Litchfield (Paperback or Softback)

Litchfield

A Town Gripped by Terror

May 8, 1993: In the Central Illinois town of Litchfield, the nude, headless body of a woman is discovered in a pile of burning brush. Same time, same campground, several people take note of a mysterious red van. Seventy miles away, in St. Louis, a 35-year-old bank teller, Lynne Matchem-Thomas, is reported missing and presumed dead. Sixteen months pass before Illinois homicide investigators piece together the puzzle of events that connect the two cases.

With the body identified, a new investigation begins: the search for the killer. Lynne's husband, Curtis, soon finds himself in the crosshairs of scrutiny by detectives in two states. But Curtis, the last known person to see his wife alive, has been despondent over her disappearance-or was that an act? The evidence against Curtis is all circumstantial except for the word of a jilted girlfriend who claims he confessed the murder to her.

Throw in a big city defense lawyer, a small town prosecutor, and a droll cast of real-life characters, and you've got one hell of a story. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, Litchfield is a psychological study of a brutal murder and its aftermath.

Wm. Stage has been an ambulance driver, soldier, public health officer, process server, and newspaper columnist. Orphaned at birth, he grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and joined the army in 1969 to escape probation. In 1978, he landed in St. Louis, recruited by the CDC as an investigator working in the St. Louis City STD Clinic. The author of 16 books, Litchfield: A Strange & Twisted Saga of Murder in the Midwest, was his third, first published in 1998.