Tag: loss of life

Eric Christiansen is on a mission as a filmmaker-documentarian. After losing his home to the 1990 Santa Barbara Painted Cave Fire (one of California’s most destructive man-made disasters on record) he devoted his talent, time, resources and energy to creating stunning, powerful accounts of survivors who have had a front-row seat to suffering. His subjects are trauma survivors: those who endured 911, first responders, military veterans, witnesses to mass shootings and others. He explains a basic conflict among his subjects: to keep or discard the mask they wear to conceal the depth of their emotional, physical and spiritual pain from the wider world. His films sensitively show life behind the mask and the healing power of moving from seclusion to inclusion by the retelling of their experiences.

Chapter three introduces John Carl Lucky Fry – the man who would murder my spouse.

You asked. Here it is. Beginning Friday, May 15, and continuing for the next seven Fridays, you are invited to listen to excerpts from my true crime memoir, A Life Divided, due out in June on Amazon. The first reading will consist of the Prologue and first two chapters.

Best selling NY Times author Lowell Cauffiel states A Life Divided is “extremely well written. Compelling.” True Crime author Steve Miller’s review indicated that it “is a deep, dark true crime memoir with gripping humanity and insights only a homicide survivor can provide.” Screenwriter/actor Jonathan Stanley claimed is as “the most moving non-fictional piece I’ve ever read. I was pulled in and stirred. I could not put it down. Cathartic and thrilling. A must-read.”

Sharon McConnel Dickerson is a study in contrasts. She is a blind international artist. She is petite yet intrepid. She does not speak Spanish, never traveled to Panama, never studied crime scene investigation, yet stopped the serial killer who murdered her close friend in Boco del Toro, Panama. She accomplished this with only a phone and determination born out of grief for her pal, Beau. Listen as she recounts her initial suspicions, the steps taken to identify “Wild Bill” Dathan Holbert as the perpetrator, stop him from fleeing to Nicaragua and how Holbert was made to account for his crimes.

Kevin McCall, a grieving father, allows us a private retelling of events surrounding the senseless murder of his 21-year old son, Ryan, at U of Tampa and the long wait before the assailant was captured. Kevin reveals the toll it took on his family and the lack of closure brought by a conviction. Kevin kept a personal journal throughout the ordeal, never intending to publish it, but that is eventually what happened. This publication, “For the Love of Family” offers rare insights in real-time reactions of a homicide survivor as days and months unfolded. Since then he has tried to honor Ryan’s memory through charitable events such as Ryan’s Run. There is no doubt that the central ambition of Kevin was to keep his family from imploding throughout the ordeal. It was the biggest challenge of his life.

Journalist /podcast host Javier Leiva (Pretend Radio and Criminal Conduct) worked alongside future murderer Vester Lee Flanagan II (aka Bryce Williams) at CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia. They lost contact, but Javier vividly remembers the morning Vester opened fire on two colleagues (Alison Parker and Adam Ward) on live television, August 26, 2015. This explicit, public tragedy even caught the attention of President Obama. Javier looks back on the hours spent with Vester and wonders what could have prevented the ambush, what signs were missed, and how this tragedy reinforced Javier’s awareness that life is fragile.

A grisly vehicular homicide on a very hilly, rural Ohio road changed the trajectory of our next guest’s life forever. Tammy Ward describes the depth and breadth of her loss when her sister Cindy perished along with four of her high school friends after being broadsided by an airborne vehicle. The irony is that that same road, Roller Coaster Road, guaranteed joy decades earlier when the family would climb and descend the same terrain on their Sunday drives. The haunting aftermath motivated Tammy to author a book named after the highway that altered the lives of people inside and outside the crushed vehicle.

Ned Barnett’s life began to unravel in September of 1999 when he lost his son to a vehicular fatality. The family imploded. Seven years later, his wife revealed the depth of her grief by placing a gun to her chest and pulling the trigger. Ned found her shortly afterward. But it was about to get worse. When the sheriff arrived he charged Ned with homicide. Since they had recently relocated to the tiny town to escape the sad memories of their son’s death, they had no friends or family in the vicinity.
He faced the longest night of his life alone, wondering if he would also lose his freedom on top of everything else. Follow this inspirational story as Ned explains how an ordinary life became haunting and what he did to find his footing again.

Lynette Duncan will not, cannot, forget the moment she was ripped out of a sound sleep (and her typical adolescence) by the terrifying sound of gunfire at 4 a.m. downstairs. Two serial killers had followed her father home after closing his business for the night, intent on robbing him. She ran toward the sound, only to witness the murder of her older sister too. Her father lay motionless on their front steps. Her mother was seriously wounded but somehow crawled into the kitchen to dial 911 on the wall phone. Shards of brick from the assault littered the inside and the outside of the house. As her mother slowly recovered in the hospital, this teenager was now the de-facto head of the house. Come along as she recounts that fateful night and feel her determination to keep the surviving murderer behind bars “until he dies or I do.”

There is a room in a home in Pennsylvania where purple dinosaur Barney stuffed animals wait silently for a little girl who will never come. The collection is in memory of the petite toddler who loved Barney, loved life and was loved in return by her mother, aunt, grandparents, and others. But the evening of March 12, 1994, tiny Lisa Marie McGhee was brutally murdered by her mother’s live-in boyfriend, William Everhart who towered over her at 6’6″ tall with a temper to match. No amount of time, explanation, tears or sharing of memories will bring peace to the grieving family. Lisa should have been age 26 at the time I spoke with her aunt, cousin and a younger sister (that she never met). Lisa’s family reiterates the dreadful events that led to her death and the unspeakable loss that followed. They explain the actions their extended family took to heal and honor their smallest relative whose life was taken before she even started school. Lisa will remain an innocent 2 1/2-year-old, with an infectious smile, sprout of straight blond hair and love of purple dinosaurs.