Crime&Stuff

Today’s quiz: After 9/11, what was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil? You know, the one that killed more people than any other? That’s right, Oklahoma City. Don’t you feel people have kind of forgotten about that one?

In any case, we talk about Tim McVeigh the twisted white supremacist whose bomb killed 168 people, including 19 young children in a day care center in 1995, including what led him to it and what happened after.

Episode 21. You never know what we’re going to say. Neither do we.

Ah, bucolic small-town life, where everything is wonderful. NOT. More like, where everything can be a real cluster f***. Take Franconia, New Hampshire, in 2007 for instance. Mix in a messed-up kid, a hard-ass cop and a vigilante gun-nut bystander and the only outcome there’s going to be is trouble. On May 11, 2007, Like Kenney shot Franconia police Cpl. Bruce McKay, then ran him over, at a traffic stop after McKay pepper-sprayed him. Bystander Greg Floyd then fatally shot Kenney with McKay’s gun.

And Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire’s attorney general at the time, called Floyd a hero and, the next day, let him off without an investigation or any charges.

But that’s only the beginning of the story that inspired Maureen’s first mystery novel Cold Hard News.

Join us for Episode 20!

In a VERY SPECIAL episode, we feature the April 2 Noir at the Bar event, in which a dozen members of the Maine Crime Writers blog and some guest speakers read (brief!) passages from their work. The Maine Crime Writers blog is a loose group of published mystery and crime writers who live in, and often write about, Maine. The genres run the gamut from cozy to hard-boiled — a little something for everyone. There may even be some lobsters and lighthouses.

Those who read at the event were Sandra Neely, Lea Wait, Maureen Milliken, Jen Blood, Vaughn Hardacker, EJ Fechenda, Brenda Buchanan, Richard Cass, Bruce Robert Coffin, Brendan Rielly, James Hayman and Chris Holm.

It’s a fast-paced fun-filled crazy quilt of mystery and crime! And sure, it may sound like you’re in a bar, but that’s because that’s where we were. So pop open a cold one, sit back and enjoy!

Don’t worry, we also have our weekly recommendations feature and stuff.

Logan Marr was too young to understand why the state of Maine kept taking her away from her mother. Her mother, Christy Baker, didn’t really understand either. Baker did everything she was asked, but a tangle of poverty, culture and, most importantly, a bureaucracy that valued its  own prejudices over the well-being of a child and her mother, won out. Logan Marr died at the age of 5 at the hands of a foster mother who, if state rules were followed, shouldn’t have had her in the first place. She and her mom never had a chance.

Also, on Episode 18, we try not to sound dumber than we ever have before in a chaotic Ask a Lawyer. At least we have some good recommendations! Join us.

Martha Moxley was bludgeoned to death, then stabbed through the neck with the broken end of a golf club when she was 15. If it had happened in 2015, an arrest probably would have been made almost immediately. But it happened in 1975 in an exclusive gated neighborhood in Connecticut and the man finally convicted in 2002 — Michael Skakel — came from a rich, powerful family that did everything it could to make sure police couldn’t do their jobs. And now, 15 years after his conviction, his money and relationship to the Kennedy family means the legal acrobatics JUST. WON’T. STOP. We take you through the nigh of October 30, 1975, and what happened in the ensuing decades, right up to now, as the Connecticut Supreme Court waits to consider a motion to appeal Skakel’s conviction, which it upheld in December.

It’s a story of wealth, power, privilege, kow-towing cops and warring writers. It’s a story of two families, one that had it together and another that was falling apart. Mostly, though, it’s the story of a teenage girl who died for no good reason, and the failure of the system to do something about it for a long, long time.

Join us for Episode 17!