Evil Season
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
"Benson is a master of true crime." --Robert Scott
Deadly Dreams
Joyce Wishart was living out her life's dream, running her own art gallery in sunny Sarasota, Florida. But that dream ended in nightmare when a deranged drifter named Elton Brutus Murphy walked through the door with a knife in his hand and a voice in his head commanding him to rape and kill. In the space of half an hour, Joyce was dead--brutally mutilated--and the tony arts enclave plunged into terror as a frenzied manhunt ensued. Told in the convicted murderer's own words, a chilling tale of one life spiraling into madness--and another gruesomely cut short.
"Difficult to put down. . .. This is one that I highly recommend." --True Crime Book Reviews on Watch Mommy Die
"Brisk pacing. . .shocking details." --Publishers Weekly on The Burn Farm
Includes the exclusive confession of Elton Brutus Murphy
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The downsides of dramatizing a true crime narrative become abundantly clear in this dull reconstruction of a horrific 2004 murder in Sarasota, Fla. An overwhelming stench leads to the discovery of the butchered corpse of art gallery owner Joyce Wishart; she had been stabbed numerous times, nearly beheaded, and her killer had removed her vagina and lower abdomen. Six months after the crime, detectives get a DNA hit identifying Elton Brutus Murphy's blood at the scene. Much of the book deals with the butcher's vivid descent into madness and violence, culminating with his murder of Wishart. The dramatic prologue provides Murphy's inner thoughts as he supposedly posed the corpse after the killing (to create his own "masterwork") and prepared to make "the stew." Yet later in the book, the author apparently quotes from his interviews with Murphy to note that the murderer laughed at the theory that his victim was posed in a particular way, and makes clear that there is no evidence of any kind that he cooked any part of her, not even in his confession. These conflicts ultimately undermine Benson's (Betrayal in Blood) credibility, a fatal flaw in any work of nonfiction.
