My Criminal Mind

a sneak peek at Kathy George's new blog

Early on in my career as a crime writer, I consulted with the FBI on a novel that eventually died in a drawer. (It later came back to life with a totally different crime in it.) At the time, however, I found myself asking the Special Agent, “What if my character did X? And then Y?” He’d say something, nodding, and I would add. “Ah, then if he did Z?” The very nice Special Agent looked at me narrowly and said, “You have an excellent criminal mind.”

My husband has since refined the phrase as he tells the story far and wide. “Even the FBI told her she has a fine criminal mind.” It’s funny that he’s so proud. He is the most scrupulously honest person I know -- he’d go out of his way to return a dollar if he discovered a vendor had short-changed himself. And I -- fine criminal mind that I have -- abhor violence, theft, fraud, even vandalism and am myself fairly crime-free. In fact I have a distinct memory of passing a catered table in an empty room when I was a teenager and filching a piece of watermelon that was calling to me. Afterward, I felt miserable and elated, telling myself, “My God, I stole something, I stole something.”

How does a person who writes crime and fears it handle the news? A little like I handle a bat trapped in the house. At first I duck and hide; then when the bat has stopped swooping and diving, I start to look around for it. As I search, I become braver. And soon the goal is to trap it before it flies at me and to take it outside and release it. (I did this just recently. My method is to clap a garbage can over it where it rests (hangs) and while it is disoriented, cover the can, carry it outside, let it fly away).

Okay. Me and crime stories. I duck, yes, they are so horrible. But I know they’re there. And my mind starts to work on how to trap them. And as I understand the bat (a good creature) is just terrified, I seek to understand the mindset of criminals and victims. Several years ago we had a local crime that made screaming headlines in Pittsburgh. A young boy had been found sliced open and eviscerated in a park. He wasn’t homeless but he was a street kid, lonely and looking for a handout on most days. The man who was eventually arrested said he’d killed the boy in an argument over a radio. I was talking to the police about it, not able to understand so much brutality for a radio, and the policeman told me, “It wasn’t about the radio.” Eventually it was revealed that the crime was sexual and the evisceration done to make the police think a deranged killer was giving in to some sort of ritual behavior. That made more sense. So I approached the crime cautiously, I absorbed its details, I trapped it so to speak. What part of it sticks with me? The coverup, the presence of mind of the killer to attempt a coverup—chilling. People who knew I wrote crime novels asked me at the time if I would write that story—if I would use it. The answer is “use it, yes” but in some other analogous way. Just as I felt taking that piece of watermelon was wrong, I feel moving too close to a real crime is wrong, intrusive, exploitative.

And yet, what do I do when the crime follows my writing about it? Will people think I copied it? As writers know, the book is written long, long before it hits the shelves. Two recent Pittsburgh crimes mimic ideas in something I first drafted three years ago and that has just come out. It’s not that the crimes were unusual, exactly, but they were local and so are my books. The first crime was the murder of a 91-year old man and the next, not long after, of a 92-year old woman. The crimes weren’t connected except that in both cases the perpetrators felt that old people who possessed goods or money should be relieved of those things—and of life. Both victims were described as quiet people. They lived alone. Yes, it sounded much like what I had already written. I had made my perpetrators as heartless as the real ones.

And what about the near perfect crime I committed on paper a year after the previous ones? When I called the forensics lab to discuss how I was trying to erase all trace evidence . . . on paper, that is, I said, “I need to make this hard for the police.” He said, “You have. Believe me. Hard for the police. Impossible for the labs.”

If I could think it . . . fine criminal mind that I have . . . someone else will. I feel miserable and yes, elated.

Kathleen George
www.kathleengeorge.com




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last revised: 10/10/14