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POINTING FROM THE GRAVE

Name: POINTING FROM THE GRAVE
Author: Samantha Weinberg
ISBN: 1-4013-5195-6

A TRUE STORY OF MURDER AND DNA

by Samantha Weinberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2003

Deeply satisfying account of a rotten crime solved by chemical sleuthing.

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The expertly told story of a murder and a molecule.

“Two lives, made and destroyed by DNA and by each other,” says British journalist Weinberg (Last of the Pirates, 1995) of the collision between Helena Greenwood, a British chemical pathologist working on various applications of DNA, and David Paul Frediani, the man found guilty of first her sexual assault and then later her murder. (Though the case can be made that Greenwood wasn't destroyed by DNA, but laid to a more peaceful rest by the apprehension of her murderer). Carefully and without melodrama, Weinberg follows Greenwood, Frediani, and their families and acquaintances through their lives, leading up to the sexual assault, Frediani's conviction, and then the murder, for which there was initially no evidence of Frediani's involvement. The author traces the evolution of elements of forensic pathology from fingerprinting to blood typing to the emergence of a spiraling ladder of protein as they replaced the smoking gun as prosecutorial manna. She fluidly handles the science behind the reliability of DNA profiling analysis and explains how inept handling by law enforcement can easily corrupt it. (Indeed, the whole history and mechanics of DNA are intelligibly presented.) Exhaustive trial scenes now and then bog down the story, but this comprehensive detail is critical to understanding the interplay between DNA evidence and all other forms of evidence, as well as the possibility that telltale DNA material may have arrived at the scene of the crime in altogether innocent ways. To help situate the Greenwood case within the history of DNA analysis, Weinberg reviews a number of high-profile DNA cases (O.J. Simpson and a handful of important others) and assesses the role played by archival homicide details both in apprehending criminals and in freeing innocent parties now serving time. But her main focus remains on the fatal Greenwood-Frediani conjunction.

Deeply satisfying account of a rotten crime solved by chemical sleuthing.

Pub Date: April 16, 2003

ISBN: 1-4013-5195-6

Page Count: 368

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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DOUBLE JEOPARDY

OBSESSION, MURDER, AND JUSTICE DENIED

by Bob Hill ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1995

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Gut-wrenching account of a brutal 1988 rape/murder in Louisville, Ky., and the miscarriage of justice that resulted when killer's prosecution was botched. Louisville Courier-Journal feature writer Hill begins with the disappearance of Brenda Schaefer in September 1988. Her family and the police suspected that her fiancÇ, Mel Ignatow, was responsible, but no physical evidence linked him to the possible crime. After 16 months, Mary Ann Shore-Inlow, Ignatow's mistress, confessed to having been coerced into helping him bury Schaefer's body and led authorities to it. The FBI hastily set up a wiretap in which Shore- Inlow was to initiate a conversation about the burial, but the results were ambiguous and poorly recorded. The arrest was made despite these complications, but the jury refused to convict Ignatow based solely on Shore-Inlow's testimony. Community outrage prompted the authorities to retry the case on federal charges of perjury (since he could not be tried twice for murder). In the interim, Ignatow's house had been sold, and the new inhabitants discovered graphic photographs of the crime hidden under the carpet. This evidence was used to force him to plead guilty to the federal charges, and he received the maximum penalty: eight years and one month, of which he will serve five—about the same that Shore-Inlow received for her plea bargain. The author relates this tragic tale with an overly obsessive attention to detail (even providing the high school background of the rug installers who discovered the photographs) that prompts the uneasy feeling Hill is stalking rather than researching the story—an effect most pronounced when he details the type, color, and size of the socks and underwear worn by the victim on the day she was murdered. Effectively executed, but a repulsive story nonetheless.

Pub Date: July 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-688-12910-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995

Categories:

TRUE CRIME

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SINS OF THE SON

by Carlton Stowers ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 1995

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A crime journalist's painfully honest attempt to come to terms with his son's downward spiral into a life of drugs and criminal activity. Stowers, an Edgar winner for Careless Whispers (not reviewed), documents the gradual metamorphosis of his son Anson from a withdrawn teenager into a drug addict who in 1988 brutally murders his ex-wife in a fit of rage. In quasi-confessional style, a professional who has reported on the tragedies of many other families seeks to understand when, in his own son's life, the point of no return was passed. Stowers delves into the early years of his career, when he spent long hours at the office and relocated several times. The tensions caused by his devotion to work take their toll on his first two marriages, which end in bitter divorces, and on his sons, Anson and Ashley. As a teenager, Anson begins to run away for days at a time; eventually he is arrested for breaking into a house and stealing food. His father enrolls him in a drug rehabilitation program, but Anson's problems with both drugs and the law escalate. His first imprisonment comes when he steals his father's car and robs a store in Louisiana; released early and still severely addicted to drugs, Anson beats, stabs, and strangles his ex-wife, Annette; pleading guilty, he returns to prisonthis time for at least two decades. As Stowers struggles with this painful past, he seems to have missed the uncomfortable irony inherent in using a book to sort out his feelings about a tormented son whose problem was in large part that his father was too wrapped up in writing books. Compelling, but morally troubling. (10 b&w photos, not seen)