I Read a Lot of Books

If you know me, or read this website, you know I like true crime. Maybe that is wrong. No one should like crime. Let us just say that I am always interested to read about true crime, or watch a documentary, listen to a podcast, etc. I am familiar with the case in The Blooding as it was groundbreaking for the use of DNA and (at the time) state of the art genetics science. It is also famous for the false confession of one of the accused. So, I knew the general story of this case before the book came into my life.

On the surface, this is the story of Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashforth, two teenagers who were raped and murdered three years apart near the village of Narborough and how police used the state of the art “genetic fingerprinting” to identify the killer, a man who had been overlooked in the original investigations. On closer inspection, this books discusses the murders as they unfold. The book is chronological, so we begin with an aside about village life from the perspective of the author who is american. Wambaugh makes it his duty to force the reader into the ‘feel’ of English village living. I think it was an unnecessary aside, but not as unnecessary as the next aside where he discusses the relationship between a 13 yr old girl whose CB handle was Green Demon and the boy (CB handle Spirit) with whom she begins a dangerous relationship. Spirit has unusual sexual demands for a teenaged boy and uses violence and emotional abuse to get his way. The book then transitions to how Lynda Mann’s family came to live in the village. That is just one example of the transitions in this book being very terrible. More on that later. Lynda was a nice girl whose babysitting gig was cancelled so she went to meet with some friends. When she couldn’t find them, she headed home, but never arrived. Her mom and step dad went out to look for her, then reported her missing, but the police treated the news very casually. The next morning a hospital worker found Lynda’s body lying in a short cut, dead. One of the many tragedies of the case is that Lynda’s stepfather had searched that particular path the night before in the dark and had passed by Lynda’s body but could not see her. Initially, detectives look at the mental hospital close by to find subjects. They also follow up leads and even spend time looking at Lynda’s stepfather. Eventually, they can’t find anyone to match the semen found on Lynda. And when I say match semen, I mean blood type was all they could get in the early 80s. The semen found at the scene showed a Group A secretor PGM 1 +. Roughly, ten percent of the male population. Her case goes cold and three years later Dawn Ashforth goes missing. Her body is discovered two days later and similarities to the Mann case bother detectives. The semen at the scene had the same blood type as Mann’s murderer. During this time the police arrest a teenager and charge him with the crime. The teenager confessed, but doubts about the credibility of that confession bother the police and they ask Dr. Alec Jeffrys to compare the suspect’s semen to the semen found on both girls. DNA technology had BARELY begun to be used in civil cases to prove paternity and the like, but it had never been used on a criminal investigation. The semen didn’t match the suspect. The police force then asked all the men in a three village radius to voluntarily submit blood samples to be tested against the killer’s DNA. I won’t spoil it for you, but they eventually get their guy. And lest you get too sorry for the teenager who confessed to the crime, well, he raped children so I don’t think he deserves that much sympathy.

What I liked about the book were the tiny details. Wambaugh was able to interview the families involved and share some personal insights into their struggles and the days and years after their children were taken from them. This personal touch is especially good when talking about forensics which can be a bit boring. The scientific community were still in the process of establishing protocols of how to collect and test for DNA and some of the early methodology if fascinating. What I think Wambaugh didn’t do well was display a certain smugness. At times he delivers the narrative like a tabloid journalist and stylistically, I hate that. The transitions, as mentioned before, weren’t all that good. That goes into the idea of leaving certain chapters like cliff hangers. The story itself was compelling enough that those tired little devises are unnecessary and distracting. I do feel like he gave the murderer (who was not Spirit from the beginning of the book, lest you assume that should logically follow, as any logical person would) and the victims and their families equal time which is refreshing. In true crime, we tend to focus on the murderer, and that is a disservice to the lives taken. True crime junkies will like this book. Also, a few of my science minded friends will appreciate the history of how DNA came to be widely respected and the rule in criminal cases today.