Heather Murphy’s NY Times story has all the ingredients for my first novel:
A murder and a mystery.
Hiking around Lake Tahoe.
Cold cases in colder climates.
Software sleuths using genetic genealogy.
Oh, and let’s not forget, “Wading through infidelities and pornography.”
Also: “Psychics!”
The title?
How Volunteer Sleuths Identified a Hiker and Her Killer After 36 Years
<Note to self: Come up with a shorter, catchier title.>
The hook?
Here are the first few paragraphs of today’s Times piece:
One could not select a more serene location for a homicide. On July 17, 1982, a woman’s body was found in a meadow in the mountains that run along the border between California and Nevada, not far from Lake Tahoe.
Footprints revealed that she and her killer had strolled half a mile or so from the road to an area known as Sheep’s Flat. It appeared that she was seated on a log when she was shot in the back of the head.
“I found that unusual,” said Len Iljana, who was a deputy at the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office at the time.
For years, he and his colleagues tried to identify the woman. They circulated news releases that stated she was in her 20s or 30s, five and a half feet tall with hazel eyes and brown hair, which she wore in a bun at the time of her death. The quality of the dental work suggested she might be European. Her last meal was a salad. None of that led anywhere.
The team became desperate enough to explore leads from psychics, he said.
On Tuesday, more than 36 years after she died, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office announced her name: Mary Edith Silvani, born Sept. 29, 1948. Detectives also believe they now know who killed her.
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If you, like me, are a sucker for a good murder mystery that combines an Everyman hero with cutting edge technology and a serene setting in heavily forested terrain, then you can find out more – including whodunit – here. And if not? Well, then I guess you are welcome to go take a hike!
But if you do happen to come up with that catchy title? Please be sure to let me know. I’ll mention you in the acknowledgements, I promise.
C’mon people, what am I paying you for here!?