[bksvol-discuss] Submitted: Nonfiction, True Crime
- From: Marilyn Beasley <mmbeagle@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 09:40:07 -0400
The Girl Who Had No Enemies: And the Man Who Hated Women
by Dennis Fleming
201 pages
Anthony J. LaRette Jr. , had been on a ten-year-long path of violence, murder,
and rape. Eighteen-year-old Mickey Fleming had recently graduated high school
and had stayed home from her summer job to nurse a migraine headache and a
fractured collarbone. THE GIRL WHO HAD NO ENEMIES follows the parallel
trajectories of these polar opposites until they meet and then chronicles the
emotional damage and rebirth in the aftermath. This book is a rewrite and was
formerly titled "She Had No Enemies" (available in Kindle version). This
current edition includes a substantial amount of background information on
serial killer Anthony J. LaRette Jr. and many of his victims. Also included is
more information on the author's sister's activities during the days leading to
her death. The story is based on the author's best efforts to remember personal
experiences. Information on some people, conversations, and events was gathered
from court documents, interviews, research, journals, press accounts, and the
memories of friends and acquaintances. Every effort was made to represent
events and circumstances as they happened. To protect the identity of some
individuals, such as witnesses, their names and identifying characteristics
have been changed. No person or event has been fabricated or condensed. THE
GIRL WHO HAD NO ENEMIES revisits every aspect of the tragedy, not only by
taking the reader to the scene of the crime in visceral detail but by
uncovering layers of revelations in a tense and absorbing way. We are allowed
access to all of the writer's secret spaces and disillusionment and share with
him a profound awareness of the human condition when he witnesses the execution
of his sister's killer and finds a way to write about the love he and his
Mickey shared. Though the story begins with a horrible murder, it is not a
typical work in the true-crime genre. The book's structure lays out, in
sound-bite fashion, the killer's life of repeated hospitalization in mental
health facilities and incarcerations in penal institutions. LaRette's story is
interjected with increasing frequency into the loving relationship between
young Mickey Fleming and her older brother until the murderer's ten-year
rampage ends with Mickey, his final victim. For nine years, LaRette sat
uncooperative on death row at the Missouri State Correctional Center in Potosi,
Missouri, until he was introduced to a young detective, Patricia Juhl, from the
Pinellas County Sheriff's Department in Florida. After that first meeting, the
killer promised to cooperate on other murders and rapes in which he was
implicated, but he insisted on being interviewed by Juhl - and no one else. So
began a six-year odyssey as Juhl made numerous trips from Florida to Missouri
in order to interview LaRette, who would dole out tantalizing murder details-a
test to see if Juhl would verify their accuracy-before giving her the rest of
the information she needed to solve the case. The investigation eventually led
to LaRette's confession to over two dozen rapes in eleven states. In this
heart-rending work of nonfiction, a sharp depiction of personal emotional loss,
Fleming has crafted a work memorable in its brutal exploration of the author's
own odyssey to emerge psychologically anew out of the emotional wilderness
created by his sister's murder. The author paints an image of Mickey so vivid
that readers feel her powerful influence on a big brother who obsessed on the
loss of this special sister to the point of his eventual discovery of his own
true direction in life. The book's theme of turning tragedy into personal
growth is uplifting.
Marilyn
mmbeagle@xxxxxxxxx
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