As any of you who have read some of my writing would know, I have written (and am currently writing) murder mysteries. To be honest, it’s not really the type of thing that I want to write, but it tends to be the type of story idea that springs to mind over and over. Many readers, including me, enjoy a good murder mystery or thriller, and because I’ve read my fair share of them, I also enjoy writing them — even though I really want to write something deep and meaningful and will someday, I hope.
What I want my readers to know, though, is that I do NOT take murder lightly at all. Any murderer that I write about will be punished; I’m never going to let the murderer get away with it — not on my watch, that’s for sure.
I’ve been touched by murder on numerous occasions, including one that happened this very week.
If you live anywhere in northeastern Nebraska, you most likely were touched in some way by the senseless murders that took place in Bloomfield. For me, it’s primarily through my boyfriend who knew one of the victims very well. Curt, the man who owned the bowling alley was his friend because he grew up in the next town over, and he bowled at that alley often and even bought his bowling ball from Curt. He and I will be standing a military flag line for Curt on March 2nd in the town of Bloomfield where our American Legion Riders post is. I didn’t personally know Curt, but I personally know many people who did know him, and I will be one of many on that day who will be holding a flag in honor of a man who was senselessly gunned down inside the very business in which he’d spent the bulk of his life.
If you’re not familiar with what has recently transpired, here’s a link to a story about it: Bloomfield double homicide
It won’t be the first flag line I’ve stood for a veteran who was murdered, unfortunately. I also stood one in Laurel, another tiny rural community in Northeast Nebraska, where four people were murdered. That one happened a year and a half ago, but the memory of that flag line outside a church in which an elderly veteran, his wife, and their disabled daughter were all being laid to rest, will haunt me forever.
In both of these cases, the murderers were caught right away — thank goodness.
When my former student was brutally murdered and dismembered in a town near Lincoln in November of 2017, it took a while to track down her killers, but they were caught and they are in prison for the rest of their miserable lives. What they did to her is utterly unforgivable and what her parents went through and continue to go through is completely unimaginable and it terrifies me to the core of my very being.
Her name was Sydney Loofe, and she was a good person. Even if she’d been a horrible person, though, she didn’t deserve what happened to her.
Sydney’s murder hit me hard and still does every time I think about it. Her father was my boss, the principal of my school, and her mother was a fellow teacher. Seeing their daily anguish took a heavy toll on me — as a human being and as a mother.
In September of 2002, my cousin went into a bank in Norfolk, NE, to withdraw some money. She never came out. She and four employees were ruthlessly murdered — all shot in the head and all dead within one minute of the moment in which the killers entered the bank. Evonne's murder
Let’s go back to my childhood in Norfolk, Nebraska, for a moment. I would ride my bike to Memorial pool quite often during the summers because I love to swim. The route I would take through neighborhoods (to stay off the main streets and make my mom happy) took me past a house where I would often see about three or four kids playing in the backyard. I could see into the backyard because the road sort of dead-ended and turned next to that yard.
One or two days after my most recent bike ride past that house with those little kids playing in the backyard, those kids were dead — killed by their own mother. I still have the occasional dream/nightmare of seeing them playing outside, oblivious to what horror awaited them. Mom murdered 4 daughters
When I was in high school, a man who wanted to “sexually assault a dead woman” and who had even told HIS OWN WIFE about his sick desire, opened the Norfolk Daily News to the wedding announcements section and saw a photo of a young woman named Beverly Ramspott. She lived in a trailer house near the mall where I often shopped. He went there, forced his way into her home with a gun, and then strangled and assaulted her repeatedly, eventually killing her, too.
I didn’t know Beverly, and I didn’t know the monster who killed her, but the fact that he simply opened the newspaper and chose her as his victim from a photo she’d shared to announce what should have been one of the happiest moments in her life still makes me sick forty years after the fact.
Here’s a clipping from the August 10, 1984, edition of the Norfolk Daily news about this murder.
There are other murders that have touched me, but these are the ones that have hit me the hardest. They were all senseless and horrible and brutal and just so very very sad.
I write murder mysteries, but I do not and never will take murder lightly. Not a single one of these murderers got away with their crimes, and a not a single one of the fictional murderers in my stories will ever get away with their crimes either.
Murder is wrong. That’s all there is to it.
Or is it?
I’m currently reading Stephen King’s novel “11/22/63.” In it, a man goes back in time to try to prevent JFK’s assassination. He also prevents someone else from murdering his entire family — something he knew that had happened — and he does this by murdering the man before he can murder his own children and wife.
If I could back in time and “take out” the men who murdered my cousin and the four bank employees, would I? I think, yes. If I could back in time and “take out” the man who murdered my former student, would I? I resounding “yes.” If I could back in time and “take out” any murderer before that person had the chance to murder innocent people, would I? Well, it’s certainly an interesting concept to think about, and the novel, so far, is very good.
I had long thought about reading it, but it’s quite long, and I wasn’t sure how badly I wanted to dive into. On a whim, I finally checked it out and decided to start it and see if I felt compelled to continue. I continued and will keep reading it now until I’ve finished it.
Apparently, there was a miniseries made in 2016 based off this novel, but I haven’t seen that. I have, however, been to the museum that is now housed in the former book depository building in Dallas. I visited it with my boyfriend and my best friend, Amy, a couple years before her death from cancer, so reading this book is bringing up strong memories of that visit and of my friend.
Isn’t cancer the ultimate murderer?
This most recent double homicide in a town I frequent as a Legion Rider and in which my boyfriend’s friend was shot in the head with a shotgun weighs heavily on me. All these murders weigh heavily on me, and sometimes I question why I write about murder when it bothers me so much, but I think that is the very reason I do so.
Until next week. I will share more of my work in progress at that point. If you’d consider upgrading to “paid” prior to that, I’d really appreciate it, and then you’d have access to all the archived “paid” portions as well as all the upcoming bits and pieces of my current novel — a murder mystery.
Tammy Marshall