There will always be crimes that challenge the convictions of even the most ardent anti-death sentence advocates and the most steadfast reformers of the human condition.
January 31, 2007 (Press Release) --
Think Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy Jr., or any of the long line of serial murderers and twisted low-lifers this country seems to spawn with alarming regularity, and you get the idea. And if, after remembering these cold-blooded killers and their atrocities, you still are among those who cling to the belief that "God doesn't make any garbage," then read about Jerry Jenkins and Ronald Kennedy, the infamous duo at the heart of Ron Franscell's heartbreaking true crime account.
Author of two novels, Angel Fire and The Deadline, Franscell has returned to his hometown of Casper, Wyo., to try and put to rest a crime that has haunted him for almost 30 years. Curiously, what triggered his remembrance and this book was a picture of a couple falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The image of falling is at the heart of Franscell's narrative. On Sept. 24, 1973, 18-year-old Becky Thompson and her 11-year-old half-sister, Amy Burridge, were abducted by Jenkins and Kennedy from a convenience store and driven to the Fremont Canyon Bridge. Amy was thrown off the 110-foot bridge, where she died upon impact. Becky was raped by both men and then also dumped off the bridge. Somehow she lived. The last words the girls' mom heard from Amy was a phone call from the store's pay phone: "We had a flat and two nice men are gonna give us a ride home."
The girls' last terrifying moments are delivered with such vivid texture that they are almost too painful to read. The technique and execution is not unlike Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the classic "nonfiction novel."
Both Jenkins and Kennedy had been drinking all day when they came across the girls at the store. "Jenkins pulled off the street and parked at almost the same time as the white station wagon. A tall, dark-haired girl and a little pigtailed kid got out. The older girl was beautiful, slender and young -- but old enough.
" 'Oooh baby, look at that!' Kennedy said. 'I'd like to meet her.'
" 'Why don't you just go up and talk to her?' Jenkins asked, more interested in cigs and doughnuts than the girls for the moment.
" 'Nah,' Kennedy said. 'I've got a better idea.' "
This isn't so much as a whodunitcrime novel but more a loss-of-innocence crime/memoir. That awful night in 1973 was a turning point for him. At the time, Franscell was 16. The sisters lived down the street from him. Life in close-knit Casper was especially sheltered. Franscell writes that although the Vietnam War was raging and the assassinations of King and Kennedy were fresh in memory, most Wyoming kids felt invincible, "not much different from most small-town kids in the guiltless years before video games,
twenty-four hour cable news, Columbine, the Internet, graphic prime-time violence, embedded war correspondents, gangsta rap and mass cynicism."
If a young Franscell could not envision murder and sexual violation (he did not even understand the term "rape"), certainly anyone in law enforcement would not have been surprised. Jenkins and Kennedy were suspects from the beginning and were quickly arrested and convicted. The duo's trail of dysfunction and escalating violence are well documented by Franscell.
"The Jenkins family," he writes, "was a mess. Booze and fights were common. The father beat the mother and the kids ruthlessly. They moved frequently from one overcrowded hovel to another. The kids got into drugs and worse when they were still young, and none of the four of them ever warmed up to schooling."
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY STEPHEN J. LYONS
Author of two novels, Angel Fire and The Deadline, Franscell has returned to his hometown of Casper, Wyo., to try and put to rest a crime that has haunted him for almost 30 years. Curiously, what triggered his remembrance and this book was a picture of a couple falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
The image of falling is at the heart of Franscell's narrative. On Sept. 24, 1973, 18-year-old Becky Thompson and her 11-year-old half-sister, Amy Burridge, were abducted by Jenkins and Kennedy from a convenience store and driven to the Fremont Canyon Bridge. Amy was thrown off the 110-foot bridge, where she died upon impact. Becky was raped by both men and then also dumped off the bridge. Somehow she lived. The last words the girls' mom heard from Amy was a phone call from the store's pay phone: "We had a flat and two nice men are gonna give us a ride home."
The girls' last terrifying moments are delivered with such vivid texture that they are almost too painful to read. The technique and execution is not unlike Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the classic "nonfiction novel."
Both Jenkins and Kennedy had been drinking all day when they came across the girls at the store. "Jenkins pulled off the street and parked at almost the same time as the white station wagon. A tall, dark-haired girl and a little pigtailed kid got out. The older girl was beautiful, slender and young -- but old enough.
" 'Oooh baby, look at that!' Kennedy said. 'I'd like to meet her.'
" 'Why don't you just go up and talk to her?' Jenkins asked, more interested in cigs and doughnuts than the girls for the moment.
" 'Nah,' Kennedy said. 'I've got a better idea.' "
This isn't so much as a whodunitcrime novel but more a loss-of-innocence crime/memoir. That awful night in 1973 was a turning point for him. At the time, Franscell was 16. The sisters lived down the street from him. Life in close-knit Casper was especially sheltered. Franscell writes that although the Vietnam War was raging and the assassinations of King and Kennedy were fresh in memory, most Wyoming kids felt invincible, "not much different from most small-town kids in the guiltless years before video games,
twenty-four hour cable news, Columbine, the Internet, graphic prime-time violence, embedded war correspondents, gangsta rap and mass cynicism."
If a young Franscell could not envision murder and sexual violation (he did not even understand the term "rape"), certainly anyone in law enforcement would not have been surprised. Jenkins and Kennedy were suspects from the beginning and were quickly arrested and convicted. The duo's trail of dysfunction and escalating violence are well documented by Franscell.
"The Jenkins family," he writes, "was a mess. Booze and fights were common. The father beat the mother and the kids ruthlessly. They moved frequently from one overcrowded hovel to another. The kids got into drugs and worse when they were still young, and none of the four of them ever warmed up to schooling."
Source: http://www.msn.com
POSTED BY STEPHEN J. LYONS
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