Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland is a 2018 non-fiction book by Patrick Radden Keefe. It focuses on The Troubles in Northern Ireland following the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten children, whose family was ultimately destroyed by her murder.
I would like to start off by saying how I just cannot get over, since I was old enough to know what it was, that the Irish/UK named this bloody, armed conflict ‘The Troubles’ like they’re discussing a pair of disobedient shih tzus and not several decades worth of paramilitary organizations terrorism and guerrilla warfare. It absolutely floors me to this day.
Anyway, Say Nothing was probably my favorite non-fiction book in 2020. I didn’t do as many non-fiction books in 2020 as in years past, but I did do a fair few (some dense) and this was probably my favorite one. In a conflict with no shortage of characters and role players, Keefe did a very good job of digging into the personalities and politics of key players in the IRA since 1972, including Dolours and Marian Price.
I didn’t – still don’t – have a particularly good grip on the history and politics surrounding The Troubles. Keefe did a good job explaining a lot of the key elements of the conflict, but there’s obviously a lot more than can fit into any single volume. He combines the history, politics, and biographies into this book and ultimately uses Jean McConville’s murder as a lens to reflect on what these extremely brutal conflicts meant to the people affected by them.
Keefe also claims to have solved McConville’s murder. McConville’s murder was considered particularly outrageous as she was the only caregiver of ten children. Keefe used the testimony of two of three of McConville’s kidnappers – Pat McClure and Dolours Price – as well as other independent corroborators to deduce the third ‘Unknown’ (a highly secretive group within the IRA) that pulled the trigger. The former IRA members had said that they wouldn’t be naming the person because the person was still alive, but considering Keefe’s deductions I’m inclined to say he was right.
Say Nothing was an excellent book that I went back to physically buy after completing the audiobook. It’s a keeper. Last item of note: Keefe takes the title from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing.’
Category Archives: true crime
Say Nothing
The Man From the Train
The Man From the Train is a true crime book by Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James, in which the James’ lay out the case for discovery of a previously unrealized/overlooked serial killer in North America from the 1890s until about 1912.
Bill James, a baseball historian and statistician by trade, originally started his research in an attempt to solve the Villisca axe murders, which were the rather famous unsolved murders of an entire family in Villisca, Iowa in June 1912.
In the course of investigating the Villisca murders, James expanded his search to similar cases in the United States during that time frame – and found a lot. Like, I thought it was a surprisingly large number of family murders. From 1890 to 1912, there were approximately 8 entire families murdered per year in the United States. James gave this number as average. Most of these murders were not related to the murders the James’ connected in this book – the murders linked in this book involved several pieces of evidence present/reported on at all the scenes but not linked as a pattern by law enforcement at the time. Sharing information was hard to begin with due to distance, plus law enforcement can be territorial, and most law enforcement believed there was a local connection between the dead families and whoever killed them. You can understand their reasoning. Why would you wipe out an entire family for what appeared to be no reason?
The James’ found family murders that occurred in Nova Scotia, Arkansas, Oregon, Kansas, Florida and other locations that all fit certain patterns: all of the families lived only a few hundred feet from railroad junctions in small towns with little to no police force, none of the families had a dog to warn of an intruder, the families had barns where the killer probably spent a few days watching them first, the murder weapon was always the blunt edge of an axe, the victims were usually covered with a sheet before being killed (probably to prevent spatter), the axe was left in plain sight, the bodies were moved/stacked after death, the parents almost never showed signs of a struggle but the young girls usually did, there was no apparent robbery, and some other details that consistently showed up throughout the linked crimes. James believed the motive for/major factor in the murders was a sadistic attraction to prepubescent girls – hence the girls frequently showed signed of a struggle and signs that they’d been molested after death, and that the killer had ejaculated at the scene. (Gross).
They eventually reveal a suspect in the case – an immigrant named Paul Mueller. Mueller is only ever linked to the case of a murdered family in West Brookfield, Massachusetts by contemporary sources at the time, but a physical description of a short but well built German immigrant who spoke little English and who was a German veteran of WWI appears in a local paper. He had unusually small and wide spaced teeth, and worked as an itinerant lumberjack with good wood working and carpentry skills. Considering most of the family murders investigated by James took place in or near logging communities and with an axe, the possibility of Mueller jumping on and off trains for jobs in different parts of the country and murdering an entire family as a hobby isn’t implausible.
The only year the James’ didn’t find any family murders who fit the pattern was 1908, leading them to speculate the man from the train was imprisoned for a minor crime during that time. The murders stop not long after the Villsca murders, and the James’ believe Mueller may have left the States when private investigators and the media begin to call attention to the fact that a single person may have been traveling on the nation’s railway system and killing people at an alarming rate. They’re fairly confident the same person committed at least 14 family murders for a total of 59 victims, and are less certain of his involvement in another 25 for a total of 93 victims. They also ruled out the man from the train from being the Axeman of New Orleans. Same fun axe but different patterns at the crime scenes.
James also goes into the consequences of some of these murders – one particularly haunting story was in the deep South (Georgia? Florida?) where a couple of black men (including a mentally challenged man) were lynched for a family murder the man from the train probably committed. Police targeted them and harassed them into confessing, telling the man with the IQ of a seven year old if he just tells them he did it, he can go home – you know , all the usual heartbreaking fun you find in these recurrent nightmare stories of criminal “justice” in the United States.
As one last thing to think about, James calls attention to the 1922 Hinterkaifeck murders in Germany, noting the similarities between that family murder and the murders committed by the man from the train. Again, James theorizes Mueller left the United States when the family murders began being linked by journalists and private investigators in 1911. Since we know serial killers don’t stop unless they’re caught or die, it’s not impossible Mueller committed these murders too, although there’s no proof. Even James admitted it was a toss up.
I found this book really compelling, and for whatever reason, very scary. Just the idea of someone jumping off a train, hiding in your barn/house for days/weeks/months, watching your every move, then murdering whole families was so creepy and upsetting to me. Scholars of this sort of thing find James’ & McCarthy James’ theory plausible and even the best possibility for solving the Villisca murders. It’s safe to say that after 110+ years, we’ll never know what happened for sure, but the case for a serial killer who went undetected for two decades is quite compelling here. And as we know, the term “serial killer” wasn’t used until decades later and are weren’t understood (better understood, anyway) until much later.
The writing could be a bit informal at times, but for the most part I found the writing engaging and interesting. I highly recommend The Man From the Train. Is some of it speculating? Yes. But while the named suspect (Paul Mueller) might not be correct, I think the case that the same person committed multiple family murders over a vast swath of North America has more than been made here. Fascinating book, wonderful job by Bill James and his daughter.
The Gift of Fear
I listened to The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence on the advice of my mother, who has spent all my life (and at this point, most of hers) trying to keep me from being kidnapped and murdered.
I’m exaggerating, but only slightly.
My parents drilled in to me, for as long as I could remember, certain safety precautions that in hindsight they were 100% right about but they maybe could have been slightly less terrifying about? Then again, I haven’t been kidnapped or murdered, so they might have been on to something.
The big safety thing my parents practically beat into me, for as long as I can remember, is to never, never, NEVER for ANY reason – get into a car with someone that I don’t know. This kept me safe but also sort of ruined my life because I’m reluctant to use any ride service (uber, lyft, whatever) except a licensed taxi service. And even then I don’t love getting into those cars by myself. My poor husband has had to basically force me into uber rides or shell out twice as much money for real cabs. Still though, I’ve never been kidnapped or murdered, so once again, my parents may have been on to something.
Now that I’m an adult, I look back on their advice and realize it was spot on in some ways that didn’t make sense to me at the time but totally make sense to me now. For example – a normal adult is never going to ask a kid they don’t really know for help. They won’t ask for directions, they won’t ask a kid to help find their dog, they won’t ask the kid to show them how a flashlight works or whatever. Especially a young kid. And while as a kid all missing puppies were a big concern for me, I know now my parents were right because as a 34 year old normal adult person, I would *never* ask a kid for help. The most I can see myself doing is asking a kid to call 911 while I am dying on the sidewalk out of reach of my phone, because that is the *only* time I would probably ever ask a kid for help.
I didn’t realize it at the time but most of these lessons were protecting me before my gut instincts were developed enough to be trusted. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not and you should get out of there.
The Gift of Fear is classified as a self-help book, but I didn’t find that classification completely accurate.
Gavin de Becker, who wrote the book, is a security specialist with a lot of experience in protection. He helped to develop the MOSAIC Threat Assessments Systems that is still used today when assessing threats of violence against people, particularly public figures. The book emphasizes trusting your gut but also educates the reader on places where violence occurs (it can be anywhere, really, but common in places like home, school, work, dating, etc…) and on PINS, which stands for pre-incident indicators. In de Becker’s experience, life threatening acts of violence aren’t usually random. You can predict violence if you know what you’re looking for, but most people don’t know what they’re looking for. Something feels off in the moment but the person ignores it, and ends up in danger.
There are a number of PINS, but these are the ones I remember best and still see all the time:
+ Typecasting – putting the chosen victim in a role (usually in an insulting way) which the victim feels obligated to prove untrue. “You think you’re too good for me.”
+ Unsolicited Promises – a promise to the victim that, usually, the victim doesn’t request. Such promises are likely to be broken. “I promise this is the last time I’ll contact you.”
+ Ignoring the Word ‘No’ – self-explanatory.
Is everyone who does one of these things going to turn to violence? No. But these are considered warning signs to go with your gut. de Becker is right that we have a finely developed instinct for fear – it’s intuition developed over millions of years that comprises a thousand little observations that we aren’t even completely aware of.
I’ve read some complaints that the advice in this book is that it’s “too anecdotal” and is “just common sense” and is too focused on “male violence towards women.” (As if there aren’t numbers that back up a lot of these violent crimes are committed by men, most frequently against women.) At least one of those complaining reviews was from a dude, who probably hasn’t been told that they should “be nice” to men to placate them and that the boy who hits you in the school yard is doing it because he “likes you.” Women are told constantly to ignore their own discomfort in favor of being nice.
It’s nice that we’re moving away from that, but it’s not gone. I also think it’s good to point out that people who are escalating in these warning signs of violence don’t suddenly de-escalate. They get worse. The book *is* fear mongering, but it’s not fear mongering in a bad way. More people could stand to better be safe than sorry.
I highly recommend the book, especially to women.
The Monster of Florence
I did a few true crime books in 2018.
The Monster of Florence: A True Story is a book by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi about the serial killer given that moniker, who terrorized the Italian province of Florence, Italy from 1968 to 1985. All 16 victims were young amorous couples in the countryside.
This was a fascinating book because it becomes more about how the authors ended up the prime suspects (Preston was entirely too young to commit the crime and wasn’t even in Italy at the time) and what a failure the Italian justice system is.
Preston and Spezi were outspoken critics of the way the Italian authorities handled the case – in fact, nobody even thought to connect the crimes until 1981.
The history of the victims is documented pretty well, as well as what took place at the crime scenes. Unfortunately, because of the ineptness of the Italian “justice system,” the killer was never caught. In fact, the courts decided it was a group of people who committed the crimes, even though this seems unlikely based on accounts provided in Preston’s book.
There is no current investigation in the Monster of Florence case. There have been no murders connected to the case since 1985. There’s a theory out there that the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer were one in the same, but it is just a theory, and I haven’t investigated it myself.
The Italian justice system is indicted in The Monster of Florence: A True Story more than any suspect. The police botched the investigations of the murders, destroyed the crime scene, didn’t follow up leads and make arrests. The authors of the book, Preston and Spezi, were arrested and the prosecutors were clearly abusing their office.
It was an interesting story, although in terms of presenting who may have murdered sixteen people, not very satisfying.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
I won’t say I’m a true crime obsessive but I will say that it is one of things I do periodically get obsessed with and can’t get off of until I’m literally having nightmares and the rest of my world is suffering from a lack of decent rest. Criminal Minds is one of my favorite shows, I watch endless episodes of the many shows on Investigative Discovery. I read true crime books and I find myself down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of unsolved murders and missing persons and unidentified remains.
Fortunately, I haven’t completely succumbed to podcasts yet.
Like many people, I find serial killers endlessly fascinating, because they are so completely different than normal people. How can they do the terrible things they do? What are their methods? Their motives? What makes them tick? But it’s hard to study these things. The gruesome nature of the subject matter is the stuff of nightmares, and it’s hard not to feel like a ghoulish voyeur going through crime scene information and notes and message boards and anything you can get your hands on. You begin to worry if you’re like them, if you’re capable of such violence. You begin to relate to the victims. It’s a dark place and can become a very dark obsession that’s hard to pull yourself out of.
This book popped up as recommended for me in 2018, and I think that was around the time they arrested a 70+ year old man for the crimes extensively reported on by Michelle McNamara in her book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer.
McNamara was the wife of well known comedian Patton Oswalt. She was a very talented writer, but she had issues with pills, and she actually died two years before the book was released due to an accidental drug overdose of prescription drugs. Oswalt, investigative journalist Billy Jensen, and crime writer Paul Haynes completed the book from her extensive notes after her death. Most of it was already written and just needed to be organized.
I haven’t read that many true crime books for the simple reason that most of them aren’t very well written. They’re informative and interesting enough but they don’t tell the story very well. The authors writing them are not true storytellers. They’re retired cops or investigative journalists (where storytelling technique isn’t the most important thing), or FBI agents, or in the case of the latest true crime book I read, a sports journalist, or whoever.
Let’s just say that the Truman Capotes don’t come along very often.
Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is the best true crime book I’ve read since In Cold Blood (which I have to revisit because I haven’t read it in years). It was captivating and smart and so completely captured the humanity of the Golden State Killer’s victims. She told their story and explained her investigation into this guy’s identity in such a way that didn’t feel voyeuristic, which is a feeling I sometimes get from true crime books. I didn’t feel like I was prying into the lives of victims in a ghoulish way at the worst moment of their existence, I was learning their names and their lives and they were becoming people I knew who happened to have a terrible thing happen to them, not exhibits who have emotional scars or worse on display for all to see.
This book didn’t lead to a tip that meant the arrest of the Golden State Killer, but it led to enough attention that the case came back into prominence. It couldn’t be ignored. McNamara wrote the book after writing articles on the serial rapist and serial killer she had coined “The Golden State Killer” for Los Angeles Magazine in 2013.
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department finally arrested Joseph James DeAngelo on April 24, 2018 and charged him with first degree murder based on DNA evidence, 42 years after his first rape. The statute of limitations had expired for his burglaries and rapes, so he couldn’t be charged with those crimes, but on June 29, 2020 DeAngelo plead guilty to 13 counts of first degree murder with special circumstances and 13 counts of kidnapping in order to avoid the death penalty.
Michelle McNamara has been gone for four years. She didn’t get to see the publication of her book, or see the arrest and guilty plea of a serial killer she was helping to find, or see her daughter grow up.
But this case, this book, ended up being her life’s work. It is good work. It’s a true crime book, but it’s more than that, because true crimes should be about more than just crime, and this book is those extra things. It’s a biography and a memoir – victims, law enforcement, ordinary citizens, the dark side of the American dream. It’s a book about what people can do when they pool resources to find someone who needs to be found. It’s a book about searching for justice.
It’s a true crime book, but it’s a really good true crime book. It’s a true crime book the way true crime books should be written, and if you’re going to read true crime books, you should read I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.
words in scarlet ink 