I've always thought secrets - the important ones - can only be kept for so long.
I thought that when a killer preyed on eleven women in Southeastern Massachusetts in 1988. I was convinced that secret would gnaw at someone's soul, that no one could live with the darkness.
I was wrong.
The New Bedford Highway Serial Killer has not been identified yet. How can that be? How can the killer exist in this close-knit and good community, where families are close, where life roots are deep?
I thought that was the only secret being kept when I wrote Shallow Graves.
I was wrong.
In my latest book, The Ghost, I examine the decades-long search for Donald Webb, a low-level mobster who lived in New Bedford and was wanted for killing a Pennsylvania police chief in 1980. How could he apparently disappear? How does that happen? How can someone keep his whereabouts a secret?
It should give us all pause. How many other secrets are being held and how many people are hurt by them? How many families are still waiting for answers? How many have been denied justice?
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