TRUE CRIME INK
TRUE CRIME AUTHOR'S FORUM

This update's author is Dave Distel
who with his wife Lynn Distel wrote
"The Sweater Letter".

The Sweater Letter
By Dave Distel with Lynn Distel
(Published 2002 by iUniverse.com, price 18.95 US, 352 pp)

Lynn and I were sitting at our kitchen table in San Diego drinking coffee one morning when
I heard her murmur almost imperceptibly. She was reading the Ontonagon Herald, the
weekly newspaper from her hometown in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She slid it across the table
and pointed to a story.

A young wife and mother had died in a hunting accident on the outskirts of town on the final
weekend of the deer season.

Almost a year later, we were sitting at a different kitchen table. This one was at our house in
Ontonagon. Beth Paczesny, a youthful prosecuting attorney, was sitting with us. A murder trial
was to start the next morning.

Paczesny’s job was to prove that the hunting accident had, in fact, been a homicide.

In the intervening months, one of the most fascinating investigations imaginable had cast
a totally different light on what happened in the snow-patched U.P. woods on that Sunday
afternoon. It had more twists and turns than a giant slalom. Paczesny told us story after
story and all were followed by gasps of amazement. 

We had to write this story. Understand that I was a writer and editor for the Los Angeles Times
for 23 years, but I was a sportswriter! This was far from fun and games, a polar opposite, in fact.

Lynn wondered out loud if I could do it. The answer was easy. This story was so intriguing and
compelling that all I had to do, basically, was stay out of the way. Let the story unravel
itself, just as the investigation had unraveled the crime.

We were very fortunate that Bob Ball, a detective sergeant with the Michigan State Police,
was willing to spend hours with us rehashing this amazing investigation. He was the hero
of the piece. He had suspicions from the start and those suspicions, in his mind, were
confirmed when a bizarre letter—hence the title—was found packed in a box of sweaters.

With little to go on but instinct, he and his colleagues spent months putting together
a case. This was the northwoods—Anatomy of a Murder country—where weather conditions
can be horrific and resources much more primitive than in metropolitan areas. There will never
be a CSI: U.P. That was all part of the challenge and the charm.

Tediously and relentlessly Ball and Co. worked to assemble enough evidence to prove, to
their satisfaction at least, that the hunting season had, indeed, been a cloak for murder. And then
Paczesny, all of 26 at the time, took it to trial against Tom Casselman, a tenacious defense attorney
voted the best in the Upper Peninsula by his peers. Now jurors had to be convinced.

I don’t really want to spoil the beginning or the end, or all that’s in between, but it’s
all there in “The Sweater Letter.”

My telephone rang not long after the book was released and the caller was Roy Gotham,
the Circuit Court judge who presided over the trial: “Dave,” he said, “this is an absolute
must read for anyone interested in or, particularly, involved in the criminal justice
system. It really tells you how things can work in the real world.”

For more information and/or ordering, please go to www.sweaterletter.com.

“The Sweater Letter” is also available at BarnesandNoble.com as well as directly from
publisher iUniverse.com’s online bookstore. In early 2003, it will be available in bookstores as well.

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Authors! Why not put your 2 cents in as well? If you have
written a current title and wish to publicize it here email us
for details at:
stringer@truecrimeink.com
 

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Previous Author Reviews

Loss of Faith by Detective Michael L. Varnado and D. P. Smith
 

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