Introduction and review of "The Death of Innocents" by Firstman/Talen

[Kriselda Jarnsaxa]

Hello, I'm Kriselda, and I'm a True Crime fanatic :) I'm hooked on all the various crime documentaries they have on TV these days, and have read more true crime books that I'd care to count. (I also like fictional crime dramas - like the Law & Order shows, and especially enjoy it when I can recognize the real-life case the episode is riffing off of....)

When it comes to true crime books, I've long been a big Ann Rule fan and also enjoy John Douglas' books, though I have to admit after reading his book "Anyone You Want Me to Be" about John Robinson (aka "The Slavemaster") I was really disappointed. In the book, he seems to buy into the idea of the super-secret, underground "slavemaster" organization - called "The International Council of Masters" to which Robinson claimed to belong.

There are - IMO - several problems with this claim, not the least of which is that Robinson is an excellent con-man - he was able to trick a KC charity into giving him their "Man of the Year" award by forging messages of support from various civic leaders, among other things. Another big problem is that when I tried to do some research on the group, I couldn't find any references to it that weren't tied to a discussion of Douglas' book. In the age of the Internet, it's pretty hard to keep any kind of group TOTALLY secret, and I'd imagine there'd be at least a few disgruntled slaves and/or former members who didn't leave on the best of terms who would want to get "the truth" about the group out to the general public. Yet there's no other information about it, and on most of the message boards I looked at, there were people involved in the BDSM community asking each other if anyone had ever heard of it. It just struck me as sloppy research on Douglas' part - he could still have included Robinson's claim, but just noted that other than that, he could find no information about it. That would have allowed him to include the claim, indicate to the reader that the claim was somewhat dubious but still not denying it outright in case someone later finds evidence that it does exist.

Anway, what are some of your favourite writers? I'd love to learn about other books and authors that y'all think are good and enjoy!

REVIEW

One book I'd like to recommend to anyone who's not yet read it is "The Death of Innocents" by by Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan. It's an in-depth look at how Dr. Alfred Steinschneider's theory about a genetic component to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome became a medical axiom and how the research he did was deeply flawed - largely because he based his case study almost entirely on the family of only one woman, Wanda Hoyt, who, it turned out, had actually been systematically murdering her children (likely due to Munchenhausen-Syndrome-by-Proxy.) Yet even as evidence mounted that his theory was wrong, Dr. Steinschneider keeps promoting it, and other doctors - unaware of how shaky the theory truly is - keep using it, inadvertently allowing an unknown number of mothers who very well may have killed their own children get away with their crimes.

The book weaves together the stories of Dr. Steinschnider and his theory; Wanda Hoyt's life, the investigation into the death of her children and her eventual prosecution; and how other doctors and researchers were finally able to demonstrate that Steinschnider's theories were false. It does get bogged down a bit in some places, especially when discussing the medical aspects of the story, but taken as a whole, the book is an excellent read, and a bit scary when it comes to seeing how one researcher's theory can take hold and become conventional wisdom for years, even when there's little else to support it.

At any rate, I'm glad to have a community of fellow True Crime buffs to chat with - I've been enjoying what I've seen so far!