You'd Look Better as a Ghost

06/07/24 • 45 min

Today Murder Most Foul takes a slight departure from True Crime to discuss the above titled novel by author Joanna Wallace. Critics call it, “Refreshingly original and laugh-out-loud funny.” This comic thriller follows the trials and tribulations of Claire, a part-time serial killer, who is keen to keep her favorite hobby a secret—despite the efforts of a determined blackmailer.

Please join me in welcoming Joanna Wallace to Murder Most Foul

Please join me in welcoming Joanna Wallace to Murder Most Foul

Previous Episode

Fatal Attraction (Part One)

In 1990, Jens Soering, a German honors student at the University of Virginia, was sentenced to life after a spectacular televised trial for the 1985 murders of his lover’s Elizabeth’s parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom. In a classic example of “he said/she said,” at their trials the star-crossed lovers each pointed the finger at the other as the actual murderer. Were Jens and Elizabeth Romeo and Juliet or Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? From his Virginia prison cell, Soering deployed his charm to create his own personal innocence project, recruiting celebrities such as Martin Sheen, John Grisham, Amanda Knox and even Angela Merkel.

Soering was paroled and deported to Germany in 2019. Soering sold the rights to his story and launched a media campaign which portrayed him as a victim of America’s cruel and arbitrary courts. Yet skeptics have questioned Soering’s claims, and he is now locked in a pitched battle to define his place in history.
A chief skeptic in the matter is Andrew Hammel, a bilingual German/English criminal lawyer and investigative journalist. Mr. Hammel traces the entire story, beginning with the bizarre romance which led to two gruesome killings. Drawing on five years of research and confidential sources with fresh revelations, Hammel takes the reader behind the scenes of one of the most extraordinary true-crime cases in modern history – and its equally gripping aftermath.

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WHITE HOT HATE

In the spring of 2016, as immigration debates rocked the United States, three men in a militia group known as the Crusaders grew aggravated over one Kansas town’s growing Somali community. They decided that complaining about their new neighbors and threatening them directly wasn’t enough.

The men plotted to bomb a mosque, aiming to kill hundreds and inspire other attacks against Muslims in America. But they would wait until after the Presidential Election so that their actions wouldn’t hurt Donald Trump’s chances of winning.
An FBI informant befriended the three men, acting as law enforcement’s eyes and ears for eight months. His secretly taped conversations with the militia were pivotal in obstructing their plans and were a linchpin in the resulting trial and convictions for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.
White Hot Hate, written by Dick Lehr, tells the riveting true story of an averted case of domestic terrorism in one of the most remote towns in the U.S., not far from the infamous town where Capote’s In Cold Blood was set. In the gripping details of this foiled scheme, the chilling, immediate threat of domestic terrorism—and racist anxiety in America— is writ large.