The Death of Innocents
A True Story of Murder, Medicine, and High-Stakes Science
-
-
4.3 • 37 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
Unraveling a twenty-five-year tale of multiple murder and medical deception, The Death of Innocents is a work of first-rate journalism told with the compelling narrative drive of a mystery novel. More than just a true-crime story, it is the stunning expose of spurious science that sent medical researchers in the wrong direction--and nearly allowed a murderer to go unpunished.
On July 28, 1971, a two-and-a-half-month-old baby named Noah Hoyt died in his trailer home in a rural hamlet of upstate New York. He was the fifth child of Waneta and Tim Hoyt to die suddenly in the space of seven years. People certainly talked, but Waneta spoke vaguely of "crib death," and over time the talk faded.
Nearly two decades later a district attorney in Syracuse, New York, was alerted to a landmark paper in the literature on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome--SIDS--that had been published in a prestigious medical journal back in 1972. Written by a prominent researcher at a Syracuse medical center, the article described a family in which five children had died suddenly without explanation. The D.A. was convinced that something about this account was very wrong. An intensive quest by a team of investigators came to a climax in the spring of 1995, in a dramatic multiple-murder trial that made headlines nationwide.
But this book is not only a vivid account of infanticide revealed; it is also a riveting medical detective story. That journal article had legitimized the deaths of the last two babies by theorizing a cause for the mystery of SIDS, suggesting it could be predicted and prevented, and fostering the presumption that SIDS runs in families. More than two decades of multimillion-dollar studies have failed to confirm any of these widely accepted premises. How all this happened--could have happened--is a compelling story of high-stakes medical research in action. And the enigma of familial SIDS has given rise to a special and terrible irony. There is today a maxim in forensic pathology: One unexplained infant death in a family is SIDS. Two is very suspicious. Three is homicide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This book is billed as the story of upstate New York district attorney Bill Fitzpatrick's five-year crusade to bring a child-killer to justice--30 years after the fact. In 1995, Waneta Hoyt was convicted of murdering her six children between 1965 and 1972 under the guise of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS. In fact, though, the husband-and-wife journalist team have taken on a project of a far greater, even overwhelming, scope. The book begins somewhat unexpectedly with an entirely different set of murders disguised as SIDS that introduces the reader to Fitzpatrick; the legal research marking the Hoyt case isn't introduced for nearly 100 pages. The pacing remains awkward throughout. The turning point of the police investigation--Hoyt's interrogation and confession--comes fairly quickly, only to be interrupted by nearly 300 pages reconstructing Hoyt's childhood and the medical and social development of the SIDS movement. There are elements of a great true-crime story--the insights into Hoyt's motivations; the investigation leading up to her arrest; the mood in the courtroom from the jury selection through the dramatic verdict and sentencing--and Firstman and Talan are good writers, making complex legal and medical issues accessible through clever reconstruction of dialogue and prose that is remarkably free of melodrama. The section on SIDS is also a fascinating history of a politically charged medical debate. But in the final assessment, Firstman and Talan have overextended themselves: they have created one promising volume from the makings of two or even three truly good books.
