case and their friend. Two requested anonymity, and I have no problem with that.

Over Messenger, Angela DeRose White revealed she’d been friends with Karen Solomon for more than 40 years.

Angela thought “[Solomon] had a wicked sense of humor.”

“[Karen and] I always poked fun at each other,” she wrote, “In fact, I called us frenemies because we loved to hate each other.”

Angela was adamant that “Hugs for Karen” was not created out of hate.

“It is a joke page,” she wrote. “Karen disliked hugging and selfies, and her friends knew it.” The page, according to Angela, was meant “to poke fun at her, and she was in on it.”

About the contrast between the crime that police say Solomon committed and her work in organizations like Blue (originally First) H.E.L.P., Angela could not “begin to comprehend what has happened.”

“I am devastated,” she told me, “that [Solomon’s] legacy with First H.E.L.P. will be tarnished by whatever horrors occurred in her home.”

Later in our conversation, Angela stated that “No one can believe this is happening.” She indicated that she’d spoken to many longtime friends, “some with tears,” and nearly everyone has been “completely speechless.”

I asked if Karen ever talked about her marriage to Kurt Solomon. “Karen never spoke much” about the relationship, she wrote. “Our lives intersected before we met our significant others, so when we got together, there was a little bit of catching up, but most of our time was spent giggling … about our college escapades.”

Regarding Kurt Solomon’s death, I admitted that much of what I’ve read of Karen’s own writing as well as writing about her gave me the impression she was the kind of person who would’ve called 911 and stayed if it was an accident. Angela thought so too. “Yes, she would own up to it.”

Her friend told me that Karen Solomon “never had a problem with throwing herself under the bus if needed.”

Source 2 made it clear that they had great respect for Karen Solomon. The source called Solomon “a phenomenal writer,” who wrote “from the rawest perspective.”

They called Solomon a “powerhouse,” but later in our conversation admitted that “sometimes even really good people do really terrible things.”

My second source said Karen Solomon never mentioned any “marital issues.”|

A third friend—Source 3—confirmed Solomon’s twisted sense of humor. According to this source, the Worcester native “loved” gags like the “Hugs” page and jokes in general.

About the Solomons’ marriage and this story’s effects on the broader first-responder community, this person admitted that there are families who know “what it’s like to be in … abusive situations and not be able to talk about it.”

They weren’t suggesting anything about the couple so much as agreeing that if there was domestic violence in the home, it was unlikely that even those close to them knew about it.

In our brief conversation, Source 3 put a fine point on sentiments shared by everyone I’ve heard from so far: “The mystery really is so mind fucking,” the source told me, “I seriously have no idea where to even begin thinking” about it.

Editor’s Note: The web versions of stories followed over several entries like this may be updated for clarity and correctness.

NOTE, 8/22/26: Look for a new post clarifying what this page was about later today. It still provides a lot of insight into Karen Solomon, but in a very different way.

Read my previous articles about this case:

• Worcester Police Seek Karen Solomon in Connection With Cop Husband’s Murder

• The Hunt For Karen Solomon Continues

• Karen Solomon’s Missing Niche

Police in Worcester, Massachusetts, are still searching for author and mental health advocate Karen (Rodwill) Solomon. She is being sought in connection with the August 18, 2026, death of her husband, Kurt, 57, a longtime Worcester PD patrolman. CBS News reported that an August 19 arrest warrant for Solomon, 58, says she is wanted “on charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon with serious bodily injury.”

MassLive noted that Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier did state that Kurt Solomon was likely killed with a “sharp object.”

Normally public areas near the Solomon home on Wildwood Avenue in the Webster Square neighborhood were closed Friday as the hunt continued on the ground and in the air. Chief Saucier reportedly said his department won’t “stop until we find her…We want closure for the Solomon family.”

A quick personal note: I’m grateful to both the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and Mark Henderson’s The 016 news site for linking to my earlier reports (see above) about Solomon’s online life, including my look at “The Missing Niche,” a blog she kept from 2013 to 2015. 

It’s understandable that the Solomon saga might be of regional or even national interest, as the public life Karen led and her work stood in such stark contrast to what she allegedly did. After all, the (initially unverified) claims that she slit Kurt Solomon’s throat point to a vicious, intensely personal homicide.

That said, some of the same sources who claimed Officer Solomon’s throat was cut also claimed days ago that Karen Solomon had been found, likely dead from suicide. While anyone who has ever studied domestic violence might agree that’s the likeliest scenario, she was still missing as of Friday night.

I’ve continued researching Karen Solomon’s online presence despite myself. It’s apparent that, at some point, she wiped some things. For example, if she still had an active Facebook profile when she vanished, it wasn’t under her married name or her maiden name, Rodwill.

But there’s still plenty to examine, like her Pinterest, which shared a title with her blog: The Missing Niche. 

If nothing else, Pinterest can be a fascinating map of someone’s general interests, a path through the things that occupied their minds in idle moments. As I looked at it, I wondered about the (unlikely) possibility that she had somehow gotten out of Worcester, possibly even traveled to another country.

Given the timing of the first 911 calls and the Ring videos showing her walking through the neighborhood in sleepwear and flip-flops (see above), it doesn’t seem that Solomon could have gotten far. But the Worcester Police play their investigations even closer to the vest than most departments, so at the moment there’s simply no telling what additional evidence they already have.

Just like a lot of middle-aged folks who can see the Valhalla of retirement looming on the horizon, Karen Solomon’s “Missing Niche” Pinterest account had a “Travel” board full of pins for destinations such as London, Los Angeles, and even Ecuador. I also found a message board post on a forum that matched one of her likely screen names and spoke of wishing she could retire there (I didn’t bookmark it because ADHD is the worst).

Still, Pinterest began to feel like a frustrating rabbit hole after a while, given my doubts about whether she was still alive, let alone in another state or country. 

So I turned back to Facebook, and that’s where I found a weird page—created in August 2016—devoted to her: “Hugs For Karen.”

A cursory glance suggested it might be a kind thing someone did for Solomon when she was having a hard time. But a closer look turned that impression on its head. The person who created “Hugs For Karen,” who described her as “a dear friend and sister,” and “a very busy person” who never “has a chance to get real hugs,” did not sound like a fan of Karen Rodwill Solomon.

Some posts included unflattering, obvious photoshops like the one above. One that caught my attention was the selfie posted at the beginning of this article.

The full version of the selfie had a caption that I strongly doubt was written by someone who had positive feelings for Karen Solomon.

The last update on the page was made in October 2016. The post just before that only underscored the feeling that this was a hate page, not the work of a friend:

With all the political stuff going on Karen would like everyone to know you can count on her for a hug. All you have to do is walk up to her and hug her like you never want to let go.

That is so Karen. It doesn’t matter how famous she is. She’s always thinking of the little people.

Mentions of the “Hugs For Karen” page by others were also enlightening. I screengrabbed one that stopped me cold. Published on October 5, 2016, it was a bizarre moment of snark that somehow seemed vaguely prophetic:

I’m not linking to the profile of the person who made the post, as I don’t yet know exactly how they were associated with Solomon. I was also hesitant to reach out because of the reasons Karen Solomon is in the news. I’m sure a lot of people, even haters, would rather not be involved.

The meme image read, “When I’m famous, everyone will say ‘I used to follow him on Facebook!’ or ‘I worked with that guy!’ or ‘I’m not surprised he took hostages!’”

The poster added, “I thought of Karen Rodwill Solomon.”

Hate pages or blogs aren’t that unusual. They come from genuine dislike, jealousy, and sometimes anger.

A few theories about this one:

• Karen Solomon created it herself. That’s the weirdest and—to me—unlikeliest possibility of all. But intelligent malignant narcissists are capable of going pretty far to paint themselves as victims if it suits their purposes. And we don’t know for sure if she was one of those.

• Someone jealous of Solomon’s profile in the law enforcement community as a writer and advocate, which was undoubtedly on the rise in 2016, wanted to take her down a notch by using a personal quirk they had noticed from knowing her.

• The selfie, different in character from any other photo I’ve seen of Karen Solomon, looks to me like the kind of thing a woman might send to a romantic interest. Which leads to the inevitable question: Did someone think Karen Solomon had her sights set on their partner?

The last theory is a reach—to the part of my brain that has worked in legit journalism for over twenty years, they all are, to one degree or another—but intuitively, it also feels a little closer to home.

Then again, for all we know, the creator of “Hugs For Karen” was extremely awkward and only sounded sarcastic but was truly sincere. Early posts seemed to indicate they were considering inviting her—but the overall sarcastic tone makes me doubt that. I feel like one safe conclusion I can make is that this wasn’t about feeling warm and fuzzy for the page’s subject.

I think the existence of “Hugs For Karen” points to some part of the story under the story. It also underscores a truth about domestic homicides—sometimes only the people involved could tell you what dominoes fell where in leading to such a personal catastrophe.

If I’m feeling motivated and energetic and like wearing my real journalist hat—and like I won’t mind being told to fuck off—I will reach out to the creator, who placed a Gmail address in plain view on “Hugs For Karen” for anyone to see. I encourage others to give it a shot, if so moved.

For now, this is a weird, unexpected wrinkle in a story that’s still being told.

As usual, I’ll update the web version of this edition of the newsletter as needed.

As of Wednesday night, August 19, 2026, police in Worcester, Massachusetts were still hunting for writer and activist Karen Solomon. She’s wanted in connection with her law enforcement officer husband Kurt’s allegedly violent death in the early morning hours of August 18th. The story has caught the attention of New England media because Solomon’s activism—she received a “Community Hero” award as recently as 2023— was dedicated to helping law enforcement officers and emergency workers cope with the personal, emotional, and psychological challenges of their jobs, adding a distinct twist to the case. How could someone who did so much for first responders end up in this position?

I’ve already written two editions of this newsletter about the hunt for Solomon:

• Worcester Police Seek Karen Solomon in Connection With Cop Husband’s Murder

• The Hunt For Karen Solomon Continues

One thing I missed: Today, several Massachusetts news outlets published Ring camera clips of Solomon from the morning she walked away from the couple’s home on Wildwood Avenue in Worcester’s Webster Square neighborhood, prompting police to issue warnings to be on the lookout for the Worcester native, stating that she might be armed and dangerous. I’ve linked the Boston Globe’s most recent article in the lede. The videos show a hunched woman in shorts and a t-shirt walking quickly and deliberately across the camera’s field of view

Since I published the second installment about her earlier, I didn’t expect to write a third. But I kept wondering why this still-unfolding case fascinates me.

There are many reasons. I love Worcester; I’ve lived in this funky city for 14 years, so I follow local news—which can tend toward the quirky and strange—very closely. It’s also unusual to get news alerts about a middle-class Gen X mom of two who might be “armed and dangerous.” Additionally, because statistics indicate women are rarely the aggressors in domestic violence homicides—if that is what happened—it’s natural to wonder what might have pushed Karen Solomon so far.

Another element of my fascination is the fact that Solomon was, at one time, a fairly prolific writer. She published two books about the personal and psychological challenges emergency service workers confront (you can find links in the previous articles) and multiple pieces for various police-centric websites, many on the same subjects.

In archived editions of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, I found multiple letters Solomon wrote to the editor, dating back to 1985. She sometimes expressed herself with precision and eloquence about hot button issues of the day.

And I kept thinking a pretty obvious thought to someone like me: Anyone that committed to writing likely had a blog at one point. And Karen Solomon was indeed a prolific blogger—for a while. She published her thoughts on a site she titled “The Missing Niche.” Early on, it bore a dry-witted subtitle: “Crazy with a side of decency.”

Captures began in 2013. Early posts read like a general interest blog, with recipes, pop culture commentary and snarky asides. Solomon apparently stopped posting in 2015. By then the focus was much more in line with the subjects of her books.

The blog’s standalone URL is no longer live, but it is still online as a Wordpress subdomain. Still, many posts were grabbed by the Internet Archive, and you can take a look if you follow the link in the preceding paragraph. I’ll be linking the archived entries.

In May 2015, she wrote an account of traveling to Washington DC during “Police Week.”

“My job was to sell books,” Solomon wrote, “I expected to be begging people to buy my book and hoped I didn’t embarrass the people who had believed in me enough to allow me to sign books.”

“What I found was incredible,” she continued, “People had purchased the book before I arrived so they’d get a copy in fear it would sell out. Others missed me at one event and took shuttles to locations 20 minutes away just to get my signature. Some people wanted their picture taken with me and, one day, there was a line of people awaiting my arrival. It was humbling beyond belief.”

She went on to detail encounters with the families of various fallen officers before concluding, “As I sat there and watched thousands of people mourn, I thought about the fallacy of perception. People believe that only a few officers are killed in the line of duty. The truth is, thousands more are collateral damage, and, as all the “survivor” hotels were booked solid, I knew that society doesn’t really know what these officers gave.”

An entry from October 2015 bore the ironic title, “You Are Not a Police Wife.”

“I am Karen Solomon, a funny, intelligent, passionate person,” she wrote. “I entered into a relationship legally called marriage with a person who still laughs at the same stupid joke for 14 years, who thinks I am smart, beautiful and successful. Someone who tolerates my nonsense and allows me to be myself without restriction. I am a police wife by default; it’s his chosen role in society.”

“Difficulties” in her marriage, according to Solomon, didn’t come from the nature of her husband Kurt’s job, but from issues like “poor communication, selfishness, misunderstanding one another, not allowing another person to grow…”

She continued, “I could come up with many more things that have nothing to do with my husband’s job and role in the community. The only way to fix your marriage is to fix those things.”

Solomon concluded by writing that if anyone was “wondering why I don’t present my marriage as my first and most important qualification, it’s because it’s not.” Her books, she wrote, “do not depend on my marriage and my marriage does not depend on them. I am more than a police wife and I am not going to peddle my relationship to sell books or gain validation. My validation comes from the trust that has been put into me, not my husband, not my relationship. Me. My ability to see what is there and call it what it is.”

In a post titled “The Missing Bullet” published in November 2015, Solomon wrote about visiting the family of a fallen police officer. It makes for a disturbing read today:

Eventually, you’ll have to enter his office, the one you know will be hard to see. The walls are covered with awards and accolades beginning years before he was shot. It’s a testament to a full and devoted career. If you stand silently and close your eyes, you may be able to feel the love and pride that came with each award. You will know that a small piece of that man is frozen in each moment in time. You’ll hold a bullet in your hand, hoping that you can’t feel the pain that comes with it. “Do you feel how heavy that is? I carried that in my body for years.”

A post Karen Solomon published in May of 2015 was also bizarre and unsettling, given the reason she’s in the news now. It was titled “A Bullet Found My Husband Today.”

She began, “As I watched the news of more officers down, I wondered what I would say if it were my family. THIS is what I would say….”

She then wrote a eulogy for Kurt Solomon, the man who would die at their home 11 years later.

He loved his family, his garden and his dogs. He was supposed to be with us for a much longer time.

Late nights he’d wake the boys so he could say goodnight. Nights off, he kept them up late to have extra time with him.

She portrayed her husband as a kind and companionable father to their sons and a man “who believed family came above all else.”

She continued:

How do I tell our children their Dad isn’t coming back? The man who is supposed to take them to the Red Sox next week is no longer here. There will never be someone hiding in the bushes pretending to be Sasquatch or playing wiffle ball in the backyard. He really was just an ordinary man.

He died an extraordinary death.

The post concluded with a few spare sentences:

He caught someone’s eye today, someone filled with rage and hate. That eye turned to a bullet and he was gone in a muzzle flash.

A bullet found my husband today.

An ordinary man, died an extraordinary death doing an extraordinary job.

Because I started doing this kind of reportage 21 years ago, when almost no one else even knew how or where to begin, it’s tempting to do as I did then and keep peeling the layers of this story.

But it’s still early, and I’ve provided plenty of links for others to follow and make their own conclusions.

The last time I checked Worcester and Greater Boston news, about 10 pm Eastern Time, Karen Solomon was still missing, presumably armed and dangerous and on the run. Independent journalists focused on Central Massachusetts claim they’ve heard from sources who say she committed suicide. If she is responsible for Kurt Solomon’s death, it’s highly likely she did take her own life—after all, domestic murder-suicides seem more common by the day, and it’s not unusual for them to come in clusters.

What led to Karen Solomon’s early morning walk captured on neighborhood Ring cameras may always stay between husband and wife, leaving only sad theories and troubling speculation in its wake.

I’ll update the web version of this newsletter edition if needed.

(Editor’s note: I removed a previous image of a couple because a reader confirmed my worry that, despite a surface resemblance, it was not of Kurt and Karen Solomon—it wasn’t labeled on Karen’s Instagram, and in working fast I didn’t pay close enough attention. I’ve also removed all the social media posts with the photo.)

According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, local reports from amateur news orgs were wrong. Worcester PD has yet to find out what happened to 58-year-old Karen Solomon.

Solomon, an activist for law enforcement mental healthcare and writer who covered issues facing emergency services personnel in general, is being sought in connection with the death of her husband Kurt, age 57. Kurt Solomon was a longtime Worcester patrolman. The couple lived together at 217 Wildwood Ave in the city’s Webster Square neighborhood.

Two local reports, one from NewsTalk New England, a Facebook-based news page, and the other from notorious Karen Read-affiliated blogger Aidan Kearney (AKA the Turtleboy guy), confidently stated late yesterday that Karen Solomon had been found dead, a likely suicide. Kearney implied he was getting this from inside sources, and there is plenty of evidence he does have inside sources in Worcester—but if he was being truthful, he may have had bad sources.

Still, the most logical assumption in domestic crimes is often that the killer will commit suicide. An American Psychiatric Association report states the connection between domestic violence and several types of mental health issues clearly:

Domestic violence is strongly associated with psychiatric problems, including increased risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior ... Exposure to chronic trauma contributes to emotional dysregulation, fear, and social isolation, which may further exacerbate mental health conditions.

I’m always hesitant to judge independent newsfolk, as that’s how I got my start 21 years ago. The Karen Read trial also proved people sometimes do reach out to give bloggers insider info on newsworthy cases—for better or worse. Still, between 2005 and today, I’ve acquired a lot of sometimes painful professional experience on the downsides of reporting unverified news.

Lesson learned.

Karen Solomon, though

My friend Andrea, who is married to a law enforcement officer (I went to high school with them both; he’s a good dude), commented on the Facebook post linking my first article yesterday: “Raises the question of what was going on behind closed doors that either one of them didn’t have resources to report safely.”

It certainly does raise that question.

In the United States in 2026, the public perception of law enforcement is generally not too favorable, to say the least. My political beliefs are to the left of many people covering true crime, and I share many criticisms of American law enforcement that typically seem to come from the left.

It appears as though Karen Solomon, at one time, had similar left-leaning beliefs about some other issues. She wasn’t afraid to express them. In 2005, using the maiden and married name hyphenate “Karen Rodwill-Solomon,” she wrote a pro-choice letter to the editor of the Telegram & Gazette about a controversial Planned Parenthood workshop held at College of the Holy Cross—a noted Catholic institution.

“For every person who protests pro-choice and Planned Parenthood,” Solomon wrote, “there are three children in Department of Social Services custody awaiting homes and more being abused or neglected every minute.”

“Rather than espouse negative, meaningless crusades,” she continued, “there are truly amazing people who advocate and care for these children without judgment. Put your energy where your outrage should be, be a mentor, or take in these children that you so desperately want to give life to and provide a good loving home. I have and I’m proud to be pro-choice.”

I’m not seeking to influence anyone who disagrees with her views against her nor am I trying to make her seem sympathetic to those who agree—I’m only pointing out one of the many reasons why this still-unfolding story is so strange. In essence, what Solomon is accused of doing—Kearney (again, consider the source) reported she’d slit her husband’s throat, a particularly violent, personal attack, if true—seems strikingly uncharacteristic.

Who was Karen Solomon?

Between 2013 and 2018 Solomon semi-regularly updated her Instagram, screen name KarenSol217. It’s a lot like the Instagram profiles of a million other Gen X moms. Photos of herself, her family and holiday events (see the Halloween image above) and in later years, images relevant to her support of mental healthcare for people working in emergency services. The last two posts were screengrabs listing dates of known police officer suicides, the final one bearing the logo of the organization she co-founded, BlueHelp. (Originally FirstHelp.)

Her bio on the BlueHelp “About” page as it appeared about seven years ago is enough to underscore why the crime she allegedly committed is so shocking:

…Karen understands today’s challenges and puts her knowledge to work on behalf of the entire profession. She is the co-Founder of Blue H.E.L.P. and the creator of www.1sthelp.net. Karen is a passionate advocate for suicide prevention and has chosen to bring that intensity to law enforcement.

Since 2014, Karen has been giving a voice to the thousands of officers in the field who can’t or won’t speak out. She has interviewed hundreds of law enforcement officers and their families to gain insight into trauma, stress and emotional survival. Bringing the human side of the profession to the forefront is her specialty. Her books Hearts Beneath the Badge and The Price They Pay are used in citizen’s academies throughout the country and endorsed by law enforcement leadership. Karen’s articles can be found on Calibre Press, PoliceOne, LawOfficer and Law Enforcement Today…

Solomon’s online presence seemed to diminish about two years ago. In 2024 she appeared on a 40-minute podcast discussing the impact of suicide on first responder families and talked about prevention and resilience training. With host Conrad Weaver, she also touched on the stigma surrounding mental health and suicide in first responder communities.

Near the end of the podcast, she also talked about her work on The Heroes Memorial project, which aimed to create a monument and wall of service not unlike the Vietnam Memorial to honor first responders who committed suicide.

Previously, in 2023, Solomon even received a “Community Hero” award from the Greg Hill Foundation, an organization devoted to “the immediate needs of families that had been touched by tragedy.”

Archived newspaper notices indicate that Karen Solomon’s marriage to Kurt was at least her second. She first married Richard Piergustavo on August 18, 1990—exactly 36 years before she allegedly killed her husband Kurt in Worcester. A divorce announcement appeared in the paper four years later.

Then in 1997 the Syracuse New York Herald-Journal published an engagement announcement for Karen Rodwill of Worcester, Mass. and Stephen Welch, of Syracuse—but I couldn’t find a marriage notice.

What about Kurt?

As for Kurt S. Solomon, he, like many who work in law enforcement, seemed to keep a low profile online. The New England Police Benevolent Association published a Facebook post dedicated to him on August 18 which read in part:

The New England Police Benevolent Association extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends and fellow officers of Worcester Police Officer Kurt Solomon, a 31-year veteran of the Worcester Police Department and valued member of the NEPBA family.

Officer Solomon dedicated more than three decades of his life to serving the City of Worcester. Throughout his distinguished career, he earned the respect of those who served alongside him and was known as an incredibly dependable officer, colleague and friend…

In local papers most mentions of Solomon are related to cases where he made arrests or had some kind of investigative role.

There was a foreclosure notice naming Kurt Solomon on the Wildwood Avenue property published in the Telegram & Gazette in October 2010, which stated that the mortgagee had “breached” conditions of the loan—but the couple must have gotten through that, since they were living there when Officer Solomon died. Still, it’s the kind of thing that would undoubtedly cause stress in any relationship. Another notice was filed two years later asking that Solomon prove he was qualified to receive a service member’s mortgage, but again, it seems obvious the Solomons managed to deal with these hurdles.

In the end…

If there was domestic violence in the Solomon’s relationship, it’s likely to have gone unreported. As this 2016 report pointed out, “Victims of domestic violence perpetrated by law enforcement officers face unique barriers that may lead to increased safety risks and decreased access to resources for seeking assistance (Wetendorf & Davis, 2003).”

After all, the report continued, if the abuser is the LEO, a victim who turns “to law enforcement for help s/he is most likely contacting someone who knows her/his abuser, making it difficult to pursue legal action against the perpetrator-officer.”

And while situations where the woman is the abuser are less common, they do occur. A study in the Journal of Community Psychology, published in 2010, stated that men “are reluctant to seek help mainly because of shame and embarrassment.”

“Men who have been assaulted by their intimate partners, either in same sex partner or heterosexual relationships, do not want to disclose their problems to avoid additional problems. Although some may relate abuse to their own weaknesses, others may blame their injuries on their own mistakes such as a careless fall or other accidents.” I’d guess that shame and embarrassment would’ve been even more intense for a working cop.

Kurt and Karen Solomon had two children. It’s hard for any parent to wrap their minds around a crime in which a mother or father is responsible for making their kids orphans. Whatever led to Kurt Solomon’s death and Karen’s disappearance must have been truly dramatic.

Again, I’ll update the web version of this as new information becomes available.

Update: NewsTalk New England reported at 3:00 pm on August 18, 2026, that Karen Solomon has been found dead in woods near her home. As of Tuesday night, no major outlets have confirmed this yet.

Earlier: Police in my city, Worcester, Massachusetts, are currently seeking 58-year-old Karen Solomon. They believe she may be armed and dangerous.

From CBS Boston:

Worcester police said in a social media post Tuesday morning that the 58-year-old Solomon was last seen walking toward Westcott Street.

“There is concern she may be armed,” police wrote on Facebook. “Please contact the Worcester police if you see her.”

The same report goes on to say Solomon is wanted in connection with the death of a man at a home on Wildwood Avenue. She was last seen wearing pajama bottoms and a tank top.

It then includes this:

Sources told WBZ-TV that the deceased male is a Worcester police officer.

WBZ-TV’s Louisa Moller interviewed Karen Solomon back in 2016 about her efforts to develop an app for police officers who are in crisis. She also wrote a book called “Hearts Beneath The Badge,” detailing good deeds performed by law enforcement.

According to the 2016 interview, Solomon ran an organization called First Help, which was described on CauseIQ as supporting “US first responders with education services, training sessions, and a family retreat to reduce mental health stigma.”

Karen Solomon also published a book meant to help humanize people working in law enforcement: Hearts Beneath the Badge. The Amazon description reads in part:

Hearts Beneath the Badge is a unique compilation of interviews with officers across the country. It’s not about the crimes they witness or the judgment they face; it’s about them – Damien, Danny, Frances, Ken, Pamela, Brian, and more. Their thoughts, their fears, their proud moments and their heartbreak.

Online records for Blue Help, another organization associated with Karen Solomon (Edit: The same organization, Solomon later changed the name), gave a street address of 217 Wildwood Ave. in Worcester. That was the same address for police officer Kurt Solomon. Worcester blogger Aidan “Turtleboy” Kearney, notorious for his close involvement with the Karen Read case, said in an X post that Solomon, “the woman Worcester Police are looking for in the Wildwood Ave area, murdered her Worcester Police Officer husband Kurt Solomon last night after slitting his throat.”

In a separate Facebook post, Kearney said that police sources believe Solomon may have committed suicide.

1st Help

The 1stHelp.net website now appears to be a spammy, junk site, but it looks like Karen Solomon authored the “About” page on the archived version.

“When I began writing about law enforcement in 2014,” Solomon wrote, “I had no idea where it would take me. There was no way for me to know that I would listen to officers and their families choke back sobs while others wept openly telling me their stories. No idea that I would lose sleep, have panic attacks and nightmares. No idea that I would learn so many of them don’t know where to find help.”

After publishing Hearts Beneath the Badge in 2014, Solomon co-wrote The Price They Pay with former police officer Jeffrey McGill.

“The Price They Pay,” the Amazon “About” blurb read, “will attempt to return to the modern police officer something they have been lacking for a long time – humanity.”

Solomon wasn’t just publishing niche books about the mental health of people in emergency services—in 2020 she testified on the same subject for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. That year she was also name-checked by Dr. Phil McGraw on Facebook (the link to McGraw’s interview is no longer active).

In 2024 Solomon guested on the First Responder Wellness Podcast. In a 40-minute conversation with host Conrad Weaver she mentioned her husband had been a police officer for more than 20 years and that her brother-in-law was a firefighter.

It’s too easy to find terrible ironies throughout the conversation—if she is guilty of the alleged crime as it has been reported so far—but one part of her talk with Weaver stuck out. They were discussing honoring the fallen and the extremely complex public view of law enforcement as well as society’s perspective on suicide.

Solomon said in part, “We’re not perfect. No one’s perfect…but on some level, we need to treat every death the same. You know it’s just that—that’s the problem. Somebody still lost their dad their mother their sister their brother their child uh and and to somehow make it different because it was suicide.”

As of 2:30 on August 18th, police were still searching for Karen Solomon. I’ll update the web version of this newsletter at TrueCrimeReport.substack.com as new information becomes available.

(Read Part I here. Note: If you’re reading this in a web browser, it’s been slightly edited from the version sent out in my newsletter.)

An armed shadow detached itself from the dark and approached 39-year-old grocer Joseph Mozynski’s parked car in Queens. It was the night of June 11, 1930, and the mystery man—described as strange-looking, with “fish eyes” and a German accent—shot Mozynski dead. Beside him sat 19-year-old Catherine May. She was spared. May later told the police that the killer acted with odd civility, leading her away and handing her a cryptic note. However, she also claimed at one point that he “molested” her.

Five days later, former champion swimmer and radio mechanic (or salesman, according to one report) Noel Sowley, 26, was murdered under strikingly similar circumstances while parked with Elizabeth “Betty” Ring, age 20. The same gun was used in both killings. Taunting letters to the press and police followed, introducing “3-X, the Man Behind the Gun,” who claimed to serve a secret international organization hunting for stolen documents.

The story sounded like lurid pulp fiction, and the thirsty tabloids seized on it. But I believe the killer may have borrowed the name 3X—sometimes published as “Mr. 3-X”—from an ordinary source. Two months earlier, the United States had begun the 1930 Census, classifying American workers through an alphanumeric system. In its occupation index, 3X had a specific meaning: cement finisher. Other fragments in the killer’s messages also appear in that system. As far as I can tell, this detail may have gone unnoticed for nearly a century.

Was the mystery rooted in a fantasy world of foreign spies? I’m sure the overheated fiction of the day played a role. But I think this unsolved case was also, at least in part, about the chaos of a society on the precipice of near-collapse during the Great Depression.

The unwritten rules of 21st-century true crime say this is where I should hyperbolically claim I’ve “solved the case”—perhaps stretching it into a six-episode podcast complete with period music and sound effects.

No. I do not think I’ve solved the case. But what I found is worth telling.

I first encountered the story of 3X in Michael Newton’s The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (2006) and was struck by a surface resemblance to the later, much better-known Zodiac killer: the arch letters, the coded messages, the threats of additional deaths. I wrote about 3X on my Obsessions & Digressions Substack in 2021 and promised a second installment. Lack of engagement and the pandemic’s general darkness kept me from finishing it then. This is that follow-up.

Obsessions and Digressions

3X: The Man Behind the Gun Part I

Catherine…

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5 years ago · 2 likes · Steve Huff

The short version of the first article: After Mozynski was killed, his assailant allegedly escorted May by bus toward Flushing and gave her a folded note stamped in red with her dead lover’s name and a circled 3. A farmhand found Mozynski’s car on a secluded Queens road, along with May’s coat, ginger-ale bottles, and a bullet; Mozynski’s body lay in a nearby ditch. He had said he was making deliveries. Instead, he was meeting May, his former landlord’s daughter. The day after the body was found, the New York Evening Journal received a coded letter on pink stationery referring to missing papers and warning of more mayhem.

Then Noel Sowley was murdered.

The New York Times described the 26-year-old as a radio mechanic employed by Cable Radio Tube Corporation. He was found in his coupe on a lonely Creedmoor Lane with two bullets in his left temple. In his pocket was a clipping about the Mozynski murder, marked in pencil: “Here’s how.” Sowley, born in the West Indies, had also been a noted competitive swimmer and diver.

The Daily News called the killer the “Lovers’ Lane Fiend” and Sowley “a rich dilettante.” Its supposed account from Betty Ring reads like tabloid embellishment, hardly unusual in a New York press culture shaped by yellow journalism. In it, Ring said a shadow approached the car, mumbling about “the papers,” shot Sowley, and searched his pockets until he found something resembling an electric bill. “That’s it,” the killer reportedly said.

Again, the stranger escorted the surviving woman to public transportation. Again, he vanished.

The Daily News also published an apparent letter from the killer, written in the same spiky script seen in messages sent to other papers:

You have not published the code message sent you—too bad. For your information there is more work for the police now. Tonight at 10 o’clock Sowley was bumped off near Floral Park ... Thirteen more men and women go the same way if they do not return two of the missing papers.

A postscript warned: “I advise you to publish the code message, or tomorrow night one more will go. On June 18 at 9 P.M. I will be at College Point to get W.R. V-8.”

Mozynski and Sowley were the killer’s only confirmed victims. Similar robberies occurred around that time, some violent, and 3X threatened further deaths, but there is no proof he killed anyone else.

Another letter pointedly exonerated Catherine May, whom police initially held on bond, reported as either $5,000 or $50,000 (depending on the source), after deciding her story changed too often. It called Mozynski “a dirty rat,” accused him of keeping company with six women and two girls, ages 14 and 15, and claimed he had possessed documents belonging to a “secret international order.” The writer demanded the return of NYX-26-73, NJ 4-3-44 and Philadelphia XV 346, threatening that 14 of Mozynski’s friends would otherwise “join him.” It ended with the headline-ready moniker:

3X, The Man Behind the Gun

The message did several things. It directed attention away from May, wrapped the crime in grandiose international intrigue, and, notably, painted Mozynski as a sexual predator. Relatedly: A 1925 New York State Census places Mozynski and the May family in the same building when she was about 13; her name appears there as “Katharine.” I found the May family again in the 1930 federal census.

The longest and strangest letter was sent to the Journal on June 19. I could not locate the earliest archival record of its original publication, but the story went out over the wires. The letter began:

Dear Sir: W. R. V8 of C. P. has returned the Philadelphia XV346 to me tonight after reading your paper--also 37,000 dollars of the black mail money--thanks to God--if I may use his name.

It listed people supposedly spared—W.R. VS, S 12, K 2, Z 3, M 6 and XX V—then named seven still marked for death: X-14, X-7, X-21, X-1, Y-2, Y-4 and L-6. “All initials withheld,” the writer explained, because they would be “too much of a clew (archaic spelling of ‘clue’ ~ SH)” for the “super detectives of Bayside.”

More coded language followed:

Mozinsky’s number was R-9.

Sowley’s number was X-4.

Please print this final message to the seven men left on the death list:

N. J. CCK-2-33-VV 3-K-RQS-4MLT-R. P. 49-6.

3X cast himself as a reluctant assassin doing an unpleasant job. He said May and Ring had been spared because of their courage, insisted again on May’s innocence, and claimed he had burned bloodstained envelopes addressed to her to protect her. Her coat, of course, was the clue that had led police to her.

The writer also claimed Sowley had been followed by accomplices called A2, M2, and M5, while assigning Mozynski and Sowley the numbers R9 and X4. Both men were described as secretive “ladies’ men” involved in an easy-money operation. Mozynski, the letter alleged, kept money under a false name at a Flushing bank.

On June 21, 3X declared the spree over. TIME magazine, writing about what some papers called the “Petterkiller,” quoted the message’s purported explanation of the symbols:

The last document, NJ 4-3-44 returned to us. . . . MY MISSION IS ENDED. The first sign of this signature means A, the supreme tribunal of the order. The second, V, its special agent. The two combined (forming a diamond) form the Red Diamond of Russia, a secret order all over the world. . . . Quiet your people and tell them 3X is no more.

These were not the only messages. For a while, 3X could not shut up. One even announced that X8W-9, identified as Harold Bridenbach, lay dead on Boston Road. Police found a similarly named Harold Breidenbach alive and well and presumably puzzled by their visit.

The 3X mystery is a labyrinth. Halfway through researching this article, I realized I will need to write a third installment—and I won’t wait five years to get it out.

But here is why I wrote this one: I think I have pinned down the possible sources of the codes. I doubt they conceal a coherent international conspiracy. They look more like they may have been a smokescreen cobbled together, Keyser Söze-style, from the letter writer’s immediate environment.

The SS Ben Hecht, by Stephen Silver

After 30 years, ’The Usual Suspects’ still has us asking what really happened

What really happened at the end of The Usual Suspects? I’ve probably seen the movie 20 times in the last 30 years, including once again this week, but I’m still not entirely certain about the answer to that question…

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a year ago · 5 likes · Stephen Silver

In April 1930, the decennial U.S. Census began. More than 100,000 temporary workers set about creating an enormous snapshot of American life. Everyone knows about enumerators, those intrepid people schlepping door to door. But behind them stood an administrative apparatus—and those were the staffers who had to learn a new language of letters and numbers.

An article published in 2002 about working in the 1930 Census described how the offices were set up and a typical staff makeup:

[Census] supervisors were also authorized to appoint an office staff. Usually hired in February or March 1930, the office staff consisted of two office supervisors, a stenographer, and up to ten clerical workers. Supervisory personnel earned between $4.00 and $6.00 a day; stenographers were paid $5.00 a day.

Once the enumerators had done their job, these office staffers had to enter data, such as occupation codes (link goes to the PDF of the Alphabetical Index of Occupations for the 1930 Census).

Here’s a simple, sloppy graphic done in Notes connecting possible occupation codes to 3X communications:

At least one letter was on pink paper. You could likely find that in Census offices as well. From page 9 of the 1930 Instructions to Enumerators manual (PDF):

49. Entries on the schedule. —The illustrative example (Form 15-3b, printed on pink paper) shows the manner in which the entries upon the schedule should be made. These entries should be made at the time of the enumeration, and the recopying of schedules should be avoided so far as possible.

Emphasis mine.

If I’m correct about this, I’m also not sure the letter-writer confined their inspiration to random occupation codes. Structurally, there’s reason to believe the letter-writer was at least familiar with stenography—the practice of writing in shorthand.

At the time, stenographers typically learned Gregg Shorthand; it was even offered as a class in many US high schools. Gregg competed with Pitman. Both were handwriting systems, which Britannica describes as “a system for rapid writing that uses symbols or abbreviations for letters, words, or phrases.”

After a lot of mind-numbing research, I decided that if my theory about shorthand was correct, the writer was most likely familiar with what was, at the time, a new system, introduced in 1924—Emma Dearborn’s “Speedwriting.”

Dearborn’s system was designed for handwriting or typewriter use. Here are the ways it seems to line up with 3X letters:

• Compressed clusters: Dearborn’s Speedwriting removed predictable vowels and sounds. This would produce strings similar to ADCM, DQR, or WR.

• Letters plus numbers: Like the occupation codes, Speedwriting sometimes involved alphanumeric combinations, such as in A2, M5, V-8, and X-4.

• Capitalization: Capital letters could represent sounds or longer letter groups in Speedwriting; the 3X writer appeared to use capitals systematically.

• Personal abbreviations: Speedwriting encouraged special formats for names, places, and occupational terms, which could explain abbreviations such as NY, PA, C.P., and maybe even PHILADA—an abbreviation used in one message for Philadelphia.

It’s possible that 3X was at least familiar with Speedwriting and incorporated that knowledge in writing the letters, combining shorthand compression with the Census codes—to both deflect and add confusion to the mix. Stenographic practice, in other words, may have informed the method of construction.

So what, then? An overworked Census employee, driven into delusion by the volume of work even as the world was falling apart at the seams? The grandiosity in the letters smacks of a paranoid mind that reached its breaking point. Maybe.

Or maybe it’s much more straightforward.

At the time of the murders, Catherine May and Betty Ring both had clerical jobs. Ring’s occupation was listed as “bookkeeper” in the 1930 Census.

Catherine May was a “stenographer.”

In his own write-up about this case, author Jason Roberts mentions “The Catherine May Theory,” which was that she masterminded the whole thing. “What if May, angry at Mozynski over a failed affair,” Roberts writes, “arranged the killing with an accomplice? The gunman shoots Mozynski, but May, rattled, flees, accidentally leaving behind her coat—the very clue that led police to her. If she hadn’t, would anyone have known she was there at all?”

I’d noticed the possible Census link in the letters years ago; I don’t remember how (though my wife, Dr. Dana Swier Huff, being a brilliant genealogist—in addition to just being brilliant in general—had an influence). But finding out Catherine May’s profession and confirming it through old news reports and public records felt like a revelation.

And that’s why there will be a Part III, in which I do my best to take a closer look at the two known survivors of 3X attacks, Catherine/Katharine May and Elizabeth “Betty” Ring.

I often think about Russell and Shirley Dermond. The still-unsolved mystery of the couple’s murder began in 2014. At the time, I had begun to worry about how vulnerable my elderly parents were in their large suburban home in Tennessee. I knew my fear wasn’t particularly rational, but that didn’t stop me from obsessing over the details of what happened to the Dermonds.

On Tuesday, May 6 that year, a 911 call from friends brought police to the Dermonds’ Georgia home in the upscale Reynolds Great Waters gated community on the shores of Lake Oconee, about a 90-minute drive from Atlanta. Investigators found 88-year-old Russell’s decapitated body in the garage. Shirley, age 87, was missing.

Fishermen found Shirley Dermond in the lake just over a week later. She had died from blunt force trauma to the head. Russell’s head was never found.

It’s been suggested since then that the decapitation was practical from a killer’s perspective. Gunpowder residue on his shirt suggested that Russell Dermond died from a gunshot. If the bullet didn’t exit, making sure his head wasn’t found meant making sure the bullet wasn’t recovered.

The Dermonds’ family was investigated, and, as CBS News reported earlier this year, authorities didn’t find any reason to think the adult children had a role in their parents’ murders. It wasn’t the first tragedy to hit the family, either—the couple’s son Mark had been killed during a drug deal in Atlanta 14 years earlier. Investigators from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI don’t believe there was a connection there, either.

While nothing was taken from the home, Sheriff Howard Sills has said he believes there were at least two killers, and they were motivated by money. That’s the most logical conclusion based on the usual motivations behind similar crimes.

Yet, in the time I’ve spent looking back through reports on the case, I’ve discovered other murders of elderly couples in the last twenty-one years that remain unsolved.

I’m not suggesting a link, like a single serial killer or a pair of killers. There have been serial murderers in the past who targeted the elderly, like Dana Sue Gray; those kinds of crimes and criminals are rare [PDF] and tend to occur within regions, and these cases are from all over the country (though Israel Keyes proved there are killers who will travel huge distances to avoid detection). It’s possible that many true crime podcasters or vloggers might want to go there immediately to get attention to the cases. I understand the temptation, and my pattern-finding brain goes there, but it feels irresponsible at this point. 

Still, in addition to remaining unsolved, there are commonalities in these five cases worth pointing out. (Note: This is in no way intended to be a thorough list.)

Albert and Joan Musalo — Reno, Nevada, March 28, 2006

Like the Dermonds, Albert and Joan Musalo, 75 and 74, lived in a gated community—the Montrêux Golf & Country Club. Their phone lines were cut, but otherwise, as with the Dermonds, there was no sign of forced entry and nothing of significant value was stolen. Mud was tracked into the house, and there were footprints in the snow outside. Investigators also found unidentified male DNA in the home. Albert was a retired Pan Am flight engineer, and Joan had worked as an elementary school teacher; they were wealthy, but reports in the Reno Gazette-Journal indicated they didn’t lead a “flashy” lifestyle. No suspect or motive has been publicly identified, and there is a $35,000 reward for information leading to their killer.

Bill and Peggy Stephenson — Florence, Kentucky, 2011

All these crimes are strange, but none more bizarre than the few known details about the murders of Bill and Peggy Stephenson, both 74 when they died. Bill ran a ministry catering to truck drivers from the Trucker’s Chapel at a TA truck stop in Florence. Peggy was a church organist. The couple was beaten and stabbed to death, and investigators found evidence that their killer stayed in the Stephensons’ condo for hours, wounding one of them again after they were dead. In a podcast interview given in 2020, investigator Coy Cox said, “There wasn’t one room in that house that wasn’t staged.” He also indicated that the couple’s killer or killers left a message at the scene, but would not provide further details. Police have said they believe the Stephensons knew their killers, because—as in the Dermond and Musalo murders—there was no forced entry. In fact, the couple would have likely buzzed the killers in.

A relative was initially considered a viable suspect, but was later ruled out. Also, as with the Musalos, police recovered unknown male DNA.

John and Geraldine “Geri” Magee — Andover, Massachusetts, 2011

Housing developer John Magee, 69, and his wife Geri, 67, were found shot to death inside their Andover estate on December 14, 2011. The bullets were fired at close range, likely from an older .45-caliber gun. Here, one of the odd underlying patterns in these cases repeats: no signs of forced entry, nothing stolen. Prior to the discovery of their bodies, the Magees’ Lexus was found 20 miles away in Boston, on fire. This time, there was a witness who said they saw a man walking away from the vehicle. There were hints and allegations of possible mob connections related to John’s work, but no evidence ever supported that theory. Cold Case New England has a thorough breakdown of the case here.

Jessie and Virginia “Ginny” Seward — Sheridan, Michigan, 2024

Unlike the Dermonds, Musalos, and Magees, Jessie Seward, 81, and his wife, Ginny, 80, did not have much money. As their stepdaughter said in an interview with WOOD TV, "I’m like, OK, you’ve got two people in their 80s, still working. Does that tell you that they probably weren’t rich people? They weren’t.”

The couple was found shot to death inside their rural home on June 26, 2024. Investigators think they’d been dead for two days. The Sewards didn’t show up for a family gathering, so they were naturally found by concerned relatives. Michigan State Police searched their property and dove into nearby bodies of water in search of evidence—but authorities have released little about what, if anything, they recovered. There has been no public determination as to the nature of the killings—whether they were targeted, random, or part of a burglary gone wrong. No motive or suspect has been announced.

It’s worth repeating that I am not saying, or even suggesting, that these are all the work of a single killer or pair of killers. Still, some patterns are worth singling out: the couples ranged in age from their 60s to their late 80s. All of them lived independently, not in assisted living. Their lives appeared stable, with regular routines and no publicly obvious exposure to violent crime.

All were attacked in or near their homes, and those homes provided substantial privacy:

• The Musalos and Dermonds lived in gated communities.

• The Magees lived on a large private estate.

• The Sewards were in a rural area.

• The Stephensons lived in a condominium where visitors had to be buzzed in.

Another detail that bears repeating: With the Musalos, Magees, and Dermonds, there was no forced entry. This could mean a lot of things, but one that occurs to me immediately is that, for whatever reason, they didn’t feel threatened, at least not at first. That, or in settings where safety is assumed, it’s not unheard of for people to forget to lock their doors.

Socially, none of these elderly couples was isolated. They all had family who cared about them, as well as church, business, or community connections. Still, they were all private enough that it’s been tough to find witnesses.

The couples all had the closed circuit of each other, and the murder of both left investigators with no witness to the danger that had entered their lives.

Deeper or more baroque theories are for others to spin right now. To me, the most surprising thing is that even with diligent investigators involved, these murders remain unsolved. Add to that the fact that there is DNA in at least two cases but no matches, indicating possible perpetrator(s) who have never been in the penal system.

These are likely five separate mysteries. Whatever the truth, that means five extended families waiting for answers that sometimes seem impossible to find.

You’re a woman alone, jogging down a lovely rail trail in Natick, Massachusetts, and you see a man in a top hat, snow-white, mime-like makeup, and a full suit on an 80-plus-degree day. That’s disturbing enough, but he approaches, cocking his head strangely, like a dog hearing an odd sound—or a cat studying its prey. He is carrying a cane, which he pounds on the gravel as he nears.

@emmatingley1Please trust your instincts. Share your location with someone you trust, and never ignore that feeling when something doesn’t seem right. Stay safe. ❤️

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This nightmare, worthy of David Lynch, actually happened. That’s according to reports about the recent arrest of a 29-year-old unhoused Framingham man named Hernan Asael Villagran Lux on criminal harassment charges. To be clear up front: He has not been accused of any overtly violent crime.

What prosecutors say he did was a step up in creepiness from merely acting weird toward people on a trail: Lux allegedly stripped down to his underwear, soaked himself in cooking oil, and started working out near three women employed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). They asked him to move, but he did not.

Reports about Lux had me wondering where the line between “mentally ill eccentric causing problems because he’s unmedicated” and criminally predatory behavior really lies.

I’ll take some personal privilege here and explain why such a seemingly minor but strange case captured my attention. For one thing, I had already been reading about him in the Natick, Mass. subreddit when the weirdness of the whole thing went national after his arrest. I’ll get to that in a moment. For another, my late brother David (he committed suicide in 2000) was gravely mentally ill. I still don’t know a lot about his psychotic breaks, but he had several in the late 1980s and 1990s. 

I do know that at least one of David’s breakdowns was very public and surely a traumatic experience for several people who witnessed it. He was a truck driver, and on one of his hauls across Tennessee, his mania spiraled into psychosis while he was at a truck stop on (or near) Monteagle Mountain. He stripped naked and ran around throwing cash at people. State troopers arrived, and my brother was sitting in the cab of his truck with his Swiss Army knife open and pressed to his throat. He explained that the silver cross logo on the red knife handle was “the cross of Jesus” and would protect him. Fortunately, the law enforcement who responded must have had training in recognizing the difference between a dangerous man in a potentially violent spiral and a mentally ill man in a state of psychosis, and my brother was hospitalized. 

So naturally, I wanted to know more about what was going on with Hernan Villagran, because signs that mental illness may be involved in any newsworthy case always make me think of David.

Citing the Boston Fox affiliate, People magazine reported that Lux was “charged with three counts of criminal harassment, to which he has pleaded not guilty.” Prosecutor Andrew Mange reportedly explained that other women apart from the DCR workers have described “an extensive number of contacts with the defendant involving him staring at them, smiling in what they describe as ‘a really unnerving and frankly terrifying manner.’”

Lux passed out in court while Mange was speaking. He was transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

Lux apparently preferred harassing women on the Cochituate (pronounced “ko-CHITCH-you-it”) Rail Trail near the border between Framingham and Natick. Boston’s NBC affiliate interviewed several people who had seen him. One woman, Tracy Qiu, told the outlet that Lux “was just kind of by the bushes, by the water, so that was a little weird that he was just kind of off the path, kind of stumbling around the bushes by himself…And that was when it was starting to get a little darker, so I got a little spooked.”

Framingham UnFiltered, a Facebook group dedicated to “hyperlocal” news coverage (though the page motto says, “Definitely not news!”), was discussing Lux before his arrest. In a post published on July 18, the page editor began with a tip from a reader:

“There’s a man who supposedly lives on the rail trail behind Home Depot in Natick. He wears white face paint with a top hat and suit (...) He has been seen wearing nothing but his briefs along the trail, but that’s not the point. The point is this man has been following women along the trail and at other local establishments, doing creepy things such as tapping his cane in front of them, manically laughing at them, cocking his head at them like a ghoul, or just cornering them. People have reported that he brushes up against them. What do you guys think? Any experience with Hernan, the Top Hat Ghost of the Rail Trail?”

The Facebook post went on to note the many mentions of Lux in various subreddits and listed some of his alternative nicknames: “‘Top Hat Ghost’ and ‘Ghost Man’ to the ‘Avatar of Natick.’”

Commenters on that post offered a variety of reactions, from accounts of seeing him: “He stares and smiles creepily. But he’s never actually said anything to me… he just casually walks on his way,” to people expressing sympathy: “I feel bad for this guy. If you look at his social media, it’s clear he has a mental health problem, possibly psychosis. I hope that he’s able to get help.”

A commenter going by “Linares Naoemi” claimed she’d known Lux for some time. “[He’s] like this because of all the drugs he’s used—he became a drug addict,” she wrote. “He didn't use to be this way. He was a hardworking person who focused entirely on his job, but he got into drugs, and that’s why he’s like this now. It’s possible that all the drug use is causing mental health issues, but he wasn't like that before; he was a very calm, hardworking person.”

She also posted a video of a man she said was Lux (see still above; can’t embed Facebook videos on Substack). The man in the footage isn’t wearing makeup, but he does appear to have the same facial features. Otherwise, he looks like any young guy you might pass on the street in a Massachusetts town on any given day.

I noted this comment because of the mention of drugs; again, I thought of my brother. Illegal stimulants were like ripping a scab off a deep cut in his mind, worsening his bipolar disorder.

Much of the online commentary about Lux, both before and after his arrest, has been surprisingly sympathetic. A commenter on the first Framingham UnFiltered post voiced a typical sentiment: “This guy literally never bothers anyone, why draw attention to him?”

Well, he was bothering people if the charges against him prove true. And a post made two days ago in the Framingham group claimed he wasn’t just facing allegations of harassment:

The case, Commonwealth v. Villagran Lux, Hernan Asael (2687CR000383), was filed on July 24, 2026, charging him with Breaking & Entering for a Misdemeanor under M.G.L. c. 266, §16A.

According to the court docket, the alleged offense occurred on June 28, 2026.

The matter was initially scheduled for a Clerk Magistrate Hearing on July 24, but Villagran Lux failed to appear.

Despite his absence, the clerk-magistrate found probable cause, issued a criminal complaint, and authorized an arrest warrant.

An additional post made yesterday detailed alleged shoplifting charges as well—which frankly make sense if Hernan Villagran Lux has no home and is unemployed. Plenty of law-abiding people have fallen on hard times and committed similar misdemeanors to stay afloat.

They have not, however, publicly stripped almost completely naked, doused themselves with oil, and proceeded to do a bodyweight workout in front of people who do not want to see that. Or allegedly harassed women alone on an unmonitored rail trail.

When I first read about Lux, I felt tremendous sympathy for him. His arrest and subsequent charges, however, tempered that sympathy. He has displayed an alleged pattern of harassment directed specifically at women. Men who have commented on the many online discussions about the Top Hat Ghost (or Top Hat Mime, etc.), claiming encounters with him, say they weren’t bothered at all or viewed him as a harmless eccentric. But there were repeated accounts of Lux behaving in worrisome ways toward women, which could speak to a predatory mindset apart from mental illness. And if he did what the park workers say he did, it sounds a lot like an escalation.

Hernan Villagran Lux, the Tophat Ghost, is reportedly undergoing psychological evaluation in Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility designed for men with psychiatric disorders. I hope he gets whatever help he needs. My brother did, but he was resistant to it for a host of reasons. He was sober and unmedicated when he died.

If you check out Lux’s Facebook, it seems obvious he underwent some kind of major change between 2024, when he was posting content that many young men interested in soccer and fitness might find appealing, and 2025, when he began posting multiple selfies wearing white makeup, dyed hair, and suits. It could have been drugs, or the onset of mental illness (bipolar disorder or schizophrenia seem likely, but I’m a layman, not a psychologist), or both.

I do worry that the charges against him are minor enough that he may be on the streets again before anyone in Natick or Framingham knows it. Whether that would mean danger for others or to himself remains to be seen.

Earlier: 1. 2.

Amanda “Mandy” Karolkiewicz’s worst fears came true. Kris Karolkiewicz was a family annihilator. The Ottawa County, Michigan, sheriff’s office has determined that Kristopher Michael Karolkiewicz killed his children and his wife, Mandy, set several fires throughout their Grand Haven home, then committed suicide. 

From WOOD TV:

A man shot and killed his wife and six children and then turned the gun on himself at a home south of Grand Haven last week, deputies say.

The death of Kristopher Karolkiewicz, 47, was ruled a suicide, the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office said in a Monday release. The deaths of his wife Amanda Karolkiewicz, 39, and their six children were ruled homicides. Autopsies determined all eight died of gunshot wounds.

The family’s pets also died.

Family annihilators tend to fit certain patterns. In 2013, TIME reported on a study of 59 such killers conducted in the UK:

The most unifying feature among the 59 killers was a perceived threat to their masculinity and a desire to exert power or control. “The family is in a very precarious position,” [Birmingham City University sociologist Elizabeth] Yardley says. “Should ‘the family’ as he knows it change due to internal or external factors, this has serious implications for his sense of self.”

Comments—unconfirmed by their very nature—made on various Facebook groups discussing the Karolkiewiczes indicated Kris may have recently lost his job.

The same study covered by TIME categorized Family Annihilators into three broad groups: “self-righteous, anomic, paranoid and disappointed.”

Self-righteous male family killers had a hypermasculine self-image as the breadwinner. If they felt they’d lost that position, researchers found, they often blamed a spouse or ex and viewed their actions as revenge. 

Disappointed fathers felt let down by their family somehow, and that their relationships were in a state of chaos. The murders or murder-suicides were essentially the killer enacting an internal sense of his world coming apart at the seams.

Anomic family killers saw their families as symbolic of their success. Therefore, if the father felt he’d failed at his job—getting fired or laid off, for example—then, according to the researchers, he saw his family as “obsolete.”

Paranoid fathers were likely to have mental health issues and believed they or their family were under some kind of external, existential threat.

Family murder-suicides, I should stress, are rare. But you hear about them because they are so mind-numbingly tragic—the kind of event that changes the way an entire city looks at itself. In comments and direct messages I’ve received on social media, many have expressed this sentiment: This has been “[heartbreaking] for our whole community.”

Note: Take care when surfing Facebook groups discussing cases like these. Commenters can be brutally cynical and unsympathetic. I take a look at everything I can in my research, including those groups, but will always be wary of the rumors and theories found there.

On July 25, I published a newsletter edition about the deaths of the Karolkiewicz family in Grand Haven, Michigan. Amanda “Mandy” Karolkiewicz, her six children—Keegan, Teddy, Bennett, Smith, Caroline, Ella—and husband Kristopher “Kris” Karolkiewicz. Their identities weren’t public when I began writing, but near the same time I hit send on my post, WOOD-TV confirmed what I’d surmised: “Amanda ‘Mandy’ and Kristopher Karolkiewicz were identified to News 8 by a family member. They shared six children, ages 5 to 15.”

The crime prompted discussion on my favorite social media platform, Threads, and led to many new subscribers to the True Crime Report. I am grateful, and hope you stick around. Please note: For now, articles will remain free to read for all. In order to comment and discuss any of the cases I write about, you’ll need to become a paid subscriber. In the future, I’ll figure out additional perks to offer along with a paid subscription.

(Also—generally speaking, this isn’t a wine-and-cheese, casual discussion of true crime. There’s a place for the breezy approach, and room for humor sometimes [though certainly not in this case]. Anyone who has followed me on social media knows I’m a goofball and would prefer to be completely unserious all the time. But crime is a subject I take very seriously, and I work to avoid judgmental, glib discussions of any case I cover.)

My posts on Threads and here also brought new insight into Mandy Karolkiewicz in particular. I’d referred to her as a “beloved” teacher in my previous article, and it was clear from people who knew her discussing the tragedy in various Facebook groups and on Threads that she wasn’t just loved by her students, but by many in the community who knew her.

In my earlier article, I quoted from a Reddit user who last posted there about two years ago using the handle “MandyK1179”—the same nic Mandy Karolkiewicz once used on Instagram (I previously inadvertently inserted an underscore, “MandyK_1179”). Many of the Redditor’s posts matched specific details about Mandy’s life, such as the number of children, location (Western Michigan), and indicated she was studying to become an educator. Other posts, however, belied the sunny image of married life that she’d portrayed in her blogs, “Mandy’s Mark” and “Our Westward Home.” They were about recovering from learning that her husband had had what he insisted was an “EA” or “emotional affair.”

A fellow Threads user, “Uxorigami,” noted a truly unsettling post from MandyK1179 made in the subreddit “As One After Infidelity.”

In response to another user who had admitted to having an affair, MandyK1179 wrote in part:

I remember being so terrified of my husband when I found out [he’d had an affair]. I realized in an instant that since I never thought he was the type of person to cheat, then for all I knew he could also be the type of man to hurt me (or worse) when feeling backed into a corner. He suddenly felt like a stranger who would react unpredictably (as evidenced by his infidelity), so I felt incredibly unsafe. That first night I was specifically afraid he was a Chris Watts- nothing in his past indicated that, but I never thought he was the type of man who would destroy his family.

There is still an outside chance the screen name was a coincidence, but I don’t believe it was. If it was Mandy Karolkiewicz writing in 2024, then her words were the sound of someone listening to their instincts about a partner, and the Chris Watts comparison was especially chilling, though Watts likely gave no thought to killing himself. But as MandyK1179 stated in another comment on the same subreddit, “We have six kids, so the idea of leaving is insanely terrifying.”

It may take some time for authorities investigating what happened to the Karolkiewicz family to determine exactly what happened, though multiple reports indicate they are firm on it likely being a murder-suicide.

Those are rare. But a report published in 2025 regarding murder-suicides in the United States between 2016 and 2022 made some things clear: Of the people who died by suicide after killing someone, 91.6% were men and 70.7% were white. Some 55.6% were between the ages of 35 and 64; 25.9% were ages 18 to 34. At least 57.2% of homicide victims were the killer’s current or former romantic partners. Specifically, 32.9% were spouses and 16.1% were girlfriends or boyfriends. Only 1% of the murder-suicides that occurred during that period involved more than four victims.

One clear takeaway from the study: the killers were overwhelmingly males who used firearms in almost nine out of ten cases. More than half of the victims were current or former partners.

It’s one of those headlines that stops anyone cold: “8 family members found dead in Michigan fire; police say at least 1 was shot.” The family found dead in an upscale Grand Haven neighborhood was led by Kristopher Michael “Kris” Karolkiewicz, 47, and his wife, Amanda “Mandy” Karolkiewicz, 39. Mandy’s sister posted about the tragedy on Facebook, and I determined the exact address and family names from that post. A social media post by Mandy’s father appeared to confirm it was the Karolkiewicz family, as did a post in the popular true crime group “True Crime Mama.”

WDIV reports:

[Capt. Jacob] Sparks (of the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office ~ Ed.) said authorities had not fully identified all the victims yet and do not have an official cause of death for them. The children’s ages ranged from 5 to 15, he said.

He did not say how many of the people had gunshot wounds.

“It’s a complicated scene, a complex scene,” Sparks said.

He said investigators were not looking for outside suspects and that one theory so far is a murder-suicide. He said everyone that lived in the home appeared to be deceased.

The TV station’s report went on to say authorities believe the fire in the home was intentionally set.

Most mass murders of families are committed by a family member—often, though not always, the father. There’s a term for it: Family Annihilators. In a 2019 ABC News report, FBI agent Brad Garrett described what happens in the minds of people who commit this kind of mass homicide, stating that they “are driven to kill their family for a number of reasons (…) Many times it’s for financial problems. And the belief is that men, in particular, will kill their family because they have lost their ability to support them. And it gets into the male ego identity. Losing identity is the key component here.”

The same ABC report notes that while there are exceptions, such as the African-American women mentioned in the same piece, most Family Annihilators are white men ages 30 and up.

A well-known example: the infamous John List, who, after severe financial problems left him humiliated, killed his family and fled to start a new life, living for decades under an alias before an episode of America’s Most Wanted led to his arrest and prosecution.

Since Michigan authorities are still investigating, it isn’t certain that one of the Karolkiewiczes killed their children—two girls adopted from China and four boys of their own—and their spouse, then committed suicide. However, the odds are that one of them did.

Mandy Karolkiewicz was a beloved substitute teacher. A January 2026 Facebook post by the Peach Plains Parent Teacher Organization—already receiving comments from others who know what happened to the family—celebrated her work, noting that she went “above and beyond for students, especially when they’re having a hard day, responding with empathy, patience, and care. She pours her heart into her work, is always willing to help wherever needed, and helps make Peach Plains a better place to learn and work.”

At one time, Mandy blogged on Blogger, one of the original blogging platforms, now owned by Google. Her first blog, “Mandy’s Mark,” launched in 2011. Her posts celebrated her children and husband and made it clear in every entry that she was a committed Christian. 

A blog entry Mandy published on August 21, 2011, celebrated Kris’s birthday: “Thirty-three years ago today, my best friend and other half was born,” she wrote, “and I could not be more thankful for him. Two years ago today, I got a husband. And two years later, he is still amazing and fantastic.” She continued, “Kristopher Michael, I love you. And I will until I die.”

Mandy started another blog in 2016: “Our Westward Home.” It began with a post about an upcoming move to Colorado. “For years I documented our home and life on my old blog, Mandy’s Mark,” she wrote. “It was a great way to update everyone on our babies and home, but since time is fleeting, I ended up resorting to simply updating my Instagram rather than the blog… However, with the new changes taking us out of state in March, I thought it may help to create a new blog for a new era… Hopefully it’ll help everyone feel up to date on the happenings and help us all feel a bit more connected despite the distance…”

Much of the rest of the blog documented the process of adopting one of their daughters from China, which was costly and clearly stressful for the family.

Mandy Karolkiewicz’s Instagram is no longer active, but someone using the same “Mandy_K1179” screen name was, for a time, a regular poster on Reddit. The Redditor’s details matched hers, including statements such as “I’m in Grand Haven, and we’re becoming more progressive by the year,” and multiple comments across various subreddits about teaching and having several children of their own. 

One notable exception was a long post by Redditor Mandy_K1179 in the “As One After Infidelity” subreddit. She used shorthand common across subreddits, such as EA for “emotional affair” and PA for “physical affair”:

My WP and I have been in the process of R for the past 4.5 years. Essentially, he still claims to this day that it was only an EA and never a PA. I’ve never quite believed him, because the evidence make it all seem like it would be very unlikely that they were never physical. We have six kids, so the idea of leaving is insanely terrifying.

He has always had major red flags that I ignored due to my own trauma and anxious attachment. He was raised in a toxic family dynamic that encouraged lying about EVERYTHING (e.g.: “don’t tell your dad I bought that for you,” or “Don’t tell your mom you were here for this long or she might get mad”) which I always was vocal about how dumb it was. Once we had kids I refused that behavior in front of them bc I didn’t want them to learn it as well. I have always caught him in the dumbest lies, and prior to Dday actually never even approached them with him bc I always figured they were stupid, minor, and not worth it.

Mandy_K1179 went on to say, “As a related note, he IS currently working through his dishonesty and impulsivity with his I(ndividual) C(ounselor). Does anyone have experience successfully working through M(arriage) C(ounseling) with a partner who’s so sensitive to feedback?”

Kris Karolkiewicz didn’t have as prominent an online presence as his wife, though an OWI (Operating While Intoxicated) arrest in 2006 put his mugshot on the first page of Google results when his full name was searched.

According to posts by Mandy_K1179, her husband was born with two heart conditions, and in 2024, Kris was a National Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the American Heart Association. He also registered a trademark just over a year ago for a product called StepFresh, “Deodorizing preparations for household, commercial or industrial use for footwear.” Newspaper archives also showed that Kris was previously married in 2004.

As of this writing, there has been no official report on how investigators believe the Karolkiewicz family died, other than noting that at least some were shot. And, of course, no reporting on who may have committed the crime.

And why write about it? I think everyone who follows true crime stories or writes about crime has a number of cases that help them understand how the tragedy unfolded. The murder of an entire family is one I’ve always found unthinkable and hard to write about, much less read about. Yet sometimes I’m so shocked by the combination of location and victimology that I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t conceive of any circumstance that might lead a man or woman to kill their own children, much less their partner.

I certainly have a theory about what happened, particularly if Amanda Karolkiewicz was indeed Mandy_K1179 on Reddit. The screen name is so specific that I believe it was her. But I will update with another edition of this newsletter when the police make a formal pronouncement.

Articles: 2., 3.

Wanted sex offender Matthew Hensley, 43, was arrested Friday at the same Cleveland, Ohio, home where missing Tennessee mother Amber Graham, 37, was found dead earlier this month. As of this writing, authorities have not charged him in connection with her death. Hensley, who was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, was wanted by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly failing to register his address.

Cleveland 19 News reports that authorities said Hensley was found hiding in a cabinet at 3490 Bosworth Road. He was taken into custody without incident.

Multiple reports I cited in my previous article said Graham’s body was found outside the same home on July 3. Some details remain unclear, but according to Cleveland 19, police and fire personnel found Graham’s body covered with a sheet and in a state of decomposition.

Matthew Hensley has been listed as an “involved person” in the Cleveland police report regarding Graham’s death. That doesn’t mean he’s a suspect or (technically) even a person of interest—yet.

To recap: In June, Graham traveled from her home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to Cleveland to meet a man she had been communicating with while playing Call of Duty on Xbox. On July 1, her 8-year-old daughter was found wandering near a fire station. She was not physically injured and had her grandmother’s phone number written on a slip of paper.

Several reports indicate that friends Josh LaCroix and Cynthia Clair last heard from Graham when she supposedly called to quit her job. During the call, a man was heard yelling angrily. “She had called work and tried to quit,” Clair told WKYC, “but that’s when he jumped on the phone and started yelling and kind of taking over and saying that she needed to quit her job.”

Graham then missed a shift at her job in Franklin, TN, which friends said was highly unusual. That phone call was the last anyone heard from her. Her family reported her missing on July 2. The following day, after a Cleveland Facebook group reportedly helped LaCroix and Clair locate her, she was found.

Hensley was arrested by the U.S. Marshals and the Cleveland Police. In a statement, U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott said, “Predators wanted for crimes involving children will be at the top of our list. Whether it be for new crimes or failing to follow the laws after they are released with respect to address registration. If they don’t follow the law, we will find them.”

According to the Cleveland 19 report, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner was still investigating the cause of Graham’s death. No one has been arrested yet in connection with her death, but Matthew Hensley is in custody in the Cuyahoga County Jail. Cleveland police said they were waiting for the medical examiner’s ruling on Amber Graham’s cause of death before launching any kind of criminal investigation. 

My wife and I met online 26 years ago. Eventually, I drove across two states to be with her. We were both apprehensive; the only stories about people meeting online then often included the phrase “serial killer.” We later learned we both had friends who warned us we might end up in a barrel in someone’s backyard (or some similar dire fate). Obviously, things worked out well for us. Accounts of online connections going horribly wrong in the real world have captured my attention ever since. 

The unfolding story of Amber Graham, a 37-year-old mother who traveled from her home in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to meet someone in Cleveland, Ohio—someone she met on Xbox—is probably the perfect example of the cautionary tale friends and family worried about when Dana and I got together.

News 5 Cleveland reports that Graham’s body was found in the backyard of a home that one official described as “a bizarre condition, like a hoarder house.” They couldn’t enter through the front door because it was blocked. 

How authorities learned Graham might be in danger only adds to the story’s overall weirdness: Her 8-year-old daughter was found wandering near a fire station, with her grandmother’s phone number written on a slip of paper in her pocket. Graham’s child did not appear to be physically harmed and has been placed in the care of Child Protective Services.

A missing persons report for Amber Graham was filed on July 2, 2026. Her mother had not heard from her since mid-June. Friend Josh LaCroix knew Graham’s general destination and that she planned to meet a man she’d met while playing Call of Duty on Xbox. The mystery man reportedly used the screen names “Huckleberry,” “Red,” and possibly “Red.Soul.” 

LaCroix, who described Amber Graham as a reliable employee who would never miss shifts at the grocery store where she worked in Tennessee, grew concerned after receiving a call from her and hearing an agitated man’s voice in the background.

After her daughter was safe, police went to the address on Bosworth Road where she’d been and found Graham’s body under a sheet in the backyard.

When the report by News 5 was published on Monday, July 6, Cleveland police were still awaiting a cause of death for Graham from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner.

This is the kind of case that fires up social media sleuths like few others. The dialogue can turn mean and unsympathetic toward the victim, too—I’ve read more than a few comments castigating Graham for taking her daughter on the trip. Yes, my paternal instincts rebel at the idea, but I don’t think people fully grasp how shrewdly manipulative predators can be. Someone seeking connection, feeling lost in a dead-end job in small-town Tennessee, might easily come to believe they are pursuing a better life for themselves and their child.

Social media also kicks the rumor mill into high gear, and there are numerous rumors afloat in various true-crime Facebook groups, often characterized by breathless, Nancy Grace-style shouting headlines, like “XBOX KILLER OFFS TOT MOM, KID FOUND ABANDONED.” That said, some, like the “Abby Blabby” group linked above, seem to surface somewhat solid info. This is a disturbing example of information that is not easily found (several Cleveland-area news orgs are behind paywalls) in the few articles currently online about Amber Graham:

Police ultimately discovered Graham’s body in the backyard of the residence while conducting the [welfare] check. Authorities said the body appeared to have been there for several days and was in an advanced state of decomposition.

An 18-year-old disabled woman, identified as Mackenzie, was also found alive inside the home and transported to a hospital for treatment. Another woman, identified as Gabriella, was also taken to a hospital. Authorities have not publicly detailed their conditions or roles in the investigation.

I wasn’t able to confirm the details about the two women. The same Facebook post said Graham’s daughter had reported seeing her mother asleep and in chains. The post also linked the address to an apparently absconded sex offender, Matthew Hensley (his older brother, Harold, is also an absconded sex offender).

Hensley, who reportedly sports a Jesus tattoo, has not registered an address with the Cuyahoga County sheriff, which he is required to do every year for 20 years.

Due to his status as a sex offender who neglected to register his address with police, I don’t mind naming Hensley here, but at this moment he hasn’t been conclusively linked with Amber Graham.

Still, absconded sex offenders are historically among the most dangerous—see the nightmarish case of Joseph Edward Duncan III, a serial killer of children and at least two adults.

So—at the moment, there are many details up in the air, unclear, and yet to be confirmed. But at least Amber Graham’s daughter is in a safe place.

I’ve hesitated to cover crime recently for many reasons, including a desire to do more than just blog or aggregate already-reported news. But how am I going to rev this engine and get things moving unless I just go ahead and talk about stories that stick in my craw—whether I’m able to do original reporting or not?

Today, I keep thinking about David Vander Meer, a 49-year-old former youth pastor turned school counselor and yoga instructor. As ABC News reports, Vander Meer “was accused of killing his wife in 2006 and collecting her $600,000 life insurance policy, according to court records.” He was arrested 20 years later, thanks to a witness who apparently couldn’t live with the knowledge that he might have murdered his wife, Bernadette, by pushing her off a cliff.

Reading about the case, I found myself thinking about how religious settings often attract predatory individuals—mostly men, but not exclusively—and the reasons behind this.

The Fall

Bernadette Vander Meer, then a few months shy of her 29th birthday, likely thought she was going on an anniversary hike with her husband. Investigators would later say she was excited about it, as they never took trips without some members of the church youth group tagging along.

Police allege it was an execution.

From a newspaper report in the St. George, Utah Daily Spectrum published after Bernadette Vander Meer’s death almost 20 years ago:

[…] The final portion of Angels Landing is about 5½ feet across with a rock formation in the center.

Lt. Jake Adams of the sheriff’s office said the couple, who biked into the park early in the morning before hiking up Angels Landing, was at the end of the hike when Bernadette Vander Meer fell.

The article went on to note that there had “been 28 accidental fatalities in Zion National Park” since 1987 at the time, and five deaths had “occurred at Angels Landing, including Vander Meer’s.”

“Out of the five fatalities from Angels Landing,” the report continued, “two are still listed by investigators as suspicious.”

Bernadette Maria Vander Meer’s (maiden name: Guidenkauf) obituary, still available online, described her as “a worship leader at New Song Christian Church, where her husband and brother-in-law are pastors and where her passions for singing and worshipping God allowed her to express her joyous spirit. Bernadette was a devoted wife, daughter[,] and friend. She loved family, friends, nature, music, and performing on stage.”

The Investigation

On June 16, 2026, Jessica Bate, a Lieutenant Investigator with the Washington County, Utah, Attorney’s Office, filed a 17-page affidavit with the Fifth District Court seeking an arrest warrant for David Howard Vander Meer. The affidavit detailed how Vander Meer’s lies and sexually predatory behavior had finally caught up with him.

Bate made a case for reclassifying what appeared to be a tragic accident as a cold-blooded spousal homicide.

According to the affidavit, David Vander Meer originally stated he and Bernadette biked to Zion to celebrate their anniversary with a pre-dawn hike. The goal was to reach the summit area as the sun was coming up. They were wearing headlamps to see in the dark, but removed them as the sky grew brighter. I looked up the weather for the area that day, and choosing to go so early likely made sense at the time. The predicted high for August 22, 2006, was over 100° (Fahrenheit) with clear skies and a “stiff breeze.”

Vander Meer said they were setting up to take photos when Bernadette fell. He said he heard his wife scream, turned, and she was gone. Newspaper reports from the time estimated she fell as far as 1,200 feet. Investigators were suspicious of his story but ruled it an accidental death. The case was closed—for a time.

Lt. Investigator Bate’s affidavit states that, sixteen years later, law enforcement received a tip alleging that, in 2006, while Vander Meer was a youth pastor at New Song Christian Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, he had sexually groomed children in his youth group. He’d begun an affair with a 16-year-old identified only as SH.

By 2022, she was ready to tell the police her story.

Timing is everything. SH said she’d ended the relationship with David Vander Meer on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2006, two days before Bernadette fell. (Note: The word “relationship” is shorthand; SH was obviously the victim of a predatory preacher.) She believed their relationship was wrong, and she wanted to move on.

SH said that Vander Meer had bought her a secret phone after the affair began, and he rented an apartment where they could meet. Most importantly—from the investigators’ perspectives—she alleged that he said they could only truly be together if Bernadette was not alive.

The morning after SH called it off, Vander Meer and Bernadette left for Zion, a two-hour drive from Las Vegas.

The affidavit states that available records support parts of SH’s account, including old AT&T records listing her phone number on David and Bernadette’s account. Investigators also obtained writings from Bernadette describing what she considered a lonely and unhappy marriage. In addition, before her death, she’d become suspicious of David’s behavior.

This was all damning enough. Then there was the money trail.

In interviews just after Bernadette died, Vander Meer told investigators that the couple had recently increased their life insurance policies. In 2005, he purchased $150,000 in coverage each for himself and Bernadette. Then he bumped both policies by another $400,000, bringing the total to $550,000 per person.

Vander Meer’s annual income at the time was less than $40,000 a year.

He submitted a life insurance claim after his wife died. The affidavit states that he eventually received a payout of approximately $567,439.

The affidavit’s timeline details Vander Meer’s brazen behavior following his wife’s death. He resumed seeing SH within two or three months. By 2007, the relationship was open, at his request.

Vander Meer began living “lavishly” on his insurance windfall, according to Lt. Investigator Bate, purchasing a car for SH and another vehicle for a different girl in the youth group. He took SH on all-expenses-paid trips. Meanwhile, equipment was stolen from Legacy Christian Church, where he worked after New Song. At some point, Vander Meer received an additional $10,000 or so in insurance money for a purloined drum set.

After learning of the parties Vander Meer had thrown for teens, complete with alcohol and gambling, Legacy pastor Barry Diamond had had enough and fired him.

Vander Meer might have been rolling in his ill-gotten gains, but he still maintained a psychopath’s parasitic habits, entering into what the affidavit termed “private/legal marriage arrangement” with SH in 2008 so he could use her employer’s health insurance. He went on to officially marry her in 2010, only to divorce her in 2014. He married two more times, each relationship marked by infidelities and oddball thefts that netted him further insurance money.

And the affidavit states that by 2015, former youth group members were talking, expressing “concerns regarding David's past behavior, inappropriate, sexual, and deceptive, to Barry Diamond.”

In the end, though, it may have been the light that did David Vander Meer in.

The Light

To put it plainly: the affidavit argues that Vander Meer’s description of the lighting conditions did not match what the scene would have looked like at that time.

Additionally, the affidavit says officials reviewed past Angel’s Landing deaths and mapped them. This revealed that most fatal falls occurred in other sections of the trail. Bernadette Vander Meer fell from a relatively high, sheer area where such accidents were uncommon.

Officers who recalled responding to the incident also thought it was strange. One reportedly thought Vander Meer’s account was too convenient. Another remembered his demeanor and statements as suspicious.

Bate wrote that investigators believe David Vander Meer had multiple motives. The break-up with SH. Bernadette was suspicious of his behavior and unhappy, likely more aware than ever before that she’d married a con man. Then, of course, there was the money.

The End

If you’re like me, you’ve probably already googled “David Vander Meer” about halfway through reading this and discovered the part I left out so far (because I acquired some newswriting habits that just don’t work when I want to tell a story a certain way, such as frontloading with all the info, then diving into the details): David Vander Meer committed suicide in custody.

Per NBC News:

[…] Las Vegas police said in a statement that a 49-year-old male inmate at the Clark County Detention Center died after he had been transported to a local hospital Thursday for treatment for “self-sustained injuries.”

It did not name the inmate. Vander Meer was 49, and he is no longer listed as an inmate at the detention center, records show.

I’m not a professional psychologist, and in these days of entire cable channels devoted to true crime, I have only a little more knowledge of criminal profiling than the average person. Still, I can tell you with reasonable confidence that David Vander Meer, who was working as a yoga instructor and school counselor at Somerset Academy Lone Mountain charter school in Las Vegas before his arrest, probably didn’t choose to end his life out of remorse. 

People with these behavioral patterns rarely experience guilt. They do, however, loathe the idea of being revealed for what they really are and losing their freedom. It seems much more likely (to me) that Vander Meer knew he was done, and this was a final act of control.

Predators of the Cloth

I’ve reached out to a criminal psychology consultant for expert input and will update the version of this post that lives on Substack if she gets back to me. But I do have some ideas as to why people of faith are sometimes sitting ducks for cold-blooded predators like David Vander Meer.

I’ll mention just one: something I’ve always considered an otherwise beautiful facet of any faith tradition that practices it—forgiveness.

The vast child abuse scandal in the Catholic church illustrated this—priest abuses stayed hidden for so long because the church shuffled them around and sent them to therapy, essentially forgiving a predator priest if he owned up to what he did and vowed not to do it again. More relevant to the story of the Vander Meers: Evangelical church abuse stories have surged in recent years as well. Any dive into these cases reveals that some predators were able to repeatedly find victims because “forgiveness” had been weaponized by church authorities and used to gaslight victims into silence. Partly to protect the institutions, among other things.

It seems that in this case, Pastor Barry Diamond did the right thing after learning that his youth pastor was engaging in sketchy behavior with teens, and he kicked him to the curb. Yet 15-16 years later, David Vander Meer was still able to find jobs that let him work with young people. He was partly able to do that because he likely knew that his previous faith-based employers believed—or chose to believe—he was a “godly” man who’d merely gone astray in having relationships with the teens under his charge, and that shouldn’t ruin his life. Predatory people count on the goodwill of others, especially church communities that believe you are a committed member of the flock.

It wasn’t precisely his predatory behavior toward teens that finally put Vander Meer on a path to justice, but it contributed. Because when those teens got older and understood what he was and what that might mean about the fate of his first wife, they said something. Given his inability to resist lying and various forms of fraud, David Vander Meer was in the right place when he took himself out.

If you’re a person of faith and believe in Heaven and Hell, then you likely think he’s in the right place now, too.

Leela Jean Livis was 32 when she died on December 1, 2025. A 2015 graduate of Western Carolina University, Livis died a few days after Thanksgiving dinner with members of her family. On January 16, 2026, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation announced that Livis’s mother, Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel, had been arrested for the murder of Livis and the attempted murders of Mia Lacey and Richard Pegg. The release also said that investigators found “evidence linking Casper-Leinenkugel to the murder of Michael Schmidt that occurred in Henderson County in 2007.”

NBC News reports that investigators charged Leinenkugel “with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder and three counts of distribution of prohibited food or beverage.” Leinenkugel, who once owned a restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina, allegedly poisoned the trio with a substance called acetonitrile, which, based on a description of how it works, is a particularly cruel and perhaps clever choice. It is a clear substance with a sweet, fruity scent—but it converts into cyanide once inside the body, and according to the CDC, exposure symptoms include “asphyxia; nausea, vomiting; chest pain; lassitude (weakness, exhaustion); stupor, convulsion.” LabPro Inc. states that acetonitrile has multiple legitimate uses, including liquid and gas chromatography. It can also be used to degrease and cleanse “surfaces and equipment in a variety of industrial settings.”

In a 2013 LA Times piece about physician Robert Ferrante, then charged with poisoning his wife using creatine tainted with cyanide, science journalist Deborah Blum wrote that she believed “poisoners are the coldest of killers.”

“They plan ahead,” Blum wrote, and “they plot out their poison and delivery methods in advance, they entice their victims to consume the poison, and they often stay to watch the poison do its work.” Poisoners, Blum continued later, “believe that careful planning will allow them to escape detection. We also know—or think we do—that ‘poison is a woman’s weapon.’”

In her 2023 Substack article titled “The Sneaky Serial Killer,” forensic psychologist Joni E. Johnston did a deep dive into this most aggressive of passive-aggressive crimes:

[Poisoners] tend to operate behind the scenes. Behind that pleasant façade lurks an immature personality determined to get their way and using emotional and verbal manipulation to do so. Guilt, gaslighting, and playing the victim are the weapons poisoners tend to use before they become deadly.

Additionally, according to Johnston, most “poisoners kill someone they know; a child, spouse, friend, or acquaintance.” Motives vary. They can be the classic life insurance windfall, but sometimes it’s simply a matter of convenience. For some, Johnston writes, it’s also about “ego (belief in mental superiority).”

For now, North Carolina investigators aren’t releasing much additional information due to the ongoing investigation. Newspaper articles from years ago, however, seem to hint at elements of Leinenkugel’s past that are much more intriguing in light of her arrest.

In July of 2006, Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel, going by Gudrun Casper, acquired a license for “Casper’s On-Site Drapery Cleaning and More,” a dry-cleaning business. While acetonitrile isn’t used on textiles, it isn’t a big leap to think she had deep knowledge of cleaning agents and solvents.

Then there’s the restaurant Leinenkugel opened in Asheville in 2016 (after several delays—the article was published in 2014)—the Patton Public House. While Joni Johnston notes that poisoners often focus on victims known to them, it’s unsettling to consider that Leinenkugel was in charge of any kind of eatery or bar. It might be interesting to find out what the pub’s local reputation was like, though it didn’t seem to last long.

Finally (for now), there’s this—on her Facebook page, Leela Livis listed two family members: mother Gudrun Linda Casper (Leinenkugel’s full name, according to public records, is Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel), and father, Robert Van Der Burgh. A check of Van Der Burgh’s profile shows the final post there was made on Sept. 10, 2019. It read:

Dear all, our dear son, brother, uncle and dear friend Robert vd Burgh died suddenly in his sleep on Monday morning at the age of 65. We are shocked and very sad. As he wished, Robert will be cremated in a private circle this coming week.

It appears that Van Der Burgh was from the Netherlands, and many condolence posts are in German and Dutch. It may be that he had been out of contact with Leela Livis’s mother for a long time.

Noting this, however, it’s worth quoting another passage from Joni Johnston’s article:

Experts believe the number of poisoners who elude justice is twenty to thirty times higher than those behind bars. Still, we can make some educated guesses about the personalities of poisoners by studying the nature of convicted poisoners and the crimes they commit.

In addition to Leela Jean Livis, surviving victims Mia Lacey and Richard Pegg, and alleged 2007 victim Michael Schmidt, it isn’t reaching to suggest that Gudrun Casper-Leinenkugel might have more than a handful of premature deaths connected to her. At the moment, it’s just a matter of waiting to see what else turns up.

Fortunately, Atlanta-area dentist Melanie Nadler Litt has been found safe, confirming there was a good reason to declare “no foul play” in her disappearance on or around Octover 14.

From 11 Alive:

Much still remains unclear about the situation involving Dr. Melanie Nadler Litt, who had last been seen on Monday. But on Sunday Cobb Police said the be-on-the-lookout notice for her was canceled as of noon.

A report from Fox 5 Atlanta has more details:

Billy Robertson said he recognized Nadler because she was his dentist years ago. So when he thought he had spotted her outside the Town Center Mall in Marietta, he talked to her.

“I just got this weird feeling that I should at least ask,” he said. “I asked her hey are you a Dentist? Do you remember me by any chance you removed my widsom teeth many years ago”

He then called 911.

Police had no further comment, citing privacy concerns.

I wasn’t optimistic enough to think she was alive; too many missing persons cases end tragically. But even before police said there’d been no foul play, I was beginning to think her case might have a mental health component, and this all but confirms it.

Despite all the grief medical professionals get for a host of reasons, there is a broad assumption that physicians in particular are leading semi-charmed lives, as they tend to be in higher income brackets and therefore have more social stability. It’s not true, though. Most professions requiring advanced degrees draw people who are driven and intense, and with that can sometimes come a considerable mental health burden.

Hopefully, Dr. Nadler is getting whatever care she needs now.

And on a personal note…

In other news, what am I even doing here, with True Crime Report?

Even with long stretches of not updating, I still get a regular, small bump in readers each month, which always surprises me. With each new follower notice, paid or not, I winced at how I’ve hemmed and hawed when looking into a new case, thinking too much about it and essentially talking myself into waiting for something else.

I turn 58 in November. In the last year I’ve lost 80+ pounds. I won’t say I’m in the best shape of my life, but I’m physically stronger than I’ve ever been and most days feel 40. Only some arthritis in my hips really pushes the “damn I feel old” button (like today, as it’s rainy and so perfectly October in New England; I love the atmosphere but am walking like I’m 75). For many reasons this all adds up a feeling of “stop waiting for things and just do them.”

So I’m doing the things. Outside of that I make no guarantees or announcements. Just expect, uh, more things.