In Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession (Scribner, Aug. 20, 2019), journalist Rachel Monroe examines why so many women are fascinated and obsessed by true crime stories and real-world whodunits – using the experiences of four women -- each of whose lives were touched by crime.
Rachel Monroe is available for interviews starting on Tuesday, August 27 through Friday, September 27, 2019. I would love to get you a copy of Savage Appetites and arrange for you to interview Ms. Monre. If there is interest, please respond with a mailing address and preferred date and time for the interview.
In this exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation.
Frances Glessner Lee - In the 1940s, a frustrated heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine.
Alisa Statman - In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family.
Lorri Davis - In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row.
Lindsay Souvannarath - And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.
Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime, the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting.
Rachel Monroe is currently a writer and volunteer firefighter living in Marfa, Texas. She’s written about #vanlife for The New Yorker; a romantic con man for The Atlantic, pick-up artists for New York magazine; child abductions on the Navajo Nation for Esquire; and a small-town quilting scandal for Texas Monthly.