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Wearing Two Hats in Vero Beach, One Comfortable, One Not

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With tears in his eyes and his voice showing emotion, Carl Elliott Jr., told me last week that he hoped my book, The Serial Killer Whisperer, would finally be enough to get Florida’s governor to schedule the execution of serial killer David Gore. 

Gore abducted, raped, and murdered Elliott’s daughter, Lynn, age 17, in Vero Beach. He has been on death row for nearly thirty years. 

I certainly did not write my book to prompt the death of anyone, including Gore. But my book has re-ignited interest in his case and is stirring strong emotions in Vero Beach.

The book describes the plight of Tony Ciaglia, who was hit in the skull by a speeding jet ski when he was 15 years old. He died three times en route to the hospital but was revived. After several weeks in a coma, Ciaglia awoke much different from the carefree, happy, and popular teen he had been. Filled with rage, often uncontrollable, and suffering from damage to the front lobe of his brain, Ciaglia spent much of the next several years under a self-imposed house arrest.  At times, he was suicidal. Bored and aimless, he needed a hobby and by chance he began writing serial killers. His psychiatric problems mimicked those of the killers and he was able to befriend many of them and get them to share their inner-most thoughts with him. Today, he tries to help the police with his ability to communicate with killers.

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How do we define insanity?

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Kelsey Patterson spent much of the 1980s in-and-out of mental hospitals in Texas. No one questioned that he had a severe mental illness –paranoid schizophrenia – that often caused him to become violent. 
In 1980, he shot and seriously wounded a co-worker. Patterson believed his food was being poisoned by the man even though they’d only met that morning.
Three years later, Patterson wounded another man during a delusional assault.
In 1986, Patterson assaulted yet a third victim.
Finally, on September 25, 1992, just days after his brother had tried unsuccessfully to get him committed to a psychiatric facility, Patterson fatally shot a businessman and his secretary.
He then put his gun down, stripped to his socks, and paced, shouting incomprehensibly until the police arrived.
There was no doubt that Patterson had committed two murders.
There was no doubt that he had a severe mental illness and was delusional at the time of the murders.
Did that mean he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions because he was legally “insane?”

Do Publishers Owe Us More?

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I’ve been writing books full-time since 1986 and, believe me, I know that publishing books is a business. I also realize that publishers have to give the public what it wants. (Recently that has been love struck vampires and young English magicians.) I admire authors who can write books that reach so many millions.

But as authors and publishers do we have an obligation to go beyond the profit line and expose wrongs, introduce new ideas, challenge conventional thinking, and confront the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

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