Sunday, December 06, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
My Yoga session ended today with these words
QUOTE FROM SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
Love says I am everything
Wisdom says I am nothing
Between them, life flows.
When I must break from writing to clean house
(I wonder if other writers experience this problem)
OK. I keep my house clean, for the most part. But things certainly get piled up when I am here alone for a few weeks at a time… For instance, mail stacks on my dining room table, dishes spend days in the dishwasher, blankets and pillows collect on the sofa in the television room and new and old newspapers, unlabeled CDs, manuscripts, books, boxes of photos and stack of photo albums including everything from family pictures to photos of criminals to those taken for lots of years at writers’ conferences and poetry conventions.
So, when I clean thoroughly, I usually misplace very important stuff like phone numbers, pass words, notebooks containing irreplaceable information and other scarps of paper that is so very important to my writings.
That’s why I don’t make a habit of straighting in my computer room until I think somebody might want to sleep over after a cookout or holiday dinner at my house.
So now with Thanksgiving just around the corner, yesterday was a cleaning day for me. Needless to say, my computer room comes last; it is on the to-clean list today.
But let me tell you what happened yesterday after I had mopped the tile floors in half the house and went outside to hose off windows and porches. OK. I started with spraying the window outside my computer room with the water running full blast. Forgot I had recently turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows... When I didn’t see the water boomaranging back at me, I realized what was happening.
I ran into the house to shut off the computer and unplug the surge protector but slipped on the drenched tiles, tripped over dampened newspapers, slipped and fell into the the closet’s sliding mirrored door. It crumbled to pieces. I just laid there in total shock staring up at the breakage as it slowly crackled, starting at the bottom and working to the top. But the pieces didn't fall.
After I gathered towels and tried to dry off the back of my computer, speakers, surge protector, too many wires for a wireless network, and turned my keyboard upside down to drain, I tried to start my computer, which had gone off without help—well, it did have held of the window-washer.
I thought and figured bills to see how I could afford another big-enough-to-work-on computer. Later yesterday, I tried one more time to start the old e-machine and would you believe, it came on.
I wasn't hurt except for a bump on the head (to match a bump I got on the other side of the head last time I cleaned) and a bit of a strained back. The YMCA where I workout doesn’t have a Hot Tub to lay back and relax in. But it does have a nice Back Extension machine that is so awesome. Yea!
But the real truth is: I should speak with my Muse before I clean house!
Friday, November 13, 2009
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND, true crime published by Xlibris Press
New: Updated original cases with new cases-- 3rd edition:https://www.createspace.com/4491231Paperback available:
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND
Billy Mansfield during his murder trial in Brooksville, Florida, listens but never
says a word.
Gary Mansfield, Billy Mansfield's brother, knew of the going'on at the family's home in Weeki Wachee Acres and of the burials that took place there.
Phyllis Spielmaker puffs her cigarette while listening to testimony during court
proceedings.
..... In the spring of 1981, while detectives were putting together a
case for the murder of Renee Saling in California, detectives in
Florida were doing some real digging. Actual digging. Information
had come out during trial proceedings in an unrelated Hernando
County case that bodies were buried at the mansfield homeplace.
......
As the investigation unfolded, witnesses in the case provided information so bizarre it seemed fictionl. How could the burying of human bodies in the Mansfield yard have been done so indifferently? It appeared the back yard being the gravesite for
young women was a shared bit of knowledge by quite a few folks in the area swampland. What did people think when they would hear of a girl's body being buried at the Mansfield place? What was going through their minds? After all, it wasn't like a team of detectives went out and uncovered bodies of murdered girls in
somebody's back yard everyday....
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND
is available from asylett.com in ebook & and soft cover
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND, 3RD EDITION ON Create Space; AMAZON
CONTENTS Introduction Cases included in MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND & names of convicted killers
1. The Story Of Billy Mansfield & Secrets Hidden In The Green Bus--Serial Killer Billy Mansfield
2. Gay Encounter Costs Priest His Life--William Howell Galvin
3. Torture Murder In The Swamp--Todd Mendyk & Philip Frantz
4. A Christmas Rabbit Hunt Became A Night Of Murder--Rick Shere & Bruce Demo
5. Shootout In Sumter County--Jeffrey Raymond McGuire & Traci Grosvenor
6. He Killed The Pretty Young Women--Serial Killer Oscar Ray Bolin
7. Murder To Be Popular--Patrici Keebler
8. A Gunman’s Intent: She’s As Good As Dead--John Barrett, Scott Burnside, & Dorssey Sanders III
9. Rumble At The Old Publix--Gang murder of Russell Coats in Brooksville, FL.
10. They Killed For A Hunk of Crack--Debra Russo & Daniel Gardner
11. Granny Killer On The Loose--Serial Killer Edwin Bernard "Mike" Kaprat
12. Killer Left Body For The Dogs--Ivan Morales
13. She Awakened To A Gunshot In The Night--Julie Leacock & Samuel Augusta Coppola
14. Killers Claim Rock Star & Bodyguard Fame--Clifford Jarvis & Brian Kipp
15. Couple On The Run: Caught With Gun In Her Panties--Melissa Herriss & Earl Linebaugh
16. She Listened To Kidnappers Plot Her Murder--Alfred Fennie, Pala Colbert & Michael Frazier
17. Mother & Daughters Dumped In The Bay--Serial Killer Oba Chandler
Cop Log I
Cop Log 2
Cop Log 3
Epilogue
NEW WITH 2012 UPDATES AND ADDITIONAL CASES AVAILABLE in paperback
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND 3RD EDITION
https://www.createspace.com/4491231
Sunday, November 08, 2009
BRIDGED BY LOVE
Reviewed by Bea
WritersWall.com
Valerie J. Patterson, award-winning author of Gee Whiz Meets S.H.A.F.T
The book opens with a day in Shanna's tortured life with Jake Minor—her owner—the man who stole her from her family when she was just a young girl. To use a trite and overworked cliché, what doesn't kill Shanna serves only to make her stronger and more resolved to find her way back to her people—back to her family.
Shanna—a full nine months pregnant—puts a plan into motion and leaves the fish camp where she's been a captive for years, but she must constantly keep one eye on the way before her and one eye on the way behind her. She can't risk being caught and brought back to the fish camp—to a way of life that only brought her pain and suffering. It's shortly after her escape that she gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. All alone and with no safe haven to run to, Shanna forges on ahead in her goal of finding the one woman she hopes can help her.
Kathryn Williams is no stranger to pain and heartache, either. A failed marriage. A miscarriage. A divorce during a time when it was virtually unheard of. And a life that's lonely for a woman who truly wants a husband and a family.Kathryn has much support in her life. Her mother resides with her plus there are several people who love and protect her. There's one man who's loved her all her life. There's another Kathryn loves and wants to share the rest of her life.One knows her pain. The other knows she's divorced and is allowing that to stand in his way. One wants nothing more than to shower her with affection. The other can't seem to see past her strength and independence. Kathryn's heart has room for both men in different ways.
When Shanna crosses paths with Kathryn, she immediately places her trust—as well as her son—in Kathryn's hands.Shanna knows men are coming to take her back to the fish camp. She knows her son will not survive in that type of environment. If only she could get to the land where her people have relocated—to where her family is—she'll finally find peace and happiness. But peace and happiness have a price for a woman on the run.
The journeys both women take are riveting, pulling the reader right into their stories. You can't help but cheer each on to happiness and the futures they deserve.
If you're looking for a book that brings you history, a hint or two of mystery, romance, and good strong characters that you'll willingly love and dislike, then Bridged By Love by Patricia Lieb is the book for you. Leave your cares behind and travel inside the lives of Shanna and Kathryn. Their stories will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
+Will be available soon by a different publisher
By: Aaron Brand - Texarkana Gazette - Published: 07/12/2009
For one writer who grew up in Texarkana, the city’s early days were fertile ground for a historical novel.
Patricia Lieb once called Texarkana, Ark., home as a member of Arkansas High School’s class of 1960, growing up with the maiden name Shipp and rooting for the Hogs.
From there, Lieb, now a Florida resident, became a writer who has won awards for her reporting and has seen her books published, the latest of which is called “Bridged by Love,” a historical novel set in Texarkana circa 1886 and recently published by Asylett Press.
Lieb chose as her heroines two young women who become friends trying to survive as Texarkana, in its infancy, is growing: Kathryn, a divorced lumberjack who lives with her mother and is in love with a man while another has fallen in love with her; and Shanna, a Native American woman who escapes life as a slave and has a newborn son to care for as she tries to return to her family in Indian Territory.
“Texarkana is the main area. That’s where Kathryn takes her wood to the sawmill, which is a fictitious sawmill in Texarkana,” said Lieb. The man she loves is a bookkeeper in town, while her business partner is in love with her. “She comes in practically every day with logs with her partner Leonard.”
Lieb, armed with information from a Texarkana friend (Wayne Adcock) and the Museum of Regional History, pictures Texarkana in its early days. Though she grew up here, she needed to research.
“I read as much as I could about Texarkana. Even though I lived there, it wasn’t 1886,” she said.
She writes in one passage about the town’s connection to the railroad: “Texarkana had grown profusely since becoming incorporated some 10 or so years ago—to the tune of about 8,000 people, give or take. Most of the growth was due to the building of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which ran parallel with Front Street on the south end of town. Then came an abundance of other train lines, thus generating much business to the twin cities.”
Elsewhere, she pictures the hustle and bustle on a young Broad Street: “This, like other streets in town, seemed to grow bigger every day with businesses booming from all corners. Tall brick and stucco buildings blocked the western horizon. People, horses, cotton carts, milk wagons and horse trolleys paraded like cow herds.”
Part of her research involved investigating old newspaper clips to get a feel for the time. Some of those stories made it into the book, she said, such as one tale about a man being arrested for branding his teenage wife or Texarkana growing to a size where it needed its own police force, Lieb said.
As a writer, she sought to imagine herself in the setting.
“I love history and I love writing, and I think I just felt the earth, the ground. I just felt myself in that period when I wrote that book ... as I wrote the book I could see everything,” said Lieb.
But it’s the characters who are the focus of her historical novel, picturing two independent women at a time when they didn’t have a lot of power.
“Most of the time women are strong. A lot of them just don’t know it,” said Lieb. “Kathryn needed to be strong because of the life she was living, and Shanna was strong because of the life she was forced into.”
Lieb said the inspiration for Kathryn and the plot itself came from her family’s history.
She said when her grandma was a young woman, a family member had a child with a Native American girl and the child was raised by Lieb’s grandmother and great-grandmother. In “Bridged by Love,” Shanna must leave her young baby with Kathryn while she journeys to find her family.
Lieb imagined her grandmother at age 27 with a fiery personality and how these characters would have felt at the time in this kind of situation.
“That’s what inspired the plot,” said Lieb, who was a reporter and features writer for The Suncoast News in New Port Richey, Fla. She covered the crime beat for the Daily Sun-Journal in Brookville, Fla., and wrote for two Illinois papers, the Daily Journal and Bourbonnais Herald.
“I started writing for detective magazines,” said Lieb. Her “Murders in the Swampland” is a book of true crime reporting from Hernando County, Fla.
Married at 24, she’d only worked in factories until then but her husband encouraged her to write. After her husband passed away at age 42, Lieb figured what she knew how to do was write. She started at a Kankakee, Ill., newspaper and went from there.
She says she feels lucky in her writing career. She didn’t think she was smart enough to be a news reporter but she’s been honored for her work.
“I’m doing what I love to do,” said Lieb.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
No parole for mass killer Billy Mansfield
New: MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND (3rd edition), original cases with 2012 updates along with new Florida murder cases:Murders in the Swampland 3rd editionPlease take notice: I would like to respectfully ask you again to please correct your mistake in the article. My aunt's correct name was Sandra Jean GRAHAM!!! Not BROWN!!! As you are profiting off of these crimes with your book, PLEASE at least get her name right!
(Senders name withheld here)
Murders in the Swampland 3rd edition
As of this date, 2-9-2013, Mansfield is STILL jailed in California...
/MURDERS-THE-SWAMPLAND-3rd-ebook:
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND
https://www.createspace.com/4491231
At a recent parole hearing Mansfield, now age 51, would not comply with psychological testing requirements required by the California Parole Board, said Det. Mike Nelson of the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office. Mansfield, who killed young women and buried their bodies in his parents’ yard in Weeki Wachee, started serving a life sentence in 1982 for the murder of Renee Saling in Santa Cruz, CA. Also, Judge L.R. Huffstleter sentenced Mansfield to four life terms for his Florida murdering spree that began in the 1970s. Mansfield plead guilty to the Florida murders.”
In California, it took a second trail to get Mansfield convicted for killing Saling, Nelson added. Nelson is now trying to identify two bodies whose bones were recovered along with Sandra Jean Graham (Brown..?), 21, of Tampa, and Elaine Zeigler, 15, of a KOA campsite near Brooksville. The bodies were dug up on the Mansfield property after Mansfield was arrested in California.
Though years have gone by since the slayings, there is so much you can do now with new DNA developments, Nelson said. During Mansfield’s Hernando County trial, several witnesses testified that they knew of the goings-on at the Mansfield property at the time of the slayings.
Actually, notice of the Mansfield killings came out by accident when a witness in an unrelated trial mentioned that Mansfield had buried bodies in the family yard. After four bodies were dug up at the Mansfield property and Mansfield was brought to trial, several witnesses testified that Mansfield picked up “girls” and took them to an old green bus located on the Mansfield property, raped them, killed them and then buried their bodies in the family yard.
During the initial investigation authorities said that if they started arresting people for withholding evidence they would have to add a new wing to the jail. There are “all kinds of rumors and speculations” that Mansfield may have buried more bodies in areas of Hernando County, but with any substantial evidence “we’d be back on the property digging,” Nelson said. Nelson said Mansfield has come up twice before for probation hearings. This year Mansfield’s mother attended, Nelson confirmed. A phone number for Mansfield’s parents Virginia and Billy Mansfield Sr. could not be located.
According to Attorney Jimmy Brown, who prosecuted Mansfield for the Florida murders, Mansfield was up for parole last year but it turned out to be a “non started”, which means there wasn’t even a hearing, Brown said.
According to Nelson, the Florida Parole Board “has been in touch with him” but a hearing here is “way down the road”. It is not likely that Mansfield will ever get out of prison alive, said Nelson.
“If he does he will be in excess of one-hundred years old.” Some of the victims’ families here do keep watch on the case, he added. Mansfield has been housed at several prisons since beginning his life-sentence for killing Saling.
He is currently at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, CA; a spokesman there didn’t return my phone calls. Prisoners are moved about in California sometimes at their own request and sometimes for population reasons, Nelson said.
Mansfield is suspected of numerous rapes and other slaying during his killing spree in Westcentral Florida.
Read: The Story of Billy Mansfield & Secrets Hidden in the Green Bus--one of 17 true crime cases covered in MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
True Crime: Murders in the Swampland
New: 2012 updated version of original cases and additional Florida murder cases:
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND AND COP LOGS 3rd addion contains the following cases plus three additional files. https://www.createspace.com/4491231
CONTENTS Introduction Cases included in MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND & names of convicted killers 1. The Story Of Billy Mansfield & Secrets Hidden In The Green Bus--Serial Killer Billy Mansfield 2. Gay Encounter Costs Priest His Life--William Howell Galvin 3. Torture Murder In The Swamp--Todd Mendyk & Philip Frantz 4. A Christmas Rabbit Hunt Became A Night Of Murder--Rick Shere & Bruce Demo 5. Shootout In Sumter County--Jeffrey Raymond McGuire & Traci Grosvenor 6. He Killed The Pretty Young Women--Serial Killer Oscar Ray Bolin 7. Murder To Be Popular--Patrici Keebler A Gunman’s Intent: She’s As Good As Dead--John Barrett, Scott Burnside, & Dorssey Sanders III 9. Rumble At The Old Publix--Gang murder of Russell Coats in Brooksville, FL. 10. They Killed For A Hunk of Crack--Debra Russo & Daniel Gardner 11. Granny Killer On The Loose--Serial Killer Edwin Bernard "Mike" Kaprat 12. Killer Left Body For The Dogs--Ivan Morales 13. She Awakened To A Gunshot In The Night--Julie Leacock & Samuel Augusta Coppola 14. Killers Claim Rock Star & Bodyguard Fame--Clifford Jarvis & Brian Kipp 15. Couple On The Run: Caught With Gun In Her Panties--Melissa Herriss & Earl Linebaugh 16. She Listened To Kidnappers Plot Her Murder--Alfred Fennie, Pala Colbert @ Michael Frazier 17. Mother & Daughters Dumped In The Bay--Serial Killer Oba Chandler 18. Cop Log I 19. Cop Log 2 20. Cop Log 3 21. Epilogue
Order from Create Space
MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND AND COP LOGS 3rd addion contains the following cases plus three additional files. https://www.createspace.com/4491231
CONTENTS Introduction Cases included in MURDERS IN THE SWAMPLAND & names of convicted killers 1. The Story Of Billy Mansfield & Secrets Hidden In The Green Bus--Serial Killer Billy Mansfield 2. Gay Encounter Costs Priest His Life--William Howell Galvin 3. Torture Murder In The Swamp--Todd Mendyk & Philip Frantz 4. A Christmas Rabbit Hunt Became A Night Of Murder--Rick Shere & Bruce Demo 5. Shootout In Sumter County--Jeffrey Raymond McGuire & Traci Grosvenor 6. He Killed The Pretty Young Women--Serial Killer Oscar Ray Bolin 7. Murder To Be Popular--Patrici Keebler A Gunman’s Intent: She’s As Good As Dead--John Barrett, Scott Burnside, & Dorssey Sanders III 9. Rumble At The Old Publix--Gang murder of Russell Coats in Brooksville, FL. 10. They Killed For A Hunk of Crack--Debra Russo & Daniel Gardner 11. Granny Killer On The Loose--Serial Killer Edwin Bernard "Mike" Kaprat 12. Killer Left Body For The Dogs--Ivan Morales 13. She Awakened To A Gunshot In The Night--Julie Leacock & Samuel Augusta Coppola 14. Killers Claim Rock Star & Bodyguard Fame--Clifford Jarvis & Brian Kipp 15. Couple On The Run: Caught With Gun In Her Panties--Melissa Herriss & Earl Linebaugh 16. She Listened To Kidnappers Plot Her Murder--Alfred Fennie, Pala Colbert @ Michael Frazier 17. Mother & Daughters Dumped In The Bay--Serial Killer Oba Chandler 18. Cop Log I 19. Cop Log 2 20. Cop Log 3 21. Epilogue
Order from Create Space
Monday, February 19, 2007
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Steve Goodman
Patricia:Good to see your 22-year-old story on Arlo, and its mention of Steve Goodman.
He often doesn't get his due. Given your interest in biography, youmight be interested in an eight-year project of mine that is coming tofruition -- a biography of Goodman that will be published this spring. I'm attaching a background sheet on the book and will keep you on my notification list!
Clay
=====Clay Eals1728 California Ave. S.W.
Riding on the City of New Orleans with Arlo Guthrie
By Patricia Lieb
Appeared in the Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL, Oct. 14, 1985
At Union Station in Chicago, the southbound Amtrak -- the one they call The City Of New Orleans --fills up quickly. There are city officals, photographers and reporters -- people who came all the way from Kankakee just to ride this train back.
And, with good reason: To greet Arlo Guthrie and accompany him to Kankakee, where he would give his first concert in the town he made famous in song.
Guthrie is quite a man. Still his warm, pleasing manner comes through clearly as he chooses a seat in the club car that was reserved for this special occasion.
This is his first ride on The City Of New Orleans, which passes through Kankakee in both the song of that name and in fact.
Traveling with him is his 18-year-old son, Abraham, and an artist.
Arlo is dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved, blue shirt and a short, tan trench coat belted at the waist. He wears tennis shoes, a pair of red checked socks, and an Amtrak hat that someone gave. His thick, shoulder-length, curly hair is graying.
"My son Abraham," he says, "is playing with me this tour."
Music, he says, has always been a way of life for his family. Although his father, Woody, took sick when Arlo was only six-years-old, and was ill until he died 15 years later, the Guthrie clan was the "singingest, dancingest family who ever lived."
Arlo saw the movie, "Bound For Glory," just once. It was supposed to be a recall of his famous father, but, "I didn't like the movie. It was a combination of a bunch of ideals that I didn't think flowed very well together, and after seeing the movie I don't know if I knew anymore about my dad than I did to begin with. And I don't mean, just by being his son, I mean for anybody. It (the movie) sort of gave the impression that he just ran around a lot and sang in freigh trains and such."
Like his father, Arlo has been involved in social movements.
"Nowadays you get involved in some things but they are not called protests anymore. Anybody who is singing about hungry people in Africa, or farms in the Midwest, or newsy plans in their own home town ... things like that don't really carry the protest aura that some things did fifetten years ago. These are actions taken by people who are very normal -- They get together and help people and they leave it at that."
Helping each other is fashionable nowadays, he says, and "I hope it becomes more fashionable. I think if you're going to be a slave to fashion, you might as well do it to benefit other people."
An admirer of St. Francis, Arlo is a lay brother. There was a time, he says, when he "sort-of" hung out in monasteries. "Just for the sake of not standing out, I dressed in gowns and robes, "But," he says, "that is not a big deal. I'm not trying to detract from other people's comings and goings. I tend to disappear as a personality or celebrity when I'm dressed like everyody else." As for Steve Goodman's song, The City Of New Orleans, Guthrie says it took him three months and six recordings to get the song like he wanted. "I kept hearing it," he says, tilting his head with a shy laugh, "but didn't like it. So, I'd go back and start from scratch again."
On his next album, he says, there are decidedly biased. "I've always been that way," he says. "I don't try to remain neutral about things. I don't find any job in neutrallity. I'd rather be wrong than neutral."
Arlo glances out the window at the big whoop-de-doo getting started along the tracks just as the conductor announces that the train will be stopping in Kankakee soon. "I never expected them (the people of Kankakee) to do it up this big," he says.
Appeared in the Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL, Oct. 14, 1985
At Union Station in Chicago, the southbound Amtrak -- the one they call The City Of New Orleans --fills up quickly. There are city officals, photographers and reporters -- people who came all the way from Kankakee just to ride this train back.
And, with good reason: To greet Arlo Guthrie and accompany him to Kankakee, where he would give his first concert in the town he made famous in song.
Guthrie is quite a man. Still his warm, pleasing manner comes through clearly as he chooses a seat in the club car that was reserved for this special occasion.
This is his first ride on The City Of New Orleans, which passes through Kankakee in both the song of that name and in fact.
Traveling with him is his 18-year-old son, Abraham, and an artist.
Arlo is dressed in jeans, a long-sleeved, blue shirt and a short, tan trench coat belted at the waist. He wears tennis shoes, a pair of red checked socks, and an Amtrak hat that someone gave. His thick, shoulder-length, curly hair is graying.
"My son Abraham," he says, "is playing with me this tour."
Music, he says, has always been a way of life for his family. Although his father, Woody, took sick when Arlo was only six-years-old, and was ill until he died 15 years later, the Guthrie clan was the "singingest, dancingest family who ever lived."
Arlo saw the movie, "Bound For Glory," just once. It was supposed to be a recall of his famous father, but, "I didn't like the movie. It was a combination of a bunch of ideals that I didn't think flowed very well together, and after seeing the movie I don't know if I knew anymore about my dad than I did to begin with. And I don't mean, just by being his son, I mean for anybody. It (the movie) sort of gave the impression that he just ran around a lot and sang in freigh trains and such."
Like his father, Arlo has been involved in social movements.
"Nowadays you get involved in some things but they are not called protests anymore. Anybody who is singing about hungry people in Africa, or farms in the Midwest, or newsy plans in their own home town ... things like that don't really carry the protest aura that some things did fifetten years ago. These are actions taken by people who are very normal -- They get together and help people and they leave it at that."
Helping each other is fashionable nowadays, he says, and "I hope it becomes more fashionable. I think if you're going to be a slave to fashion, you might as well do it to benefit other people."
An admirer of St. Francis, Arlo is a lay brother. There was a time, he says, when he "sort-of" hung out in monasteries. "Just for the sake of not standing out, I dressed in gowns and robes, "But," he says, "that is not a big deal. I'm not trying to detract from other people's comings and goings. I tend to disappear as a personality or celebrity when I'm dressed like everyody else." As for Steve Goodman's song, The City Of New Orleans, Guthrie says it took him three months and six recordings to get the song like he wanted. "I kept hearing it," he says, tilting his head with a shy laugh, "but didn't like it. So, I'd go back and start from scratch again."
On his next album, he says, there are decidedly biased. "I've always been that way," he says. "I don't try to remain neutral about things. I don't find any job in neutrallity. I'd rather be wrong than neutral."
Arlo glances out the window at the big whoop-de-doo getting started along the tracks just as the conductor announces that the train will be stopping in Kankakee soon. "I never expected them (the people of Kankakee) to do it up this big," he says.
Friday, December 29, 2006
BRIDGED BY LOVE
Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL book review for "Bridged by Love"
Historical novel good, fast read for any afternoon"
Bridged by Love
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Reviewed by Bonnie Flouhouse
St, Anne, IL
Patricia Shipp Lieb's "Bridged by Love" is a historical novel set in Texarkana in the late 1880s. It's the story of two women--Shanna (a young Indian woman trying to evade ruthless white men) and Kathryn (a storng white woman willing to take on any opponent).
Several people, but most importantly an infant, tie the women's lives. The fast plot is at times too coincidental, but it ensnares the reader in the story of these women. To build suspense, the author presents segments of one character's story, stops at a crucial moment, and then moves to the other character's struggles.
Because the only way to connect Shanna and Kathryn is to show how several men are involed in their lives, several episodes involved only these men. Liberal doses of danger, treachery, intrigue, and romance fill the book. Eventually Lieb untangles everyone and brings closure to the storylines.
Numerous predictable stock characters add to the local color of the book: the slick swindler, the traveling prostitute, the ignorant guy who'll do anything for a few coins, the prejuciced business owner, the liberal man who thinks Indians are mistreated, the fiercely strong pioneer woman, the decent man who patiently waits for his chance at love, and displaced Indians. Add a ruthless tavern owner and a young man willing to face all foes for the woman he loves, and the character list is complete.
In an attempt to capture the aura and lifestyles of a past time, Lieb has crowded lost of characters and details into her book. But over all, "Bridged by Love" is a fast read good for an afternoon's enjoyment.
Bridged By Love
Trade paper back & ebook downloads from Asylett Press, Fictionwise, and any major book store.
Hardback:
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Publisher:
Trade paperback; order from Asylett Press
Hardback 328 pages; order from Booksurge
Description: Kathryn, a backwoods woman, and the young Indian girl, Shanna, have a connection: love for an infant. Set in about 1885, give or take, on the borders of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, with travels to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), complex characters tangled with kidnapping, murder and romance add a height of tension to this suspenseful telling of the difficult roads traveled between two women bridged by love. Copyright 2006 (c) Patricia Shipp Lieb
BRIDGED BY LOVE by Patricia Lieb is published by Asylett Press
https://www.asylett.com/HTML/mainsite.htm
Historical novel good, fast read for any afternoon"
Bridged by Love
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Reviewed by Bonnie Flouhouse
St, Anne, IL
Patricia Shipp Lieb's "Bridged by Love" is a historical novel set in Texarkana in the late 1880s. It's the story of two women--Shanna (a young Indian woman trying to evade ruthless white men) and Kathryn (a storng white woman willing to take on any opponent).
Several people, but most importantly an infant, tie the women's lives. The fast plot is at times too coincidental, but it ensnares the reader in the story of these women. To build suspense, the author presents segments of one character's story, stops at a crucial moment, and then moves to the other character's struggles.
Because the only way to connect Shanna and Kathryn is to show how several men are involed in their lives, several episodes involved only these men. Liberal doses of danger, treachery, intrigue, and romance fill the book. Eventually Lieb untangles everyone and brings closure to the storylines.
Numerous predictable stock characters add to the local color of the book: the slick swindler, the traveling prostitute, the ignorant guy who'll do anything for a few coins, the prejuciced business owner, the liberal man who thinks Indians are mistreated, the fiercely strong pioneer woman, the decent man who patiently waits for his chance at love, and displaced Indians. Add a ruthless tavern owner and a young man willing to face all foes for the woman he loves, and the character list is complete.
In an attempt to capture the aura and lifestyles of a past time, Lieb has crowded lost of characters and details into her book. But over all, "Bridged by Love" is a fast read good for an afternoon's enjoyment.
Bridged By Love
Trade paper back & ebook downloads from Asylett Press, Fictionwise, and any major book store.
Hardback:
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Publisher:
Trade paperback; order from Asylett Press
Hardback 328 pages; order from Booksurge
Description: Kathryn, a backwoods woman, and the young Indian girl, Shanna, have a connection: love for an infant. Set in about 1885, give or take, on the borders of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, with travels to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), complex characters tangled with kidnapping, murder and romance add a height of tension to this suspenseful telling of the difficult roads traveled between two women bridged by love. Copyright 2006 (c) Patricia Shipp Lieb
BRIDGED BY LOVE by Patricia Lieb is published by Asylett Press
https://www.asylett.com/HTML/mainsite.htm
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Book signing in Gulfport, Mississippi
Book signing at Barnes & Noble
Gulfport, MS,
Patricia Lieb, author
(Murders
in the Swampland;
Bridged by Love;
and Glenn Sweman,
author of 11 books
of poetry.
author of 11 books of poetry
New Publisher for Patricia Lieb: Asylett Press
Friday, October 27, 2006
Whooooooo: the ghosts of poets
Happy Halloween
Visit the Graves of Poets
Death, Be Not Proud: The Graves of Poets
At the Academy of American Poets
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19256
Visit the Graves of Poets
Death, Be Not Proud: The Graves of Poets
At the Academy of American Poets
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19256
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Captured: poems by Patricia Lieb
Captured
By Patricia Lieb
Acknowledgements:
A Pteranodon chapbook published by Lieb-Schott Publications. Copyright 1983 by Patricia Lieb. All rights reserved.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors and publishers of the following publications where the collection of poems in Captured first appeared:
Affinities: The South Florida Poetry Review, for Shadows and The Deep: Sirens;
Anthology of Florida Poets for Grave Digging (third printing), and Looking At You Through A Rain Covered Window Pane;
Cedar Rock for Grave Digging and Waiting;
Earthwise for Hurricane;
The Florida Arts Gazette for Captured;
Gryphon for Learning To Write A Poem;
Indian Corn for Bathing In Red Wine Words;
Pudding for Grave Digging (second printing);
The Spoon River Quarterly for Dreaming Of Wheat;
Tempest for The Eagle And The Dove;
Xarier Review for Until Dawn.
Captured by Patricia Lieb
Available from Liebbooks.com
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Poet Jared Carter
Read the impressive interview
Carol Schott Martino and I
conducted
with the awesome poet
Jared Carter back in
the days of Pteranodon.
Please leave a comment.
http://jaredcarter.com/archives/interviews/pteranodon/
The Pteranodon magazine cover shown above features numerous poets; pictured are Dr. Barbra Nightingale, professor of poetry and creative writing at Broward College in Hollywood, FL; Dr. Glenn Swentman, writer in residence at William Carey College, Gulf Port, MS; and the late poet and professor of Humanities at the University of South FL in Tampa Dr. Hans Juergensen; the bottom photo is of the famed Indiana poet Jared Carter.
Carol and I met Jared Carter in about 1979 when he was a featured speaker at the Suncoast Writer's Conference in St. Petersburg, FL., and have since attended his readings. You are in for a treat when visiting his Website (link above).
Please watch for revisits to the eight issues of the literary magazine Pteranodon featuring Jared Carter, William Stafford, Richard Eberhart, Richard Shelton and other internationally know poets and writers via <http://liebbooks.com>. We published Pteranodon in 1979-1984.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Wild Orchids
Another
"On My Way
To The Mailbox"
photo; this one of
lovely
wild orchids
growing along
the mailbox path
Photo by
Patricia Lieb
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Hurry Up
Say hello to my friend Hurry Up, one of several gopher tortis living in my yard.
I met up with Hurry Up on the way to the mailbox yesterday. Soon he and all his family will cover themselves under Florida sands for the season.
Photo by
Patricia Lieb
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Judy Candis
Judy, a very loved soul
August 8, 1950-September 18, 2006
Novelist, Writing Instructor, & Business Owner
Author of Color Blind, Blood Offering, Still Rage, & All Things Hidden
CEO of Bar-B-Que King, Incorporated
Beloved Mother, Sister, Aunt, Cousin, Niece & Friend!
http://www.judycandis.com/
http://jccafe.blogspot.com/
Photo of Judy and me at a signing for All Things Hidden in Tampa, FL
Friday, September 22, 2006
GO! Barack Obama (D) IL
http://www.barackobama.com/2004/07/27/dnc_2004.php
IL U.S. Senator
Barack Obama
has a lot to say
to those who
will listen or read.
http://www.barackobama.com/2006/09/14/louisville_dems.php
http://www.barackobama.com/2006/09/20/energy_independence.php
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Speaking at William Carey College, Gulfport, MS
I will speak to Dr. Glenn Swetman's American Literature class on October 26 after a duel booksigning with Swetman at the Barnes & Noble in Gulfport on Oct. 25. Hope to see you there.
Friday, September 01, 2006
This is where I live in Florida
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Skydiving
This is the way down
Zypherhills, FL
See photos:
http://writerswriteon.com/
Story appeared in Vocational Biographies
Friday, August 25, 2006
Sanibel Island, FL's Gulf Coast
Photos (C) Patricia Lieb
Watch for my story
about Sanibel Island
in Florida Living magazine
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
From Texarkana College; KTXK Public Radio Aug. 24, 9 a.m.
Hey, exciting news: I will be talking with Sabrina McMcCormick on KTXK radio from Texarkana College 91.5 FM on Wednesday, Sept. 6 at 9 a.m. Texarkana time about my book "Bridged by Love." Hope you will tune in.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Sadly, this is William Carey College, Gulfport, MS
William Carey College, Gulfport, MS, Aug. 1, 2006
Classes are being held in these trailers more than a year after Hurricane Katrina.
On my trip to Gulfport, MS, earlier this month to speak with Dr. Glenn Swetman's creative writing class at William Carey College, I was saddened by the disaster still plaguing the Gulf Coast, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
I will speak at Swetman's American Literature class on October 26, after a duel booksigning with Swetman at the Barnes & Noble in Gulfport on Oct. 25. For more information email pat@liebbooks.com
Monday, August 14, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
Sunday, July 09, 2006
On Writing Historical Fiction
On writing historical fiction
I will talk to Dr. Glenn Swetman's Creative Writing class at William Carey College, Gulfport, MS, Aug. 1 and will sign copies of my novels "Bridged by Love" and "Across the Red River to Her Mysterious Heritage" at a local bookstore there Aug. 2. For more information e-mail me at: pat@liebbooks.com. Also in August, I will be guest author at Judy Candis' Writing the Popular Novel class at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
From Amazon. com
July 30, 2006
A great taste of the old frontier, July 30, 2006
Reviewer:
Paul S. Brittain (Scottdale, PA USA) - See all my reviews Bridged By Love was a pleasant surprise for someone whose readings usually tend to science fiction and horror. But Patricia Shipp Lieb grabbed my attention from the first page and held it throughout this well-crafted novel, weaving twists, turns and surprises. Female protagonists Shanna and Kathryn are connected through the love of baby Aaron, who is the center of this saga. Both strong in resolve, Shanna is a native American Indian and Kathryn is a frontier woman who together triumph over the schemes of a number of unscrupulous men. The author's attention to detail brought the old southwest to life as she deftly blended the passages of her many characters. I am honored to have had the opportunity to read and review this book, and highly recommend it to someone who is seeking a different kind of story that is based on a long gone historic era. I look forward as well to other readings of books by Patricia Shipp Lieb.
From the Tampa Tribune, July 9
"Bridged by Love," by Patricia Shipp Lieb (BookSurge, $16) - Spring Hill resident Lieb has written a historical adventure set in the late 1880s in Texarkana, a city that straddles the Texas-Arkansas line. Lieb draws on a bounty of historical knowledge to craft a tale of two women - one native American, the other white - linked together in a fight against injustice.
From the Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL, May 28
Historical novel good, fast read for summer afternoon
"Bridged by Love"
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Reviewed by Bonnie Flouhouse
St, Anne, IL
Patricia Shipp Lieb's "Bridged by Love" is a historical novel set in Texarkana in the late 1880s. It's the story of two women--Shanna (a young Indian woman trying to evade ruthless white men) and Kathryn (a storng white woman willing to take on any opponent).
Several people, but most importantly an infant, tie the women's lives.
The fast plot is at times too coincidental, but it ensnares the reader in the story of these women.
To build suspense, the author presents segments of one character's story, stops at a crucial moment, and then moves to the other character's struggles.
Because the only way to connect Shanna and Kathryn is to show how several men are involed in their lives, several episodes involved only these men. Liberal doses of danger, treachery, intrigue, and romance fill the book.
Eventually Lieb untangles everyone and brings closure to the storylines. Numerous predictable stock characters add to the local color of the book: the slick swindler, the traveling prostitute, the ignorant guy who'll do anything for a few coins, the prejuciced business owner, the liberal man who thinks Indians are mistreated, the fiercely strong pioneer woman, the decent man who patiently waits for his chance at love, and displaced Indians. Add a ruthless tavern owner and a young man willing to face all foes for the woman he loves, and the character list is complete.
In an attempt to capture the aura and lifestyles of a past time, Lieb has crowded lost of characters and details into her book. But over all, "Bridged by Love" is a fast read good for a summer afternoon's enjoyment.
Bridged By Love by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Publisher: BookSurge
Pre-publication reviews for "Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage"
By Patricia Shipp Lieb
Review by Dr. Glenn Swetman: author, poet, writer in residence at William Carey College, Gulf Port, MS
In Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage, Lieb (known for her no-nonsense true crime reporting, her sensitive and complex poetry and her exceptional initiation novel, "And Her Name Was Catharine") has conceived yet another genera.
Her latest, Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage, is a literary triumph, a genealogical mystery novel, and a record of the acute pangs of longing that make us human. Mary, the protagonist of the book, is engaged in a search for her identity both physically and spiritually as she struggles through her own kinds of Pilgrim's Progress or Divine Comedy that takes her from the portals of Purgatory to the brink of her personal Inferno.
But not only is this a book that should be read, it is a book that is exceptionally readable.
The words seem to leap from the page to the reader's eyes and from there do the very soul: a must for the serious reader. A must for anyone who reads.
I will talk to Dr. Glenn Swetman's Creative Writing class at William Carey College, Gulfport, MS, Aug. 1 and will sign copies of my novels "Bridged by Love" and "Across the Red River to Her Mysterious Heritage" at a local bookstore there Aug. 2. For more information e-mail me at: pat@liebbooks.com. Also in August, I will be guest author at Judy Candis' Writing the Popular Novel class at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
From Amazon. com
July 30, 2006
A great taste of the old frontier, July 30, 2006
Reviewer:
Paul S. Brittain (Scottdale, PA USA) - See all my reviews Bridged By Love was a pleasant surprise for someone whose readings usually tend to science fiction and horror. But Patricia Shipp Lieb grabbed my attention from the first page and held it throughout this well-crafted novel, weaving twists, turns and surprises. Female protagonists Shanna and Kathryn are connected through the love of baby Aaron, who is the center of this saga. Both strong in resolve, Shanna is a native American Indian and Kathryn is a frontier woman who together triumph over the schemes of a number of unscrupulous men. The author's attention to detail brought the old southwest to life as she deftly blended the passages of her many characters. I am honored to have had the opportunity to read and review this book, and highly recommend it to someone who is seeking a different kind of story that is based on a long gone historic era. I look forward as well to other readings of books by Patricia Shipp Lieb.
From the Tampa Tribune, July 9
"Bridged by Love," by Patricia Shipp Lieb (BookSurge, $16) - Spring Hill resident Lieb has written a historical adventure set in the late 1880s in Texarkana, a city that straddles the Texas-Arkansas line. Lieb draws on a bounty of historical knowledge to craft a tale of two women - one native American, the other white - linked together in a fight against injustice.
From the Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL, May 28
Historical novel good, fast read for summer afternoon
"Bridged by Love"
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Reviewed by Bonnie Flouhouse
St, Anne, IL
Patricia Shipp Lieb's "Bridged by Love" is a historical novel set in Texarkana in the late 1880s. It's the story of two women--Shanna (a young Indian woman trying to evade ruthless white men) and Kathryn (a storng white woman willing to take on any opponent).
Several people, but most importantly an infant, tie the women's lives.
The fast plot is at times too coincidental, but it ensnares the reader in the story of these women.
To build suspense, the author presents segments of one character's story, stops at a crucial moment, and then moves to the other character's struggles.
Because the only way to connect Shanna and Kathryn is to show how several men are involed in their lives, several episodes involved only these men. Liberal doses of danger, treachery, intrigue, and romance fill the book.
Eventually Lieb untangles everyone and brings closure to the storylines. Numerous predictable stock characters add to the local color of the book: the slick swindler, the traveling prostitute, the ignorant guy who'll do anything for a few coins, the prejuciced business owner, the liberal man who thinks Indians are mistreated, the fiercely strong pioneer woman, the decent man who patiently waits for his chance at love, and displaced Indians. Add a ruthless tavern owner and a young man willing to face all foes for the woman he loves, and the character list is complete.
In an attempt to capture the aura and lifestyles of a past time, Lieb has crowded lost of characters and details into her book. But over all, "Bridged by Love" is a fast read good for a summer afternoon's enjoyment.
Back to Liebbooks.com
Bridged By Love by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Publisher: BookSurge
Pre-publication reviews for "Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage"
By Patricia Shipp Lieb
Review by Dr. Glenn Swetman: author, poet, writer in residence at William Carey College, Gulf Port, MS
In Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage, Lieb (known for her no-nonsense true crime reporting, her sensitive and complex poetry and her exceptional initiation novel, "And Her Name Was Catharine") has conceived yet another genera.
Her latest, Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage, is a literary triumph, a genealogical mystery novel, and a record of the acute pangs of longing that make us human. Mary, the protagonist of the book, is engaged in a search for her identity both physically and spiritually as she struggles through her own kinds of Pilgrim's Progress or Divine Comedy that takes her from the portals of Purgatory to the brink of her personal Inferno.
But not only is this a book that should be read, it is a book that is exceptionally readable.
The words seem to leap from the page to the reader's eyes and from there do the very soul: a must for the serious reader. A must for anyone who reads.
Pre-publication review by Allan MacKinnon, writer-photographer, The Florida Keys
Patricia Lieb has written a best seller! The story chronicles the search by Mary Gray, a young black woman with blue eyes, for her heritage. Each chapter grabs you and won't let you go. You'll reach for each new chapter to learn more about Mary's, until near the end of the book, you begin to get a hint of where she will find her ancestors. Well written and well conceived, Mysterious Heritage leaves you hoping that the author has more intrigging tales in the future for our enjoyment.
Pre-publication review by Dr. Barbra Nightingale, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Broward College, Hollywood, FL
Wow! Patricia is a true storyteller; each page begs to be turned as her intriguing prose spins it tale full of surprises.
Well told!
"Across the Red River to her Mysterious Heritage" can be ordered from Xlibris.com
Book signing in Dade City, FL
The Tampa Tribune
2 Authors Appearing At The Book Shack
Photo: Patricia Lieb, J. B. Preston & Dr. Glenn Swetman
Book Shack owner Jo Kassabuam (above) gets ready for another day of literature at her shop in Dade City, FL.
Dade City--Two local writers will be at The Book Shack, 14407 Seventh St., from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday to answer questions about their books and the publishing process.
Patricia Shipp Lieb of Spring Hill has written a fourth book, "Bridged by Love," the story of a backwoods woman and an American Indian girl bound by their love for a baby. It's set in the mid-1880s on the tristate borders of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.
Lieb has been a writer and newspaper reporter for more than 20 years, including reporting for papers in Brooksville and New Port Richey. She has been a speaker at various writers conferences.
J.B. Preston of Lakeland will sign copies of his book "Autumn Under the Papagalos." The story moves from the Mid-west to Central Florida to the rain forest of Costa Rica. This is Preston's first novel, although he has written poetry and has a short story collection. He has a master's degree in library and information sciences from the University of South Florida.
For information about the event, contact Jo Kassabuam at The Book Shack, (352) 567-5001.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Introduction to "Murders in the Swampland"
http://www.amazon.com/MURDERS-THE-SWAMPLAND-3rd-ebook/dp/B009GB138W
New 3rd edition available at Amazon.com
Covering crime was new to me when I moved to Florida's west coast and started working for The Daily Sun-Journal.
For a couple years prior to giving up the north for the Sunshine State, I wrote for The Daily Journal in Kankakee, Illinois. Before that, I was a co-editor/co-publisher of a literary magazine, wrote feature stories and a newspaper column about children, and had stories and poetry published here and there. That was it. Zip. A far cry from crime.
I had been living in Florida for three weeks when I returned to my apartment after a photography job interview and noticed the light blinking on my telephone answering machine. That is when I got the most rewarding call of my career as a journalist.
The recorded voice was that of Ken Melton, a man I didn't know but one who would become my boss and friend.
Ken was editor of The Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax.
Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, The Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
Ken was editor of The Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, The Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
The memories of working at The Daily Sun-Journal are lasting. Daily briefings in Sergeant "B" Frank Bierwiler's office were nearly always fascinating. Sergeant B and some of the five reporters from local media would usually come out with jokes or funny remarks that would bring humor to the morning. We sat in Sergeant B's office and read sheriff reports, sometimes with a chuckle, repeating aloud and commenting about off-the-wall incidents, like somebody picking mushrooms out of cow manure with the intentions of boiling them and drinking the juice to get high. But there were many reports far from the light side.
While a lot of incidents reported as criminal seemed somewhat rediculous, the amount of hard crime in the small county was inconceivable. Recently, some former staff of The Daily Sun-Journal gathered on Ken's patio to talk about the old days. He said that when he first arrived at The Daily Sun-Journal from a newspaper in the north, he was told Brooksville was a "lousy news town," a place where nothing ever happened. In the early-to-mid 1980s the county's population stayed pretty much at 20,000. "You used to really have to concentrate to find this place," Ken said, jokingly, of the area some 55 or so miles north of Tampa.
"Then bodies were being dug up in Billy Mansfield's back yard. I thought, 'My God!' Come to find out, Billy would take these girls home, rape them, kill them, and bury them in his mother's back yard. They (family) talked about hearing people screaming back there. Of course, nobody ever did anything. They'd say, 'Oh, that's just Billy.' It's amazing to me how his family didn't turn him in. I don't think there was any question whether they knew what was going on. It was like they thought: 'He's just killing somebody in the back yard--don't worry about it.' Mansfield was kind-of scary, like Charles Manson.
"In an unrelated incident a few years later, four men showed up at a house for various reasons at different times and were murdered. One man, later convicted of the crime, ran off to a far-away island in the South Pacific. A couple years later, detectives followed his mother when she went to visit her son.
"Now why would a killer have his mother fly in for a visit, as if he weren't being hunted anymore?"
Putting murder aside, some wild happenings in thecounty covered everything from a horse drinking too much wine to a man attempting to drown his wife in the waterbed because he didn't like her new hairdo. And there was the time, during one of the jailbreaks at the new jail, when a couple prisoners actually kicked a hole in the jail wall and escaped through it.
Laughing, Ken said, "Didn't they consider when they were building the jail that there might be people locked in who want out?"
Ken recalled hilarious happenings occurred in the old days, too. "Deputies in cruisers were chasing a car and the driver got away. When cops found him a little later, after he had smashed up his car, he was beside a garbage bin on the parking lot at a convenicence store having sex with a woman he had just met. "
It is the funniest story I've ever heard and it happened here. "The man got away from officers again. "I think the cops must have been laughing so hard that night they couldn't even catch the guy. Now what are the odds a man would meet a woman who would do that,"Ken said, laughing.
"They told me Brooksville was a lousy news town. Then they started digging up bodies in Billy Mansfield's yard and another guy got beat to death with a rock--then all hell broke loose. Brooksville was no longer a sleepy little town."
In this book, I am sharing with you some of the criminal acts that have occurred in Central Florida's once far-removed swampland adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. The "swamp" collection also includes extensive accounts of lawmen and their search for clues in one of the most horrific cases in Tampa Bay history after the boater's sighting led to the discovery of the bodies of a mother and her two teenage daughters weighted with concrete blocks and floating in the bay.
As well as covering most of these murders for The Daily Sun-Journal, I wrote accounts of the cases for the various true-crime magazines over a 10-year-period. In some stories, the names of witnesses and defendants' families have been changed; some have not. Several cases in this collection occurred before and after my tender with the newspaper. But they are crimes that still haunt folks who remember.
Be forewarned, some details herewith are gruesome.
I used literary license in writing these stories. Some quotes are assumed, as nobody really knows what was said during the crimes. Many quotes were taken directly from court records, including police reports, depositions, confessions, and trials. The happenings and moods are as close to truth as I could detect while studing the cases.
http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0011252002/default.aspx
Available from Xlibris
New 3rd edition available at Amazon.com
Covering crime was new to me when I moved to Florida's west coast and started working for The Daily Sun-Journal.
For a couple years prior to giving up the north for the Sunshine State, I wrote for The Daily Journal in Kankakee, Illinois. Before that, I was a co-editor/co-publisher of a literary magazine, wrote feature stories and a newspaper column about children, and had stories and poetry published here and there. That was it. Zip. A far cry from crime.
I had been living in Florida for three weeks when I returned to my apartment after a photography job interview and noticed the light blinking on my telephone answering machine. That is when I got the most rewarding call of my career as a journalist.
The recorded voice was that of Ken Melton, a man I didn't know but one who would become my boss and friend.
Ken was editor of The Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax.
Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, The Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
Ken was editor of The Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, The Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
The memories of working at The Daily Sun-Journal are lasting. Daily briefings in Sergeant "B" Frank Bierwiler's office were nearly always fascinating. Sergeant B and some of the five reporters from local media would usually come out with jokes or funny remarks that would bring humor to the morning. We sat in Sergeant B's office and read sheriff reports, sometimes with a chuckle, repeating aloud and commenting about off-the-wall incidents, like somebody picking mushrooms out of cow manure with the intentions of boiling them and drinking the juice to get high. But there were many reports far from the light side.
While a lot of incidents reported as criminal seemed somewhat rediculous, the amount of hard crime in the small county was inconceivable. Recently, some former staff of The Daily Sun-Journal gathered on Ken's patio to talk about the old days. He said that when he first arrived at The Daily Sun-Journal from a newspaper in the north, he was told Brooksville was a "lousy news town," a place where nothing ever happened. In the early-to-mid 1980s the county's population stayed pretty much at 20,000. "You used to really have to concentrate to find this place," Ken said, jokingly, of the area some 55 or so miles north of Tampa.
"Then bodies were being dug up in Billy Mansfield's back yard. I thought, 'My God!' Come to find out, Billy would take these girls home, rape them, kill them, and bury them in his mother's back yard. They (family) talked about hearing people screaming back there. Of course, nobody ever did anything. They'd say, 'Oh, that's just Billy.' It's amazing to me how his family didn't turn him in. I don't think there was any question whether they knew what was going on. It was like they thought: 'He's just killing somebody in the back yard--don't worry about it.' Mansfield was kind-of scary, like Charles Manson.
"In an unrelated incident a few years later, four men showed up at a house for various reasons at different times and were murdered. One man, later convicted of the crime, ran off to a far-away island in the South Pacific. A couple years later, detectives followed his mother when she went to visit her son.
"Now why would a killer have his mother fly in for a visit, as if he weren't being hunted anymore?"
Putting murder aside, some wild happenings in thecounty covered everything from a horse drinking too much wine to a man attempting to drown his wife in the waterbed because he didn't like her new hairdo. And there was the time, during one of the jailbreaks at the new jail, when a couple prisoners actually kicked a hole in the jail wall and escaped through it.
Laughing, Ken said, "Didn't they consider when they were building the jail that there might be people locked in who want out?"
Ken recalled hilarious happenings occurred in the old days, too. "Deputies in cruisers were chasing a car and the driver got away. When cops found him a little later, after he had smashed up his car, he was beside a garbage bin on the parking lot at a convenicence store having sex with a woman he had just met. "
It is the funniest story I've ever heard and it happened here. "The man got away from officers again. "I think the cops must have been laughing so hard that night they couldn't even catch the guy. Now what are the odds a man would meet a woman who would do that,"Ken said, laughing.
"They told me Brooksville was a lousy news town. Then they started digging up bodies in Billy Mansfield's yard and another guy got beat to death with a rock--then all hell broke loose. Brooksville was no longer a sleepy little town."
In this book, I am sharing with you some of the criminal acts that have occurred in Central Florida's once far-removed swampland adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. The "swamp" collection also includes extensive accounts of lawmen and their search for clues in one of the most horrific cases in Tampa Bay history after the boater's sighting led to the discovery of the bodies of a mother and her two teenage daughters weighted with concrete blocks and floating in the bay.
As well as covering most of these murders for The Daily Sun-Journal, I wrote accounts of the cases for the various true-crime magazines over a 10-year-period. In some stories, the names of witnesses and defendants' families have been changed; some have not. Several cases in this collection occurred before and after my tender with the newspaper. But they are crimes that still haunt folks who remember.
Be forewarned, some details herewith are gruesome.
I used literary license in writing these stories. Some quotes are assumed, as nobody really knows what was said during the crimes. Many quotes were taken directly from court records, including police reports, depositions, confessions, and trials. The happenings and moods are as close to truth as I could detect while studing the cases.
http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0011252002/default.aspx
Available from Xlibris
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
True Crime by Patty Shipp Lieb
New: updated 2012 3rd editlion...http://www.amazon.com/MURDERS-THE-SWAMPLAND-3rd-ebook/dp/B009GB138W
http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0011252002/default.aspx
The below notations are newspaper articles
The below notations are newspaper articles
written about my true crime book titled
"Muders in the Swampland."
Please list your own books
Please list your own books
in the comment section of this entry.
Murders in the Swampland by Patricia Shipp Lieb
New: 2012 http://www.amazon.com/MURDERS-THE-SWAMPLAND-3rd-ebook/dp/B009GB138Wupdate with additional stories:
Many people move to the Nature Coast knowing little about the region.
Certainly, they've been enticed by the climate and the natural beauty of the countryside, the Gulf of Mexico and the lower cost of living. Yes, the Nature Coast is an attractive place.
What almost no newcomer to the region does is check the crime files. Perhaps the newcomer will look up the statistics and see fewer hard crimes here than in the place they are leaving and be reassured. However, a higher crime rate reflects a larger population than that of the Nature Coast. And statistics never put a face to crime.
Shipp mentions her editor, Ken Melton, who now works for a sister newspaper of the Citrus County Chronicle, and credits Melton with encouraging her to publish her book.
Each story could be fiction, if the facts and characters were not so real. The scenes of murders, the roads traveled by the murderers and the lawmen who caught them exist. Many of the lawmen are still at work and are well known the the communities. Most of the crimes are set in Heranado County, but adjacent counties figure in as well.
Each story has a horrible uniqueness, but all the murders are amateurs, even the serial killers detailed in the book. Many mistakes are made that lead the lawmen to the killers. It is refreshing to see the entire crime put into one document, rather than revealed in the installments of newspaper reports.
These stories read like accounts in detective magazines, for which many of them were written. Thuse the reader learns about the serial killer, Billy Mansfield, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s picked up young women hitchhikers on U.S. 19, took them back to his mother's trailer in Weeki Wachee for some hours of rape and torture before murdering them and burying them in the back yard. I have lived near Weeki Wachee for more than seven years, I had never heard about the Mansfield murders.
">What is unusual about those murders and several others in the book is that so
many people at the time knew about them and said nothing. Indeed, the sheriff
said he would have to build a wing on the jail to detain all the people who had
withheld evidence about Mansfield's crimes. But those folks knew about the
murders after the fact.
A more surprising crime happened Aug 3, 1990, in Floral City, when many people were aware of the plot to murder Joanne Sanders. The gang at a car repair business in melrose would get together and talk about how it should be done, priming the murder-to-be, John Barrett.
">This case was perhaps the most bungled of the 17 in the book, because Sanders
never got murdered at all. But four m,en who entered her house before she did
were killed, while Barrett was waiting for her.
Barrett was gone when Sanders came home and found the bodies. One thing this story does not tell the reader is why Barrett left before Sanders came home. Perhaps he lost his nerve, or perhaps he thought of something else to do.
A striking similarity in may of these cases is the randomness of the violence. Many of the victims were not safe in the security of their own homes, where the killer broke in through the screen door in the back or just knocked on the front door and asked to use the phone or bathroom.
In the case of the serial killer Mike Kaprat, the Granny Killer of Spring Hill, who murdered several elderly women between August and October in 1993, some of the victims had one thing in common--they had written checks to the same handyman who was Kaprat's relative whom Kaprat occasionally worked for as a helper.
Kaprat's motive was hard to determine. He would break in, rape and torture the elderly female victim, tied her to her bed, then set fire to it. When the law enforcers picked him up, Kaprat expressed loathing for the crime. Although Kaprat was an odious person, likely on one loathed him as much as he hated himself. Kaprat was tried, convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, but never made it to "Ol' Sparky." He was murdered by a fellow inmate. However these were not all acts by strangers. Murders killed friends, relatives and spouses. They killed for money, for a car, for a tire, for a rock of cocaine or for the thrill of it.
The reader gains a heightened sense of paranoia, that at any moment a knock at the door or a trip to the kitchen can mean death. All of these cases really happened, in a neighborhood near yours or even next door.
Shipp (Patricia Shipp Lieb) is now a freelance writer.
Chris Van Ormer is a desk editor at the Chronicle.
---
Writer visits McNairy County
By Micah Smith
From the Independent Appeal
Selmer, TN
Writer visits McNairy County
Patricia Shipp Lieb recently published her true crime book under her maiden name, Patty Shipp, after spending many years in the writing business as a journalist.
style="color:#990000;">"Murders in the Swampland" contains 17 true crime stories that took place in the
Brooksville, FL, area while Lieb was a reporter for the Daily
Sun-Journal. The stories are sometimes gruesome and shocking, especially
since they are all based on fact.
">
Her stories of events that include serial killers, kidnapping, murders and murders for hire show a blend of styles.
They are written in a journalistic style, which brings the reality of the crimes home, but they also have the narrative approach of a work of fiction to add an emotional edge to the horror of many of the stories.
Lieb also mixes in her own notes on some of the cases and ends the book with a series of cop logs relating humorous briefs of events that happened into he area.
"I had a regular beat and at night I had time to go to the library and research the records for police stories at the courthouse," said Lieb. "All the information in her is from reading court depositions and talking to police officers, public attorneys and prosecutors. I had a lot of friends in the county so it was easy to just call them."
Lieb is an experienced writer, she freelances for several papers and magazines, has worked full-time at several papers in Illinois and Florida and has published several collections of poems including Captured and Catholics and Publics.
Lieb recently quit her job working for the Suncoast News in New Port Richey, FL, to come to Selmer and stay with her parents, Walter and Rachel Reeves.
"My parents were both sick," related Lieb. "Pop had prostate cancer. They did surgery on that and it appears he is clear. Mother has another biopsy so I am here indefinitely."
Lieb said her parents decided to move to Selmer in 1989 because they have numerous relatives wo already live in the area.
Lieb said she is planning to not take another full-time job to focus on other writing projects. "I'm gonna get back into it and now I don't plan to get another job," said Lieb. "I'm glad I'm going to free my mind up to do what I want to with my writing."
She also had freelanced for Vocational Biographies based in Sauk Centre, MN. The magazine is published seven times a year and is used in places such as vocational centers, high schools, libraries and online to help people decide what career path to follow. Lieb said that the magazine focuses on different individuals in every possible vocation imaginable. It describes a person's career path, what all the tasks of their job are, how they chose the career, other jobs they have had and advantages and disadvantages of the job.
In Selmer, Lieb has written a biography on Christina Hawkins, who works for home Health and one on Smiley's Towing. She is planning to do another on a car salesman and three doctors.
Another of life's former projects is an online magazine titled Write on Magazine, founded and published by Lieb and friend Evelyn Manak. It includes columns, contests, information and writings of many styles by all different levels of writers from novices to professionals.
Lieb shows her support for writers in general in describing her own writing style.
In creative writing, I let my mind do the writing and I think that's what other people do too," said Lieb. "So I guess everybody's style would be different. I jut write what comes in my head and everybody's head is unique."
"Murders in the Swampland" is available online at Xlibris.com.
---
Local slayings recounted in "Murders in the Swampland"
Former reporter to discuss book Saturday at Brooksville Golf and Country Club
Written by Lara Bradburn
Article appeared in Hernando Today
Brooksville--In the winter of 1976, a young girl disappeared from the KOA campground west of Brooksville. A friend had seen the girl the night before with a young man named Billy Mansfield--a man who would later become the most notorious criminal in county history.
Over the course of four years, three other women linked to Mansfield would disappear in the night. Witnesses would later recall hearing the screams of women emanating from the woods of Weeki Wachee.
Years later, police would dig up the bodies of four women who died at the hand of Mansfield.
It was the end of innocence for this sleepy, rural county of Hernando. Mansfield had stolen its small town security.
"Billy Mansfield didn't get caught in Florida. He got caught in California where he killed another girl," explained former crime reporter and author Patty Shipp Lieb. "It was during another man's trial where he mentioned Billy Mansfield burying bodies in his backyard. That's when they started looking for bodies. It was 1981."
"The scary thing is," Lieb added," he could get out soon. He's already been up for parole."
The years since have not dulled the gruesomeness of Mansfield's killing spree, which seemed to set off a barrage of bizarre killings in and around Hernando County. Nor has time dulled the public's fascination with them.
As a crime reporter, Lieb was able to follow many of these cases first hand, becoming intimately familiar with the cases and those involved. Her experiences led Lieb to record her impressions in the criminal anthology, "Murders in the Swampland."
Those who remember the crimes and newcomers interested in learning about the region's tainted history can hear Lieb recount the tales during Saturday's author luncheon at the Brooksville Gold and Country Club.
The noonday event is hosted by the Spring Hill Service League and the United Way of Hernando County. Tickets are $20, which includes lunch and a chance for door prizes.
Many local residences will remember Lieb as a reporter for the Daily Sun-Journal and the Suncoast News. When ot working the local crime beat, Lieb would put her experiences to work by publishing stories in national detective magazines. That, in turn, led to publishing the book.
There are 17 cases in all contained in this book. Some stories were uncovered first hand. Others had to be painstakingly knitted together by combing through court documents and police files.
But all of them are true. All of them terribly grizzly. All of them ripped from the front page headlines of area newspapers.
Besides Mansfield, there is a story of John Barrett who killed four people in a murder-for-hire scheme that went awry. Barrett was presumably hired by Dorsey Sanders Jr. To kill his former wife Joanne.
As he waited for her to arrive home, four other men haplessly wondered into the wrong place at the wrong time. He killed the all, never reaching his original target.
Lieb said it was the most interesting case she had covered as a reporter.
"Before Joanne came home, he got tired of waiting for her and left," Lieb said. "Her son, dowries III, was convicted of conspiracy. Sanders former husband was tried and acquitted. (Accomplice) Scott Burnside fled to the Christmas Islands. He was brought home and convicted.
"John Barrett was sentenced to death," Lieb said. "He's the one who killed the four meant, very brutally, I might add."
Other stories recount the killing of Father Jon, the Episcopal priest in Brooksville who was beaten to death in 1979 during a homosexual encounter, and the mother and her two daughters who were killed during a vacation to Tampa. Their bodies were found in 1989 tied to concrete blocks and floating in Tampa Bay.
---
Book's Introduction to "Murders in the Swampland"
By Patty Shipp Lieb
Covering crime was new to me when I moved to Florida's west coast and started working for the Daily Sun-Journal.
For a couple years prior to giving up the north for the Sunshine State, I wrote for The Daily Journal in Kankakee, Illinois. Before that, I was a co-editor/co-publisher of a literary magazine, wrote feature stories and a newspaper column about children, and had stories and poetry published here and there. That was it. Zip. A far cry from crime.
I had been living in Florida for three weeks when I returned to my apartment after a photography job interview and noticed the light blinking on my telephone answering machine. That is when I got the most rewarding call of my career as a journalist.
The recorded voice was that of Ken Melton, a man I didn't know but one who would become my boss and friend.
Ken was editor of the Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, the Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
Ken was editor of the Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, the Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
The memories of working at the Daily Sun-Journal are lasting. Daily briefings in Sergeant "B" Frank Bierwiler's office were nearly always fascinating. Sergeant B and some of the five reporters from local medias would usually come out with jokes or funny remarks that would bring humor to the morning. We sat in Sergeant B's office and read sheriff reports, sometimes with a chuckle, repeating aloud and commenting about off-the-wall incidents, like somebody picking mushrooms out of cow manure with the intentions of boiling them and drinking the juice to get high. But there were many reports far from the light side.
While a lot of incidents reported as criminal seemed somewhat ridiculous, the amount of hard crime in the small county was inconceivable. Recently, some of the former Daily Sun-Journal staff gathered on Ken's patio to talk about the old days. He said that when he first arrived at the Daily Sun-Journal from a newspaper in the north, he was told Brooksville was a "lousy news town," a place where nothing ever happened. In the early-to-mid 1980s the county's population stayed pretty much at 20,000. "You used to really have to concentrate to find this place," Ken said, jokingly, of the area some 55 or so miles north of Tampa.
"Then bodies were being dug up in Billy Mansfield's back yard. I thought, 'My God!' Come to find out, Billy would take these girls home, rape them, kill them, and bury them in his mother's back yard. They (family) talked about hearing people screaming back there. Of course, nobody ever did anything. They'd say, 'Oh, that's just Billy.' It's amazing to me how his family didn't turn him in. I don't think there was any question whether they knew what was going on. It was like they thought: 'He's just killing somebody in the back yard--don't worry about it.' Mansfield was kind-of scary, like Charles Manson."
In an unrelated incident a few years later, four men showed up at a house for various reasons at different times and were murdered. One man, later convicted of the crime, ran off to a far-away island in the South Pacific. A couple years later, detectives followed his mother when she went to visit her son. "Now why would a killer have his mother fly in for a visit, as if he weren't being hunted anymore?" Putting murder aside, some wild happenings in the county covered everything from a horse drinking too much wine to a man attempting to drown his wife in the waterbed because he didn't like her new hairdo. And there was the time, during one of the jailbreaks at the new jail, when a couple prisoners actually kicked a hole in the jail wall and escaped through it. Laughing, Ken said, "Didn't they consider when they were building the jail that there might be people locked in who want out?"
Ken recalled hilarious happenings occurred in the old days, too. Deputies in cruisers were chasing a car and the driver got away. When cops found him a little later, after he had smashed up his car, he was beside a garbage bin on the parking lot at a convenicence store having sex with a woman he had just met. "It is the funniest story I've ever heard and it happened here."
The man got away from officers again. "I think the cops must have been laughing so hard that night they couldn't even catch the guy. Now what are the odds a man would meet a woman who would do that," he said, laughing.
"They told me Brooksville was a lousy news town. Then they started digging up bodies in Billy Mansfield's yard and another guy got beat to death with a rock--then all hell broke loose. Brooksville was no longer a sleepy little town."
In this book, I am sharing with you some of the criminal acts that have occurred in Central Florida's once far-removed swampland adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. The "swamp" collection also includes extensive accounts of lawmen and their search for clues in one of the most horrific cases in Tampa Bay history after the boater's sighting led to the discovery of the bodies of a mother and her two teenage daughters weighted with concrete blocks and floating in the bay.
As well as covering most of these murders for the Daily Sun Journal, I wrote accounts of the cases for the various true-crime magazines over a 10-year-period. In some stories, the names of witnesses and defendants' families have been changed; some have not. Several cases in this collection occurred before and after my tender with the newspaper. But they are of crimes that still haunt folks who remember. Be forewarned, some details herewith are gruesome.
I used literary license in writing these stories. Some quotes are assumed, as nobody really knows what was said during the crimes. Many quotes were taken directly from court records, including police reports, depositions, confessions, and trials. The happenings and moods are as close to truth as I could detect while studding the cases.
This is a review from theCitrus County Chronicle (Florida) written by
Chris Van Ormer"Murders in the Swampland"
Many people move to the Nature Coast knowing little about the region.
Certainly, they've been enticed by the climate and the natural beauty of the countryside, the Gulf of Mexico and the lower cost of living. Yes, the Nature Coast is an attractive place.
What almost no newcomer to the region does is check the crime files. Perhaps the newcomer will look up the statistics and see fewer hard crimes here than in the place they are leaving and be reassured. However, a higher crime rate reflects a larger population than that of the Nature Coast. And statistics never put a face to crime.
Putting a face on big crimes in the Nature Coast is what Patty Shipp (Lieb) has
done in her book, "Murders in the Swampland." She chronicles 17 murder cases
from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. Some of these cases Shipp covered while
she was the crime reporter for the Sun_Journal in Brooksville, from 1987 until
the newspaper shut down in 1991.
Shipp mentions her editor, Ken Melton, who now works for a sister newspaper of the Citrus County Chronicle, and credits Melton with encouraging her to publish her book.
Each story could be fiction, if the facts and characters were not so real. The scenes of murders, the roads traveled by the murderers and the lawmen who caught them exist. Many of the lawmen are still at work and are well known the the communities. Most of the crimes are set in Heranado County, but adjacent counties figure in as well.
Each story has a horrible uniqueness, but all the murders are amateurs, even the serial killers detailed in the book. Many mistakes are made that lead the lawmen to the killers. It is refreshing to see the entire crime put into one document, rather than revealed in the installments of newspaper reports.
These stories read like accounts in detective magazines, for which many of them were written. Thuse the reader learns about the serial killer, Billy Mansfield, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s picked up young women hitchhikers on U.S. 19, took them back to his mother's trailer in Weeki Wachee for some hours of rape and torture before murdering them and burying them in the back yard. I have lived near Weeki Wachee for more than seven years, I had never heard about the Mansfield murders.
">What is unusual about those murders and several others in the book is that so
many people at the time knew about them and said nothing. Indeed, the sheriff
said he would have to build a wing on the jail to detain all the people who had
withheld evidence about Mansfield's crimes. But those folks knew about the
murders after the fact.
A more surprising crime happened Aug 3, 1990, in Floral City, when many people were aware of the plot to murder Joanne Sanders. The gang at a car repair business in melrose would get together and talk about how it should be done, priming the murder-to-be, John Barrett.
">This case was perhaps the most bungled of the 17 in the book, because Sanders
never got murdered at all. But four m,en who entered her house before she did
were killed, while Barrett was waiting for her.
Barrett was gone when Sanders came home and found the bodies. One thing this story does not tell the reader is why Barrett left before Sanders came home. Perhaps he lost his nerve, or perhaps he thought of something else to do.
A striking similarity in may of these cases is the randomness of the violence. Many of the victims were not safe in the security of their own homes, where the killer broke in through the screen door in the back or just knocked on the front door and asked to use the phone or bathroom.
In the case of the serial killer Mike Kaprat, the Granny Killer of Spring Hill, who murdered several elderly women between August and October in 1993, some of the victims had one thing in common--they had written checks to the same handyman who was Kaprat's relative whom Kaprat occasionally worked for as a helper.
Kaprat's motive was hard to determine. He would break in, rape and torture the elderly female victim, tied her to her bed, then set fire to it. When the law enforcers picked him up, Kaprat expressed loathing for the crime. Although Kaprat was an odious person, likely on one loathed him as much as he hated himself. Kaprat was tried, convicted and sentenced to the electric chair, but never made it to "Ol' Sparky." He was murdered by a fellow inmate. However these were not all acts by strangers. Murders killed friends, relatives and spouses. They killed for money, for a car, for a tire, for a rock of cocaine or for the thrill of it.
The reader gains a heightened sense of paranoia, that at any moment a knock at the door or a trip to the kitchen can mean death. All of these cases really happened, in a neighborhood near yours or even next door.
Shipp (Patricia Shipp Lieb) is now a freelance writer.
Chris Van Ormer is a desk editor at the Chronicle.
---
Writer visits McNairy County
By Micah Smith
From the Independent Appeal
Selmer, TN
Writer visits McNairy County
Patricia Shipp Lieb recently published her true crime book under her maiden name, Patty Shipp, after spending many years in the writing business as a journalist.
style="color:#990000;">"Murders in the Swampland" contains 17 true crime stories that took place in the
Brooksville, FL, area while Lieb was a reporter for the Daily
Sun-Journal. The stories are sometimes gruesome and shocking, especially
since they are all based on fact.
">
Her stories of events that include serial killers, kidnapping, murders and murders for hire show a blend of styles.
They are written in a journalistic style, which brings the reality of the crimes home, but they also have the narrative approach of a work of fiction to add an emotional edge to the horror of many of the stories.
Lieb also mixes in her own notes on some of the cases and ends the book with a series of cop logs relating humorous briefs of events that happened into he area.
"I had a regular beat and at night I had time to go to the library and research the records for police stories at the courthouse," said Lieb. "All the information in her is from reading court depositions and talking to police officers, public attorneys and prosecutors. I had a lot of friends in the county so it was easy to just call them."
Lieb is an experienced writer, she freelances for several papers and magazines, has worked full-time at several papers in Illinois and Florida and has published several collections of poems including Captured and Catholics and Publics.
Lieb recently quit her job working for the Suncoast News in New Port Richey, FL, to come to Selmer and stay with her parents, Walter and Rachel Reeves.
"My parents were both sick," related Lieb. "Pop had prostate cancer. They did surgery on that and it appears he is clear. Mother has another biopsy so I am here indefinitely."
Lieb said her parents decided to move to Selmer in 1989 because they have numerous relatives wo already live in the area.
Lieb said she is planning to not take another full-time job to focus on other writing projects. "I'm gonna get back into it and now I don't plan to get another job," said Lieb. "I'm glad I'm going to free my mind up to do what I want to with my writing."
She also had freelanced for Vocational Biographies based in Sauk Centre, MN. The magazine is published seven times a year and is used in places such as vocational centers, high schools, libraries and online to help people decide what career path to follow. Lieb said that the magazine focuses on different individuals in every possible vocation imaginable. It describes a person's career path, what all the tasks of their job are, how they chose the career, other jobs they have had and advantages and disadvantages of the job.
In Selmer, Lieb has written a biography on Christina Hawkins, who works for home Health and one on Smiley's Towing. She is planning to do another on a car salesman and three doctors.
Another of life's former projects is an online magazine titled Write on Magazine, founded and published by Lieb and friend Evelyn Manak. It includes columns, contests, information and writings of many styles by all different levels of writers from novices to professionals.
Lieb shows her support for writers in general in describing her own writing style.
In creative writing, I let my mind do the writing and I think that's what other people do too," said Lieb. "So I guess everybody's style would be different. I jut write what comes in my head and everybody's head is unique."
"Murders in the Swampland" is available online at Xlibris.com.
---
Local slayings recounted in "Murders in the Swampland"
Former reporter to discuss book Saturday at Brooksville Golf and Country Club
Written by Lara Bradburn
Article appeared in Hernando Today
Brooksville--In the winter of 1976, a young girl disappeared from the KOA campground west of Brooksville. A friend had seen the girl the night before with a young man named Billy Mansfield--a man who would later become the most notorious criminal in county history.
Over the course of four years, three other women linked to Mansfield would disappear in the night. Witnesses would later recall hearing the screams of women emanating from the woods of Weeki Wachee.
Years later, police would dig up the bodies of four women who died at the hand of Mansfield.
It was the end of innocence for this sleepy, rural county of Hernando. Mansfield had stolen its small town security.
"Billy Mansfield didn't get caught in Florida. He got caught in California where he killed another girl," explained former crime reporter and author Patty Shipp Lieb. "It was during another man's trial where he mentioned Billy Mansfield burying bodies in his backyard. That's when they started looking for bodies. It was 1981."
"The scary thing is," Lieb added," he could get out soon. He's already been up for parole."
The years since have not dulled the gruesomeness of Mansfield's killing spree, which seemed to set off a barrage of bizarre killings in and around Hernando County. Nor has time dulled the public's fascination with them.
As a crime reporter, Lieb was able to follow many of these cases first hand, becoming intimately familiar with the cases and those involved. Her experiences led Lieb to record her impressions in the criminal anthology, "Murders in the Swampland."
Those who remember the crimes and newcomers interested in learning about the region's tainted history can hear Lieb recount the tales during Saturday's author luncheon at the Brooksville Gold and Country Club.
The noonday event is hosted by the Spring Hill Service League and the United Way of Hernando County. Tickets are $20, which includes lunch and a chance for door prizes.
Many local residences will remember Lieb as a reporter for the Daily Sun-Journal and the Suncoast News. When ot working the local crime beat, Lieb would put her experiences to work by publishing stories in national detective magazines. That, in turn, led to publishing the book.
There are 17 cases in all contained in this book. Some stories were uncovered first hand. Others had to be painstakingly knitted together by combing through court documents and police files.
But all of them are true. All of them terribly grizzly. All of them ripped from the front page headlines of area newspapers.
Besides Mansfield, there is a story of John Barrett who killed four people in a murder-for-hire scheme that went awry. Barrett was presumably hired by Dorsey Sanders Jr. To kill his former wife Joanne.
As he waited for her to arrive home, four other men haplessly wondered into the wrong place at the wrong time. He killed the all, never reaching his original target.
Lieb said it was the most interesting case she had covered as a reporter.
"Before Joanne came home, he got tired of waiting for her and left," Lieb said. "Her son, dowries III, was convicted of conspiracy. Sanders former husband was tried and acquitted. (Accomplice) Scott Burnside fled to the Christmas Islands. He was brought home and convicted.
"John Barrett was sentenced to death," Lieb said. "He's the one who killed the four meant, very brutally, I might add."
Other stories recount the killing of Father Jon, the Episcopal priest in Brooksville who was beaten to death in 1979 during a homosexual encounter, and the mother and her two daughters who were killed during a vacation to Tampa. Their bodies were found in 1989 tied to concrete blocks and floating in Tampa Bay.
---
Book's Introduction to "Murders in the Swampland"
By Patty Shipp Lieb
Covering crime was new to me when I moved to Florida's west coast and started working for the Daily Sun-Journal.
For a couple years prior to giving up the north for the Sunshine State, I wrote for The Daily Journal in Kankakee, Illinois. Before that, I was a co-editor/co-publisher of a literary magazine, wrote feature stories and a newspaper column about children, and had stories and poetry published here and there. That was it. Zip. A far cry from crime.
I had been living in Florida for three weeks when I returned to my apartment after a photography job interview and noticed the light blinking on my telephone answering machine. That is when I got the most rewarding call of my career as a journalist.
The recorded voice was that of Ken Melton, a man I didn't know but one who would become my boss and friend.
Ken was editor of the Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, the Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
Ken was editor of the Daily Sun-Journal and needed to replace his crime reporter who was leaving for a bigger newspaper in another county. A copy of my resume had crossed Ken's desk. Needless to say, I returned the call immediately.
I reported to Ken the following morning, was hired and remained with the newspaper for the next three-and-a-half years, until the newspaper went to a weekly and along with more than half the staff, I got the ax. Ken's eyes were teary when he said, "We're family here." On that sad day in 1991, the Daily Sun-Journal had started to fold--a process that would take a year to complete.
The memories of working at the Daily Sun-Journal are lasting. Daily briefings in Sergeant "B" Frank Bierwiler's office were nearly always fascinating. Sergeant B and some of the five reporters from local medias would usually come out with jokes or funny remarks that would bring humor to the morning. We sat in Sergeant B's office and read sheriff reports, sometimes with a chuckle, repeating aloud and commenting about off-the-wall incidents, like somebody picking mushrooms out of cow manure with the intentions of boiling them and drinking the juice to get high. But there were many reports far from the light side.
While a lot of incidents reported as criminal seemed somewhat ridiculous, the amount of hard crime in the small county was inconceivable. Recently, some of the former Daily Sun-Journal staff gathered on Ken's patio to talk about the old days. He said that when he first arrived at the Daily Sun-Journal from a newspaper in the north, he was told Brooksville was a "lousy news town," a place where nothing ever happened. In the early-to-mid 1980s the county's population stayed pretty much at 20,000. "You used to really have to concentrate to find this place," Ken said, jokingly, of the area some 55 or so miles north of Tampa.
"Then bodies were being dug up in Billy Mansfield's back yard. I thought, 'My God!' Come to find out, Billy would take these girls home, rape them, kill them, and bury them in his mother's back yard. They (family) talked about hearing people screaming back there. Of course, nobody ever did anything. They'd say, 'Oh, that's just Billy.' It's amazing to me how his family didn't turn him in. I don't think there was any question whether they knew what was going on. It was like they thought: 'He's just killing somebody in the back yard--don't worry about it.' Mansfield was kind-of scary, like Charles Manson."
In an unrelated incident a few years later, four men showed up at a house for various reasons at different times and were murdered. One man, later convicted of the crime, ran off to a far-away island in the South Pacific. A couple years later, detectives followed his mother when she went to visit her son. "Now why would a killer have his mother fly in for a visit, as if he weren't being hunted anymore?" Putting murder aside, some wild happenings in the county covered everything from a horse drinking too much wine to a man attempting to drown his wife in the waterbed because he didn't like her new hairdo. And there was the time, during one of the jailbreaks at the new jail, when a couple prisoners actually kicked a hole in the jail wall and escaped through it. Laughing, Ken said, "Didn't they consider when they were building the jail that there might be people locked in who want out?"
Ken recalled hilarious happenings occurred in the old days, too. Deputies in cruisers were chasing a car and the driver got away. When cops found him a little later, after he had smashed up his car, he was beside a garbage bin on the parking lot at a convenicence store having sex with a woman he had just met. "It is the funniest story I've ever heard and it happened here."
The man got away from officers again. "I think the cops must have been laughing so hard that night they couldn't even catch the guy. Now what are the odds a man would meet a woman who would do that," he said, laughing.
"They told me Brooksville was a lousy news town. Then they started digging up bodies in Billy Mansfield's yard and another guy got beat to death with a rock--then all hell broke loose. Brooksville was no longer a sleepy little town."
In this book, I am sharing with you some of the criminal acts that have occurred in Central Florida's once far-removed swampland adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico. The "swamp" collection also includes extensive accounts of lawmen and their search for clues in one of the most horrific cases in Tampa Bay history after the boater's sighting led to the discovery of the bodies of a mother and her two teenage daughters weighted with concrete blocks and floating in the bay.
As well as covering most of these murders for the Daily Sun Journal, I wrote accounts of the cases for the various true-crime magazines over a 10-year-period. In some stories, the names of witnesses and defendants' families have been changed; some have not. Several cases in this collection occurred before and after my tender with the newspaper. But they are of crimes that still haunt folks who remember. Be forewarned, some details herewith are gruesome.
I used literary license in writing these stories. Some quotes are assumed, as nobody really knows what was said during the crimes. Many quotes were taken directly from court records, including police reports, depositions, confessions, and trials. The happenings and moods are as close to truth as I could detect while studding the cases.
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Monday, June 12, 2006
Daily Journal, Kankakee, IL book review for "Bridged by Love"
Historical novel good, fast read for summer afternoon
"Bridged by Love'
by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Reviewed by Bonnie Flouhouse
St, Anne, IL
Patricia Shipp Lieb's "Bridged by Love" is a historical novel set in Texarkana in the late 1880s. It's the story of two women--Shanna (a young Indian woman trying to evade ruthless white men) and Kathryn (a storng white woman willing to take on any opponent). Several people, but most importantly an infant, tie the women's lives.
The fast plot is at times too coincidental, but it ensnares the reader in the story of these women. To build suspense, the author presents segments of one character's story, stops at a crucial moment, and then moves to the other character's struggles.
Because the only way to connect Shanna and Kathryn is to show how several men are involed in their lives, several episodes involved only these men. Liberal doses of danger, treachery, intrigue, and romance fill the book.
Eventually Lieb untangles everyone and brings closure to the storylines. Numerous predictable stock characters add to the local color of the book: the slick swindler, the traveling prostitute, the ignorant guy who'll do anything for a few coins, the prejuciced business owner, the liberal man who thinks Indians are mistreated, the fiercely strong pioneer woman, the decent man who patiently waits for his chance at love, and displaced Indians. Add a ruthless tavern owner and a young man willing to face all foes for the woman he loves, and the character list is complete.
In an attempt to capture the aura and lifestyles of a past time, Lieb has crowded lost of characters and details into her book. But over all, "Bridged by Love" is a fast read good for a summer afternoon's enjoyment.
Bridged By Love by Patricia Shipp Lieb
Published Amazon.com
Description: Kathryn, a backwoods woman, and the young Indian girl, Shanna, have a connection: love for an infant. Set in about 1885, give or take, on the borders of Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, with travels to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), complex characters tangled with kidnapping, murder and romance add a height of tension to this suspenseful telling of the difficult roads traveled between two women bridged by love.
Copyright 2006 (c) Patricia Shipp Lieb
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