Melissa G. Moore and Michele Matrisciani are the authors of the new book Killer in the Family: The Hidden Costs of Loving Someone the World Hates.
Q: Why did you decide to write Killer in the Family?
Michele: By the time Melissa approached me to collaborate on the book, she had already had a publisher for the concept. What drew me to help bring the book to life was Melissa’s passion for extending the dialogue she had become trusted for: a daughter of a killer seeking to build a life in the wake of shame, trauma, and secrecy.
By inviting other families to share their own experiences, I believed the book could provide a much fuller, deeper picture of how people grapple with the grief and the loss of a familial relationship alongside mourning the lives of those lost.
Even those without a killer in the family could relate to the raw human emotion and the insights and healing that might come out of the thought experiment of What would I do? How would I feel? Who would I be after such a tragedy?
As a publishing professional focused on the nonfiction space, I have always been drawn to the true stories of people, especially when they touch upon relatable topics like resilience, rebuilding, and forgiveness. Killer in the Family is ripe with all of these and much more, and I believe it is less a voyeuristic look into true crime than an inspiration to overcome.
Melissa: I wanted to show what inside the family looks like when a killer is discovered. The most common question I get is "how did you not know?" This book shows how we all didn't know and beyond on how we live post-discovery.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
Michele: Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a family member connected to a well-known case, and each takes on a tone, structure, and theme as personal as the family itself. The same was true of the interviews, as no two unfolded in quite the same way.
For the Watts family, Melissa traveled to their home and spent several days living alongside them, looking at pictures, and accompanying them to the cemetery—a total immersion into life after their son, Chris, murdered his pregnant wife, Shanann, and their two daughters, making the Watts both family of the perpetrator and family of the victims.
For others, a series of Zoom calls was sufficient.
With Corban Bates, the brother of Magen Fieramusca, who murdered her best friend, Heidi Broussard, and kidnapped her newborn daughter, he and Melissa met for coffee, texted, talked on the phone, and shared documents by email.
Corban was open to sharing court documents, interviews he had with law enforcement and attorneys, and family history that helped the chapter become a layered exploration of a case that will enlighten many.
As a collaborator who has worked on many memoirs, I was surprised by how different these stories were from the narratives I have helped shape in the past. Most memoirists are reflecting on a defining period in their lives from some distance; even when the consequences remain, the experience itself has an ending.
These families are never really able to move forward in the same way because their stories do not remain in the past. They live within a society that has both a short-term and a long-term memory: short-term because a crime can become a fascination in the moment, and long-term because these cases can reenter the news cycle decades later.
A new crime is compared to an old one. A parole hearing takes place. A killer appeals for a retrial, gets married, or experiences another personal milestone that becomes public news. The family’s story is reopened, often without their participation or consent, and they are returned to a tragedy the rest of the world may have treated as a shiny new cultural object before moving on.
Melissa: What especially surprised me was the intensity of the online world surrounding these cases. There can be an almost insatiable hunger among online sleuths for another photograph, another detail, another family secret, anything that might provide a new clue or revelation.
For the families, those aren't pieces of a puzzle. They're pieces of their lives. That was something I wanted to capture in the book: what it feels like when your family memories, photographs, conversations, and even your grief become something the outside world wants to examine, dissect, and sometimes judge.
Q: The author James Renner said of the book, “These are the stories of the forgotten victims--the families that murderers leave behind.” What do you think of that description?
Michele: I was blown away when I saw this endorsement because he understood exactly what we hoped the book would accomplish.
We have always been mindful that telling the stories of perpetrators’ families—or exploring who these individuals were before they killed, through the eyes of those who loved or still love them—could be misunderstood as justifying or defending their crimes, or as somehow diminishing the victims. That was never our intention.
James Renner’s description recognizes that the devastation of murder extends outward, leaving behind another group of people whose grief, trauma, and loss are rarely acknowledged. I appreciated him lending his credibility to the subject and expressing the book’s purpose so clearly.
Melissa: I think that description is 100 percent true. I call the families of killers secondary victims because they experience a very particular kind of loss and grief. They grieve the identity of the person they thought they knew, while trying to reconcile that person with what they have now discovered.
Then there is everything that comes with the discovery. Their privacy can disappear overnight. There is the invasion of the media, the scrutiny from the public, and the judgment that can come simply because they are related to the person who committed the crime. Some lose jobs, friendships, relationships, and their sense of safety in their own communities.
While they didn't lose a life in the same way the victims' families did, they lost the life as it was. There is a before and an after. Their memories change. Their family history changes. Even their understanding of their own past can change.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
Michele: For those who are familiar with these cases, I hope they discover a dimension of the family relationships they didn’t know about or hadn’t considered.
Some of these crimes occurred before Melissa was even born, so I also hope readers learn about cases from 40 years ago and, in doing so, help honor the victims and ensure they are never forgotten.
Most of all, I hope readers come away with a deeper understanding of the families left behind and recognize that they, too, must live with grief, trauma, and consequences they did not create.
What has also emerged as a powerful “B” story in the book is a discussion of the evolution of media. From the early 1980s to now, the media has played a major role in shaping narratives, fueling divisiveness, and blurring the lines between privacy and public curiosity.
Melissa’s own role in media—and how she became a producer—is a captivating story that makes the point that sometimes, in order to fix something that is broken, you have to become part of it.
We have moved from a world of local news and glossy magazine headlines to one of armchair detectives producing and controlling their own content within a 24/7 news cycle. That makes the conversation about media more important than ever.
I hope readers will value Melissa’s insider perspective on how we arrived here—and where we should be headed when it comes to ethical coverage, compassion, and care for everyone touched by a crime.
Melissa: I hope readers come away looking at breaking crime stories differently and viewing speculation with more critical thinking. Most of all, I hope they see the family as innocent until proven guilty, rather than guilty until proven innocent. Families may truly have no idea what someone they love has done, and they deserve humanity before judgment.
Q: What are you working on now?
Michele: What I love about my job as a collaborator is that I’m able to fill the funnel with different authors, topics, voices, and services. I am rarely working in the same capacity from one project to the next.
Right now, I’m working on several books in spirituality, parenting, memoir, and hospitality—and even a policy-driven book that I believe will make headlines as we enter the next political cycle.
One day, I would love to finish my own memoir, but for now, I remain focused and invigorated by helping amazing authors bring their ideas to life and connect their work with traditional publishers.
Melissa: I’m currently helping a young woman in her 20s prepare to confront her father, who is in prison for murder, and ask him the question she has lived with for years: Where is her missing mother?
Her father is seriously ill, and if he knows what happened and where her mother is, those answers could die with him. I’m documenting her journey with a film crew as she searches for the truth and, hopefully, the chance to finally bring her mother home.
Q: Anything else we should know?
Michele: If you are a writer who is interested in book coaching, book proposal writing, developmental editing, manuscript evaluations, or ghostwriting, I’d love to help. michelem.net
Melissa: While Killer in the Family is a true crime book, it isn’t traditional true crime. It is an open diary into these families’ lives, shared with incredible trust and vulnerability. I hope readers will receive their stories with the same respect and empathy with which they were shared.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment