An Angel's Death
The true crime behind my latest novel
Hi, everyone, and welcome to my substack newsletter. I’m glad that you’re here!
I’m a (so far!) unpublished mystery writer, and my current work-in-progress involves a murder inspired by a true cold case. Here’s the pitch:
A disgraced rookie reporter becomes obsessed with finding the identity of a dead immigrant child on a rural Alabama farm, even if it means running afoul of newsroom ethics again. But when her mentor, another investigative reporter, disappears, she realizes that her single-minded pursuit of the truth might cost her both her job and her life.
I read about a similar cold case in high school: an abandoned child’s body, her name unknown; a nearby immigrant community, afraid to talk to authorities for fear of deportation; a detective who doggedly continues to seek answers and finally found the horrible truth. Rather than calling the child “Jane Doe”, law enforcement dubbed her “Angel” and paid for her burial and a monument depicting an angel. Those details haunted me. (I’m tearing up thinking about this.)
Recently I decided to track down that original article in Reader’s Digest.
I’m the furthest thing from an amateur detective, and I don’t remember details about when I read the article (possibly between 1993-2000) or even the murder location (somewhere in the Southwestern U.S.).
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy to track down historical RD articles as I’d hoped. Given my limited research skills, I still haven’t found the origial article anywhere.
Maybe it doesn’t totally matter what the true story was.
Maybe it’s better that I don’t know the true story, so my fiction doesn’t follow the truth so closely that it exploits this little girl’s death.
Maybe what matters is that I remember that little Angel and seek in some small way to keep her memory alive.
Thank you for reading. I hope that I will have an author interview for you soon.
P.S.: In my research, I stumbled over some other cold cases from my home state of Alabama. I went down a rabbit hole about the 1984 disappearance of Sherry Lynn Marler in Greenville, Alabama. Her stepfather, Raymond Stringfellow, happened to have the same last name as a graduate of my high school and her father, who was my parents’ trusted auto mechanic. After several hours of combing obituaries and free public records, I can’t establish a connection. It’s probably just an odd coincidence.
I'm thrilled to be on your substack! I'm so glad I'm not the only one drawn to little lost souls.
There’s some backstory to how I can relate to that. It begins when I got a contract for my first book. At the time, my federal agent husband wanted me to use a pen name to protect us from people who might track us online. I recognized the wisdom of his counsel because I grew up a sheriff's deputy's daughter as was very aware that we could easily be singled out by vengeful criminals because of his patrol car in the driveway. So I agreed to the necessity of a pen name and chose the first one that came to mind.
Let me tell you about Kierstin. When I was young, probably still in elementary school, my dad, then working on patrol, was called to an elementary school to collect a child bruised so severely she was not safe going home. I don't know where DFS was, but he brought her to our house. She was a thin child with brown hair like mine. My sisters and I took care of her for only a few hours, but she made a lasting impression on me. Years later, while standing in my dad's office at the sheriff's office, I said, "Dad, whatever happened to Kierstin?"
His face changed. "Oh, honey, the family moved to Idaho, and her stepfather killed her there."
I chose Kierstin’s name because she mattered to me. It’s a way of keeping her close and never forgetting her. A sweet child who only knew pain. I write about hard topics to satisfy my obsession to rescue victims--like Kierstin. I always cry when I think about her. I hope from her window in heaven she's able to look down and know that someone cares.