📺 This week I sat down with brothers Cameron and Brian Santana on Santana True Crime for nearly 90 minutes to talk about The Jacklighter, my new true crime book about a 1976 “hunting accident” in Pennsylvania that became a murder case nearly 20 years later. It was my third appearance on the show, and it was a lot of fun.
Cameron, a retired police officer, hosts the podcast, and his brother Brian, a college English professor, is his regular co-host. Our first true crime books came out around the same time from the same publisher, so these two feel like old friends. I joined Cameron last November to celebrate the relaunch of my first book, Chained Birds, as an indie author (read that post here), and it was good to be back with both brothers.
The jokes, and the case behind them
The brothers posted a short clip of the episode on social media, showing how freely their humor ran. Brian compared the whole situation to going hunting with former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Cameron said the story sounded like an episode of Desperate Housewives.
But all humor aside, Cameron and Brian asked probing, serious questions about the 50-year true-crime saga that began with a skeet-shooting incident in the Pennsylvania woods. On June 2, 1976, young, promising attorney Martin Dillon took a supposed best friend to his family’s hunting camp, Gunsmoke, to shoot clay pigeons. But Marty did not come home. His friend, Dr. Stephen Scher, said Marty died in a tragic accident that day, and for 20 years the doctor got away with murder.
The Santana Brothers and I covered a lot of ground yet kept the conversation fairly spoiler-free, which pleased at least one YouTube viewer who said they planned to read the book and didn’t want the end revealed.
Brian’s next book: Murder in Niceville
We also talked about Brian’s next book, Murder in Niceville: The Debra Elizabeth Espey Story, coming in February 2027. It is a true crime book about the 1973 killing of Debra Espey in Niceville, Florida. You can pre-order Murder in Niceville on Amazon.
Brian and Cameron are also the authors of A Murder on Campus: The Professor, The Cop, and North Carolina’s Most Notorious Cold Case.
Watch the full interview
You can watch the full conversation on the Santana True Crime YouTube channel. Follow Cameron on Instagram at @santanatruecrime and Brian at @truecrimeprofessor.
Thank you, Cameron and Brian, for another great conversation, and thank you to everyone who tuned in. ✨
