somebody instead of knocking and out of the time. so i think that is what that is. .. i don't think that was ever going to go back to crime life but i wasn't dying to have a good relationship with the people. i didn't have a relationship with my father. i couldn't understand my

mother's impact but what i learned from it. how mike going my going to finally get ahold of it? it became my focus and my stability. she stood by through everything and now we are the ones doing this amazing work. >> national book critic circle award finalist. it calls you back, luis rodriguez is the author. this is booktv on c-span2. our live coverage from los angeles times festival of books continues. coming up next another author panel discussion, this one on violence. deanne stillman "desert reckoning" caitlin rother "lost girls" and david mcconnell "american honor killings." this is live coverage. >> as well as the fire bread which came out in 2003. his short fiction and journalism has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies in his new book "american honor killings" was

released this year. david lives in new york city and beside david is deanne stillman and deanne wrote "desert reckoning" based on stones peace. that book won the 2013 spur award for best contemporary nonfiction. her previous book, mustang with l.a. times best book of 2008 and won the california book awards silver medal for nonfiction. her book twentynine palms was an l.a. times best book 2001 and it has just been reissued and she lives in l.a.. and beside me is caitlin rother. rother has written a hoax fiction and nonfiction. a pulitzer prize investigative

journalist. rother worked for nearly 20 years for daily newspapers and made scores of tv and radio appearances as a crime expert. her latest book "lost girls" came out last year and she lives in san diego. welcome to all of you. looking forward to a spirited discussion. the format will be i will ask a couple of questions to all the panelists and then i will have a couple of questions for each of the panelists about their works after which we will take some time for questions from all of you who are with us today in the session. so, first i would like to ask all three of you, your genre of nonfiction true crime differs quite a bit from mine and from several other stories of nonfiction. mine is typically called current affairs of sociology, biography

being another that comes to mind related to this sort of work you do in a certain way. but current events and current affairs types of approaches have a fair amount in common i think as all nonfiction with the work you do, specifically the work requires a lot of research. and we write about real people, real events and we try to do that in a way that has -- and that is quite compelling. so what i want to ask you is if you have thought about how the type of research you do differs from others in other sorts of nonfiction and from that matter how it differs from research that you might undertake for a novel for example. so i think i will start with david because in addition to writing nonfiction, david has received considerable acclaim

and won several awards for his novels. you can lead us off. >> sure. when i started this nonfiction which was really the first nonfiction book i have done it really was an effort to tell stories and tell stories based on the truth. so there was research i did that was different from the research in hollywood. gathering details, gathering color, it gathering all the stuff that would go into sort of bringing the story alive on the page and it was much less my concern to back up an argument. in fact i didn't really have an argument when i started this book. and even in the end i wanted to create a story that you can sort of from all points of view sort of say well this is evidence for my argument.

so i am just trying to sort of reproduce the actuality on the page as vividly as possible and then from there people can go on and argue about it. in fact the material is somewhat controversial in the book. it takes a look at several cases of men who were conceived to be and murdered by straight men or in one striking case someone pretending to be straight. >> i think for me i don't think of my book as true crime and it's not really what i do. the nature of crime refers to and bolts as to procedural and yet my work of narrative nonfiction involves crime that i'm really taking a big look at war and peace in the modern west and in each of my books for instance in twentynine palms that's about two girls who were

killed by marine after the gulf war and in crimes against the wild horse i take a look at the massacre of 34 horses outside of reno at christmastime in 1998 and i use that as a prism through which to look at the history of the wildhorse in the west from millions of years ago through today. in my latest book "desert reckoning" is about the fatal collision between a hermit and the los angeles county sheriff and the shadowlands of l.a., meaning the antelope valley in 2003 and then what happened after this fatal collision which was the biggest manhunt in modern california history. not that your honor manhunts, sorry. this one i write about really was the biggest one in recent times. so this is really narrative

nonfiction and i knew the elements of fiction in my writing. i bring and the desert as a major player in all of my work and characters in the big way and bring in their back story and so on. so it's hard for me to say, true, crime doesn't apply to what i do. >> my latest book, "lost girls" in vaults really serious heavy-duty research including going to state residents to interview john gartner who raped two teenaged girls and i had to go through him and his family. i waited until i finished all of my research and because the case did not go to trial i actually thought it would be easier. it turned out to be more difficult because the documentation that i would normally get by looking through court exhibits, court transcripts, the trial, interviewing attorneys about

their strategies and the things i would normally do with crime books which are nonfiction, trying to get behind the story until the scene. i really didn't have access to that information so had to i had to get enterprising. i sent him letters which he signed and sent to the various state agencies so i could get the release of his statements of health records, his prison record and various other records. i was denied most of them by agencies that apparently didn't want anybody looking at them so i ended up getting them through his mother and found out some fascinating things that never got into newspaper. then i went to go visit him specifically on the day where i knew that charlie manson's relatives or friends would visit him and it than it was in a big open lunch room with no glass, nothing between us and i didn't sleep much the night before because i thought it was possible he could basically dive across the table and grabbed my neck and he had a trigger temper.

so i just wanted to make sure i didn't say anything to make him angry. i also wasn't allowed to bring in more than 10 sheets of paper. i wasn't allowed to wear an underwire because i had to go through the the metal detector in case it could be used as a weapon. i couldn't bring in a pen. i had had to take it apart and look at it to make sure there was nothing inside like drugs or something like that. i have to think quite a lot about what i wanted to ask him. i've really had to get myself you now emotionally prepared and i basically read through all kinds of documentation that i got through his parents, mother and sisters. interviewed all of them and interviewed attorneys. i have course bonded with him and interviewed as many people as they could i could before i sat down and interviewed them for five hours. i tried to interview the killers that i write about in every book

and my friends think i'm insane. i just try to think of them as another person that want to know why did you do this and how did you get to be the kind of person who would do this? that something is really port and that we can all work from. >> great, thank you. to follow up on that question a little bit more. could you just describe a little bit about how you go about the research specifically, how you get access? >> the story is about going to prison and i'd did a lot of prison interviews as well. it's really scary and crazy. i remember there was one of the people i write about. we eventually developed quite a long relationship that when i visited them he was on death row in san quentin. when i visited him, it is like that. they are very strict about all the objects you bring, metzel anything like that but in addition in order to do the interview with him at san

quentin they lock you up in a cage. so you go into the visiting area and then there is a big cage. they put you in with this guy you have never met who is on death row. and they lock the door. he was actually you know incredibly nervous. we were talking about his case although i would be pursuing that at some point but he was trying to put me at ease. he was a kid who spent his whole life in prison, terribly damaged guide and damaging of course. and he was trying to put me at ease. he said well you know don't worry about it. they just do this because there was a bit of a problem. a visitor with staff so they want to be really careful. it's so funny because he was honestly trying to make me relax and he was saying all the wrong things. >> while i find myself having

conversations with all the people that i write about. what i do is like life itself. as a matter of fact it is life itself. it takes a long time to get to know people in real life than it takes years when you are writing about somebody, it takes even longer sometimes to get them to trust you and not just open up and want to let somebody into their world and tell you their life story. i'm certainly very grateful to all the people who have let me do that over the years. the characters in my book tend to be people who are generally misunderstood or not taken seriously. in the media or misrepresented when they are written about. i find most people over time are very happy that somebody is finally listening to them. we all feel that a thing, right?

most of us feel that no one is paying attention and a lot of people aren't paying attention. we really aren't listening to each other and when that happens something really unfolds over time. when i go into the corners of the mojave or talk to cops often enough all of these people as i said often feel misrepresented in the media. when they see that i'm in it for the long-haul, i spent eight years on my book "desert reckoning" in my previous book i spent 10 years on so i'm cranking up my project here. when people see that i'm in it for the long-haul and i'm not kidding about wanting to tell their story, they tend to start talking. that's a very, you know it's a

big deal and really important when it happens. the people i write about get that i don't do where's the fire kind of reporting although i think maybe i do now. "desert reckoning" and it in a giant consecrations so i find myself in this case doing it where's the fire story. it took eight years over time lots of things happened and i also do research in libraries and archives. one thing leads to another. as i say once people get that i'm serious about what i'm doing, they will start introducing me to other people and it goes from there. >> great, thank you. let me shift gears a little bit. in all of your work obviously you are writing about people who who -- to most folks and a great

interest of mine for a long time has been how it's written about and how it's used in various media. and in your writing obviously plays a central role so i'm wondering if you have thought about how you take frightening material, how you decide do i want the reader, how do i want the reader to feel at this point ,-com,-com ma not that i can manage that and just sort of how does that play out? why don't i start with rother because in this book and "lost girls" you are writing about murder, death and violence occurrences and you are able to do it somehow without going into all the violent and gory detail so how do you sort that out and make that where? >> well each case that i write about is different and i am telling a story about why. i want to know what made a person become a person capable of doing that. in a previous book i did called

dead reckoning it takes place in ocean off of newport beach with a couple tied to an anchor and thrown overboard a life which is probably the most horrible way i could think about dying. the person they did it, one of the motivations, the guy was married and his wife was pregnant with their second child. he needed money for a sex change operation. basically what i honed in on, i wanted to find out the dynamics between him and his wife who was in charge because that was a major interest in the courtroom. three trials with five defendants and it went on for five years. i went to go meet him and i basically, at this time there was glass between us and we talked on the phone. i've just wanted to find out how did he manage to manipulate everybody and con everybody because he was the most nonthreatening person you could probably -- possibly imagine and

yet he could turn around and slit your throat and have no remorse and no emotion whatsoever. that's a very scary thing. looking him in the eye and trying to figure out how did he do it and convey that to the reader. one of the main motivations i have been writing the stories that i do in choosing the stories that i do is i want to equip people to understand that these killers, these sexual predators regardless of what kind of killer they are, a lot of them are con men and con women and they don't have a big s on their forehead for sexual predator. they are charming and manipulative then they tell you stories. when i met with him yet at very very high voice like a teenage girl and he seemed very gentle. he wanted to make me laugh. he sang to me so i wanted to convey that as i was telling the story, what was his mode of operation. in each case with each book that i read i think that that's very important, to show that these people use you and people are

not what they seem. they are not scary. generally these killers you are not going to be able to tell that they are killers unless you have maybe read one of my books. >> deanne. >> i'm sorry would you restate the question? >> how do you work with frightening material knowing that your readers will be quite fearful along the way? >> had never second guess readers. that's the last thing on my mind. the stories that i tell our, the universe makes me tell these stories but i just think they cross my path and it resonates for me. as i often tell my friends, they ring me like a church bell on d-day. i kind of don't have a choice in them matter. i feel that i am the -- the story so i'm not thinking of

anybody else's reaction when i write. i do end up getting to know the people i write about and in some cases becoming quite close to them. that's where the problem comes because sometimes i find out things about them that even their own family members don't know and that they would rather maybe not be made public so i wrestle with that. the old john gideon line about writers spilling someone out and i found myself in that position but over time i've learned as i was saying earlier most of the people, all of the people i write about are people whose stories are generally not told and people who are ignored by our culture in general. so once things. after my books come out generally any sort of

troublesome response or anybody that might be upset about the things i've written it tends to change over time and people are happy that finally somebody is listening to them. i'm not saying that to congratulate myself but to remind you hauled how important it is to listen to each other. i'm telling you, almost everybody, everybody have written about they always say i'm not being listened to. if there's one thing i've learned that is going on in this country is that no one is listening to each other. >> that's actually an incredibly interesting point and a lot of people are curious. how did the people you wrote about react and it's a striking thing for me because everything i've written previously was fiction. i consulted with friends of mine who had written a lot and that sort of thing. their reaction is really quite interesting. even if you're very tough and

very frank about someone's experience, they might be miffed or you got it all wrong, it's way off. and then as deanne says they live with it and they say this is sort of inaccurate version from this person's point of view. as far sure question goes, that's really interesting but i think there are two sides do to it. one is the view that i deal with that is the writer. sort of getting them to open up and opening myself up to them. that is one kind and it's really disconcerting. and it's devastating really to interact. there comes this moment of frankness where you were just talking about the most awful things you can possibly imagine. by that point you have developed

a relationship with this person. that's almost the scariest thing of all. caitlin's point is really important. these guys don't necessarily look frightening at all. there are a couple of guys that i wrote about the make this effort to appear spooky and scary and sort of that's their method of intriguing someone on the outside. they are sort of adopting this spooky drag that they want to fascinate you through. as far as the fear on the part of the reader that's a little bit invisible to me. the urgent problem for me is getting the story down as accurately and honestly as i can. their reaction that people have, i am often surprised at how strong it's been. oh i can't deal with that, that, it's too scary and too upsetting.

certainly that was not my intention. i'm not trying to write anything that is spooky. i'm just trying to tell the truth of the stories that some people if they don't look carefully enough will shy away from it. >> i feel i want to ask a question of all of you before i go to questions for each of you because it occurs to me we are here today, the day after the arrest of one of the suspects in the boston marathon shooting. when you three watch this, is there anything you want to share about how you responded and what you thought? don't feel obligated that if any of you want to talk about it, i know it's on a lot of people's minds in the room and people watching. >> i really was horrified thinking to myself that this is happening all over again and i wanted to try to analyze what was it about it that was so scary to people, not just

because it's been so long since 9/11 but i think it was because we are used to seeing this thing happened -- is kind of thing happen in other parts of the world with his backpack bombing thing in the streets. it can happen here just like that and on video, captured like this. but i was so amazed and actually really happy to see how quickly law enforcement got on top of it and hold pulled it together so incredibly quickly and got the people apprehended them and they were captured in a matter of days. that actually made me feel so much more secure and so much better and i was really applauding the fbi and all the police that were working together and how everybody seemed to be reacting differently to those then 9/11. there was less feared and more rallying and they were not going to let them do this.

on the other hand as my job i was watching the friends ask in the technology that they were using and i was fascinated. the infrared helicopters that they could watch the motions of the guy in the boat the fact that there was let in a sabha campus moving. i need to pick those things up for my writing and i know that sounds horrible but i'm listening as a human being and listening as a writer. i couldn't help the reality is that i thought it was fascinating and horrifying. >> having spent a number of years writing about a manhunt, i also found the tactics of this manhunt quite interesting. in the one i write about in "desert reckoning," there were thousands of cops in vehicles and on foot and horseback

involved and the fbi and the dea and many police agencies and also the los angeles county sheriff's department primarily and a number of members of the department who were a big help including lieutenant stephen foster who is here. he is also a character in my book and i want to thank him and all of the other first responders without whom i would not have been able to tell this story. they, over time, came to let me into their world. i found out exactly how this manhunt went down by the end of this seven day -- that there was deployed so it was great to watch this from latest iteration of the modern manhunt where you have the cybertechnology and so on. also i want to say something interesting i found that in terms of first responders was

really just how little we appreciate them. i have spent my life writing about misunderstood people but i now include cops in that description. there are people that most of us generally only call when they have an emergency or there's a problem. otherwise we make jokes and talk about getting -- were often mattock cops. really i thought there something else going on that's very important that we saw play out this weekend. during the seven day manhunt the swat team was in at all places of convent in the desert in palmdale. i thought it was really interesting that there were a few cloistered tribes coming together and forming the strange bond, cooking and praying for the swat team while they were running in and out in looking

for him because he knew the desert so well he was able to outfox modern high-tech cops. i have a section about this in my book and what happened during that part of the manhunt. so there are a lot of people out there helping and we did see this play out yesterday as kaitlyn mentioned. >> yeah, what happened this week was incredibly important. the sort of national convulsion and this manhunt for extraordinary. i saw myself really interested in following it very closely, more interested in the psychology of these guys which at this point is completely speculative so we don't really know much about it. i was so struck so you know when we discovered oh the brothers, one is a little older having trouble socializing in the

united states and the younger one sort of more easy-going. people said he was sweet. the older one perhaps gets into extreme, religious extremism and it's an exact pair will to one of the first cases in my book that is very spooky. i write about the williams brothers who are two brothers, very similar who grew up in northern california, who come from a fundamentalist christian background and two attempted to start the firebombing of synagogues in sacramento and to start a race war, a holy war in the united states, right here in the states. ..

you know, it really is a corrective to our, you know, our impulse to say, oh, you know, all of this comes from islam, this comes from halfway across the world. you know, indeed, you know, these boys grew up on a farm. there were homes cool. there were devout christians. they lived separatist lives. and when that older boy matt williams, you know, tried to socialize himself, tried to join the navy and go out to seattle and live a real life he failed. he ended up going back home and he ended up to you know, spiraling down into a very spooky extremism and drew a long

this and the scent put upon dominated brother so it really is an interesting parallel pending all discoveries about what this case really is. >> thank you. however like to turn to questions for each of you. before we will -- we will get to questions from the audience. be patient. as he has already. let me start. you said that the lust grows is the most important of your box. so why'd you say that? also, how is it that given all the work you have done, you can't enjoy this book a particular? >> well, i don't know if any of you are familiar with the case. if you live in san diego, it was pretty much the biggest murder case we ever had, and it was partly because it involved these two teenage girls. fourteen years old to amber duvall and about a year later chelsea king, 17 years old.

very close properly within about 10 miles of each other. and it basically galvanized the entire community in san diego when chelsea witnessed. there was a fire at my gym. 17-year-old blonde applies. and i just thought, wow, this must be a very special grow because i've never seen a fire for missing row before. it's usually, you know, yet they helicopter flyovers sometimes looking for somebody with alzheimer's or somebody like that. this is unusual. there was so much hope that a captured everybody in the county, somehow these fires, and it went on line. went on facebook. went on twitter. what local. everyone came out to look for this girl. and there was something about it that really gave something to come together, which is said that it had to come to this, and when they found her panties with john gardner dnase on it almost immediately there arrested him

within two days and there was this anger, this galvanized community came together in anger . and they found her body two days later and in another few days that it is found ever do falls remains by tip which turned out to be john gardner. and i just saw what this did to the community. because i live in san diego, it grabbed me. at the camino, because people care so much about this case i don't run know very much as sexual predators and adopted most of us to because i don't think most of us want to . is there a possible to cover paul's idea. three don't understand it. we don't see why someone would do that to a poor innocent girl or one for that matter. three-est don't understand it. at dawn, this is an opportunity to open people's eyes. i want to do a case study and figure out for myself and educate people come out as a person gets to be a sexual offender. i don't understand it. i take cases because the people who are mentally ill or who are addicts or that sort of thing.

audi's related? is a mentally ill? does he have addictions? was he molested? if i can get in touch with his mother who nobody has heard from, she would not talk to anybody, get into his whole family history and really see if i can paint a picture of what went wrong here and is there anything that parents can learn, those who have kids like john gardner, and also of parents to have daughters, what they need to know to protect themselves and their families. is there something that i can do to really do something positive and bring something from this tragedy if i can actually help people. and in doing so i really did feel that this was the most important book that i have written to this point it is a new law was going to be hard. i knew this is a very emotional suspect -- subject, and it was. people were so scared of saying the wrong thing. and yet it turned out, i think,

to be very eye opening. natalie dug into his own case history, is family to not to be incredibly dysfunctional. his mother was a victim. she was molestation. she had been raped. and it was all to the family with addiction and mental illness. it was just the most dysfunctional family you have ever seen. and then he was also bipolar. he had imposed problems come impose control problems. he and the hd. an anchor problems, like crazy. so when i finally sat down to talk to him, i wanted to know what was in his mind to make you do this. and what did you think afterwards? and really i try to not get into the violence of it but to get into the psychology of it. and then try and figure out why he was still on the street. what went wrong with the system. might consider for an hour intaglio of the flaws in the system and how many times he should have been violated and the back and present and jesse king would not be dead today.

so i really felt like i was on a mission to further the story much further than it went in the mainstream media and connect all those dots. and to really hope that it makes a difference. >> great. thank you. then, when i think of your work, i think what the body. is that fair? a really strong sense of place, and that place. so why there? what does you there? >> you know, it has been happening since they won. even though i grew up on at the mostly frozen shores of northeastern ohio, i wanted to get out of there for as long as i can render. and my first escape route out was the editor allan poe from eldorado which my father used to read to me as a kid. some of you may remember the refrain, and sunshine and then shadow had travel along singing a song in search of eldorado.

the opening stanza, but that it conjured up this, you know, it conjured up the wild west for me. open roads lined with cactus. you know, the american promise. just every day you can start over. it was just this magical place, this land colorado that i used to go into that palm with my father when he read it and live there. and then try was also reading of their works about the west and escaped as a kid. millie and then later when i get older black elk. crazy native american mythology. stegner and so on. the classic western writers. and when my parents get divorced

and a mother and sister and i moved from the right side of the tracks to the wrong side of the tracks, just a rack up bringing. i really began moving more and more inside the west. and it wanted to live there for real when i grew up and became a writer, which i always wanted to and i did. and the body somehow resonated for me in a big way when i first came. it is really the joshua tree that has become a tone for me. you know, who knows how these things happen. it is just imprinted. it is imprinted on me, like us said, since they won. maybe it is because i am a member of the ancient hebrew tribes. i am a person of a book. i have been on this trough for really long time. >> thanks. [laughter]

>> so, david, there is a great remark about your work from sebastian youngbear is says that he refused to judge or to gloss anything over. but i wonder if more problems, for you tonight because your dealing with really kind of horrific and violent acts in trying to do so artfully. >> that is actually, you know, this gets at the heart of, you know, putting violence on the page. it was something that i really struggled with in this book. i had written fiction previously and this -- and in one of those novels i have actually, you know, included a scene or a couple of scenes of extreme violence, but it was really, you know, very artificial. was almost in the spirit of quentin tarantino, is over the top baroque of violence. and, you know, that service certain artistic purpose. then suddenly, you know, came

confronting the real thing. looking at it in real life and try to put it on the page. and it is a very, very striking thing. i think for the writer -- i don't know many of us are writers here, but when you actually are manipulating the sentences and you're trying to write about the truth and you are creating, you know, details of a very, very horrific act, there is this strange disconnect . talked very famously but the coldness of the writer, that he is looking at these events and these, you know, these incredibly involved and of setting an emotionally engaged defense. and the writers sort of is sitting there -- sitting there filing his nails. oh, that's fine. you know, even a novelist operates that way. it is a little more intimidating when you're doing nonfiction, but it is very, very intimidating when you're writing about some real person's death,

the details of it. it is very, very upsetting. and i wrote the stories kamal they involve sex, sexuality, and i had -- i was not really prepared for, you know, the incredible responsibility the you have toward real people. and i was so sort of driven to be frank about this material because i think that that is what is lacking from the discourse. he will talk about these things and then draw a veil over, well, what actually happened, and that was when i read newspaper accounts, very often homosexuality was involved. very often it's a sexual crime was involved they would not tell you what really happened. now, if i want to go as a writer and be incredibly honest and frank about that and enter this into -- into this material into

this session without being -- you know, taking advantage of it, without being gruesome and, you know, sort of true hangover the horrific details coming out of my going to go about it? and you are put in up laundry, really. i found every time -- in other words, writing a very violent act you want to make a vivid, but vivid is often requires a metaphor, something like that. so you want to say, well, the blood is red like a color. that creates this, this incredible awkward this if you are going to be nearly artful about it. you're going to let jews, oh, it was read like us broccoli -- something like that. then you have added in this incredibly extraneous elements, even if it is absolutely not accurate. and so the vividness creates its

own -- the technique of writing in out creates its own problems, and so i found that although i really enjoy, you know, more baroque, richer riding, i found that in this to you know, really-of the pack. you know, very, very cautious about the way i wrote about these events. >> at last, it reminds me of the great john prime, one of the folks. and i wanted it exactly right, but wet glove looks like, black-and-white. a black-and-white tv. shadows. >> jack. >> a big issue in any sort of writing about anything visit. how much of it is a shadow and how much is in -- >> sunshine and shadow. >> right. >> right. >> yeah. >> so, i think we have some time for questions from the folks in the audience here. and who has a microphone? do you? this lady back there.

>> the interaction and reaction of the victims' families. >> sure. um, i spoke to lots of victims. occasionally they would not speak to me. occasional there was no market track down. i was -- i was very frank about -- my book concentrates a little bit on the criminals themselves. and i was very frank about that. and i was, you know, touched by how open they were with me. i spent a lot of time, especially in oklahoma with the families of the man who was murdered there. and his brother was incredibly welcoming. and understood the project. you know, wanted the story to get out there and thought it was important as well. he was a deeply religious man and had, you know, ask that the death penalty be taken off the table in the case of his

brother's murder. so was very moving, as matter-of-fact. again, as i said before, very humbling, nerve wracking, for someone who amasses itself this fancy new york novelist suddenly as irresponsibility for, you know, taking someone story in dealing with it honestly. >> anyone else? >> i agree with david. it is a very, very big and daunting responsibility. faugh i have gone to be very good friends with some of the people i have written about, as i mentioned earlier. though these friendships have not been to you know, without their own problems, i have found out things that the people i have written about may not themselves of known about their own family members who have been killed. then my dilemma is, do i use this material or not or do i go back to the people and tell them

what i am about to do knowing that that might cause further problems and even shot a project down. these are very, very difficult problems to wrestle with. they have taken a major emotional toll overtime. it is one of the reason my books have taken years to write. sometimes i have had to step away from each of these stories, you know, as i deal with these questions cannot with desert reckoning i had something really amazing happen. part of my story involves -- there is a father-some kind of sub story running through this. it has to do with the hermit you killed a sheriff. and his son from whom he had been estranged for a long time. as i said, this guy was a

hermit. years later he tried to have a real battle with his son. it failed. it was one of the things that sent this chairman of the edge and ultimately led to the killing of this to be sheriff. and so i explore this father-and story in my book. of course, i really needed to talk to close friends of the sun who ultimately had died of a heroin overdose in a warehouse in downtown los angeles. and they work -- it took them years to get -- to be able to deal, to come forward and talk about this. i had a part of the story as my book was going to press to but i did not have all of it. and about -- almost like 24 hours before the ibook was ready to get to the printer and started getting calls from all of the son's friends. bill, bone, boom. it was all very secret mystic. and i made a late breaking @booktv literally made a stop the presses phone call to my editor because this is a crucial

part of the story coming in. and i remember i said earlier, it takes years for people to know and see what i am not too. well, there was. a late breaking thing. and it is a critical part of the story. and very grateful to these people for coming forward at that time. and it often happens that way. you just don't know when someone is going to be ready to talk and if they ever will be. >> you want to talk to the forensics. >> i have really had a very wide spectrum of experience, different reactions from family members. i have had no response at all. i tried to go through victim's witness programs where i try to meet to me know, talk with the parents of some of these victims and some of the books. i get no response of all. sometimes i have people who really want to talk about it. it ends up helping them and the end of becoming facebook

friends. in the coming to my book signings for other books. this santa to me. they help me. then make phone calls to other police departments. my most recent book with the victims' families being very upset with the book that came out, lost girls. because they said it was unauthorized. well, a judge their person when i could. i went ahead with the buck. some people were angry about that. there are a lot of people who said that, you know, the first amendment. nobody knows the story. a very important started a community. i have a right to tell it. i had a wide variety of reaction. one thing i want to say, i always try to be sensitive in

case one of these parents to pick up the books so that some of for example, with this reason but it was about teenage girls. i made sure. a major i did not go into any detail whatsoever. one girl was stabbed and mom was strangled, and that's pretty much all i said. i did not go into anything sexual is that of wanting -- of the anyone is to know that. i tried telling stories i try to use the parents words because there were on tv so often. i was able to tell their story by how they have told them in the public domain. >> another question right up here in the front. we need to write off -- way for the microphone. if you would stand up will be

all set. >> okay. thank you. i am curious. the boy the you interviewed. >> jack. >> and you ask him to almighty you do that. remember? you're telling us about that. >> john gardner. >> yes. >> sees 30. >> okay. he said why did he do that. >> yes. >> with the sec? creek. >> well, there were two separate murders. and i just try to be quick because i can sit there for a long time expired on this. a first-round, he did not -- he did not know these people and events. he had completely different moods and motivations and was in a completely different mental state in each case. the first one he was angry escrow friend. she was off doing that with some

other people. he stayed up all night long, banks open like 16 years and he was angry. he grabbed a gun and knife and he went out hunting and you want to tear somebody. he did not care who was. he saw this figure walking alone with the heady and did not realize where there was a boy wrote. campeau's terror, solid it was a girl and then was happy because then he did a paper to. he was very honest about it. the premier said that. and i'm not going into any details, but that's pretty much how he said it. the second one, he had disintegrated. he later he had tried to commit suicide in several different race, running his car into a barrier. he tried to overdoes with all kinds of drugs. and it was close to the anniversary from the first one. and he was disintegrating. his mother tried to get -- he and his mother tried to get institutionalized, 5150 s psychiatric facility. the doctor turned away and get some bills. he was in his right mind.

pacing around on these trails. he decided, he drank again something like nine years to know which she found to miss about two packs of cigarettes and was just talking to women using a snake as a ruse to get them to talk to him. and then he saw what it was attractive. he decided, want to have sex, to cite that as a renter after. thankfully for her she was too fast and could not keep up. subpar growth, the 70 euro to step in to be it the wrong place in the wrong time and he took care instead. >> we have just a short time left. al is like to ask authors this question. if there is a take away, it does not have to be necessarily the moral of the story, but emotional to kuwait, policy take away, from your work, all of you been doing this for a while now. what would be? anybody who is ready to save, when the help people take away.

>> sure. i would just point out that i think it is end of interesting that it can deny are coming in from different angles because she was saying that, you know, she thought it was important not to get into too much detail, and i found it very important to, you know, be very, very frank about, you know, being explicit without, you know, taking advantage of it. and i think that is, you know, sort of, from my perspective, that is the key thing to me know, you know, i believe that we actually can talk about all this material upon the and tastefully done if you want to use that word. i don't know if everybody does agree with that. you know, there are some people that, you know, start going to be a will to deal with it. certainly, you know, i'm not talking about even taking advantage of somebody or anything like that, but i wanted to sort of the size that being completely honest is important in telling the truth.

not leaving the you know, sort of discretion, even if it is, you know, even if you think it is, you know, on behalf of someone's sensitivities are feelings of something like that. it is important to look at the whole truth. and, you know, from my perspective i think, you know, the work that i was doing, that would be the key thing that i really wanted to just tell the stories, discover the source of this violence, which i think is an batman rather than to have anything to do with the victims. it is really a problem, an issue of masculinity. >> okay. >> something i see running through all of my stories is this very american obsession with personal right, you know, it's a free country. i can do about what. this mantra that we all grew up with. is agree one, but their is a big problem that we have which is that when this obsession, when

this very dedicated believe in this mantra things up with a personal apology, there is no stopping. there is no check on the behavior of. so in every one of my stories there is a key character who says this college recessing processed and it's a free country, and you would want, or of officer, do you have a warrant? which ever right to ask. where is that? what really is that all about tonight coming, there are people who swear by the bill of rights as scripture, and that's great, but there is no -- because we have personal rights, does that mean we must use them all the time, regardless of the welfare of other people? when this mantra since up with personal pathologies we have a very big problem, and i see that playing and in every one of the stories that i tell, whether the stories involve a member of the

military who rapes and kills or people who love to go out into the wilderness and kill wildlife or a hermit who is on a hair trigger and the state's law enforcement. that language coming from the bill of rights runs through all of these stories for better and for worse. and i don't really know. i don't have an answer. this is what i am exploring in my books. and the other thing that i am taking a look at is the role of the land in our lives. what is -- can we get back to the garden? you know, as the old saying goes , we are disconnected from the homeland, which is our environment. it is set fire to our living room. if that doesn't stop -- you know, again, because it has not stopped, that is something else that has led us to where we are

now, and that's something else plays and a big way in my stories. alexei, by stories in the desert rock and explore this question . it is a place. the fuel the american dreams. freer killing off the space, or is the lead is? >> thank you. >> well, my main reason that i hope people will read this chandra of books and my book in particular , i really tried ..

and loads of cash with cocaine on them. the mothers are doing drugs and the moms are physically present but they're not emotionally present. you will end up with the kid who may or may not go out and hurt other people. even though when the karen's really do care and make wrong decisions or they don't keep their eyes open because they are victims themselves. they can try as hard as they can. it's tough but it seems that the parent does play an important role in these cases. >> thank you all very much and thank you all for joining us. [applause]