It Rubs The Lotion
If you pay close attention you might notice I’m showing a clip from the classic “It Rubs the Lotion on Its Skin” sequence for the crime fiction movie The Silence of the Lambs ─ yet I’m classifying the post as True Crime.
How can crime fiction be true crime?
This is an example of crime fiction intersecting with true crime.
During the 1990s I had carte blanche at Philly P.D.’s Homicide Division and its S.I.U. ─ that’s the Special Investigation Unit that tracks down serial killers and solves cold cases. I was writing up a lotta murder cases in Philly at that time and serial killer Gary Heidnik popped up.
A great story ─ so I queried the editor at True Detective magazine to get the okay to write it up. But she rejected my query.
What the fuck?
Rose Mandelsberg was the editor. She discovered me a couple years earlier and nurtured me. If not for her, who knows?
There were times when she almost begged me for copy because they were short in a particular month. And I’d always dig something up, under deadline, and she’d publish my story under a different byline to make it look like one person wasn’t writing multiple stories in the same issue.
I wanted that story. So I did some digging and found out that Thomas Harris used Gary Heidnik as his model for Buffalo Bill in his best seller The Silence of the Lambs – which is where the movie came from.
To this day I don’t know if I was the first person to find out, or not, but don’t give a shit. All I know is I found out.
The movie came out and was a blockbuster. So I called Rose, passed along the info, and she gave me a verbal commitment to write the story. Which I did, and True Detective published it a month later ─ but Rose didn’t give me the cover story.
I don’t want to spoil the plot because I plan to write about Gary Heidnik soon. But suffice it to say that he kidnapped women and kept them in a pit in his basement. He filled the pit halfway with water and if one of his hostages misbehaved, he hooked up battery cables and zapped her.
The Gary Heidnik story is coming soon ─ as soon as I can dig up my notes from almost thirty years ago.
I’m America’s Best Crime Writer – Barry Bowe – & I approve this message.
My first book – BORN TO BE WILD – Published in 1992 – Still selling on Amazon & Kindle. A true story about certain members of the Warlocks motorcycle gang.
The story took 21 years to play out – many twists & turns – an amalgam of SONS OF ANARCHY & BREAKING BAD – but these outlaw bikers make the SONS look like Cub Scouts.
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