Post on True Crime

Some mysteries are buried deep, but they never truly disappear. For the past year, I’ve been immersed in the cold, hard details of a case that’s haunted me since I first started researching it three decades ago. Bringing The Jacklighter to life has been an exercise in reconstruction—sifting through old boxes of evidence, documents, and now ...

Something Shifted This Week For years, I’ve been researching, reporting, and writing The Jacklighter, a narrative true crime book about the 1976 murder of Montrose attorney Martin Dillon and the decades-long quest for justice that followed. (Set for publication this fall.) For 30 years, I’ve kept boxes of newspaper clippings in my basement. Decades ago, I ...

🗣️ Listen to this short post and full excerpt, narrated by the author (23 min): New excerpts from THE JACKLIGHTER mark 50 years since a Pennsylvania attorney was murdered in the woods. In a perfect world, The Jacklighter would have been published on June 2, 2026, exactly 50 years to the day that Martin Dillon walked into ...

One of the highlights of this year’s Pennwriters Conference in Lancaster, PA, was recording a special podcast episode for the BookSpeak Network. I was thrilled to sit down with podcaster Tory Gates—author, broadcaster, and host of The Brown Posey Press Show—for an all-Pennwriters edition of the podcast. Tory is a veteran of nearly four decades ...

The 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference — Lancaster, PA | May 15–17, 2026 There’s something about a roomful of writers that recharges me every time. The 39th Annual Pennwriters Conference, themed The Writer’s Path, brought a swarm of authors, poets, and storytellers to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for three days of workshops, craft conversations, and a Lord of the ...

I’m still pinching myself. When I launched the Kickstarter campaign for The Jacklighter: Murder, Betrayal, and Justice in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, I hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. But my Backer Besties came through and fully funded (and then some!) my first Kickstarter campaign 😭😭😭 To every single backer who pledged, shared the campaign, ...

An Invitation From Across the Pond When UK true crime podcaster Tom Clarke of Caught Up In Crime reached out to interview me about Chained Birds, I said yes immediately. Tom has a gift for getting to the heart of a story, and we took a deep dive into how I gained access to a whistleblower inside one ...

I’ve done more than a dozen podcast interviews about Chained Birds, and I say that with deep gratitude. But this one is different. This one stopped me in my tracks … and that was before I saw Tom Clarke’s video intro to his cinematic-for-the-ear episode called “The Snowball.” Caught Up in Crime is the brainchild of ...