Gary Provost - How to Write & Sell True Crime

A week before Christmas 1982, I got a phone call from Pat Piscitelli, an attorney in my home state of Massachusetts. He had gotten my name from a mutual friend. Piscitelli had been the lawyer for Anne Capute, a nurse who, in 1980, had been accused of deliberately overdosing a patient with morphine, and had been tried for first-degree murder. The case had gotten reams of local publicity and a fair amount of national notice, so attorney Piscitelli was confident that someone would publish a book about it. He wanted me to write that book.

At the time I was something less than the perfect person to write a true crime book. I had written books for children, books for writers, and a romance. I had also published about a thousand shorter piecesarticles, columns and stories. I had written about roller skating, glass painting, music making and igloo building, but not a word about criminals, police, courts, trials, lawyers, prisons, convicts, violence or bloodshed.

So I did the only sensible thingI agreed to write the book. I reasoned that nobody has experience at anything until he does it for the first time. And, more to the point, Ive always felt that a good writer can write well about anything that excites him. And I had gotten excited when Piscitelli told me about the Capute case. I saw that it had many of the elements of a compelling novel. There was a sympathetic central character in Anne, the lowly LPN who was being crucified by the hospital and the legal establishment. There was a knight in shining armor, in Piscitelli, the well-known lawyer who embraced the case even though Anne couldnt possibly pay his fee. There was formidable opposition in the cool and competent nursing supervisor who accused Anne; and in the cunning and ambitious district attorney who prosecuted her. There was domestic strife because Annes husband was less supportive than she would have liked, and Annes teenaged daughters were emotionally wounded in the crossfire of publicity about their mother, the murderer. There were side stories, like the friend who shot himself dead in Annes house during the trial while Annes daughter slept in another room. And there was a happy ending, because Anne was acquitted of the charges.

Okay, so I had never written a true crime before. It didnt matter. I recognized a good story when I saw one.

So I wrote the book, Fatal Dosage, and it was published by Bantam Books in 1985. Later, I sold the movie rights to a producer named Jack Farren, and in October 1988, I was able to gather with fifty friends and, for the first time, watch something Id written come to life on the screen. My book had become the CBS television movie, Fatal Judgment, starring Patty Duke and Tom Conti. Without any special training in true crime writing I had become a true crime writer.

I hadnt switched careers. And I hadnt abandoned the other kinds of writing that I love. Since Fatal Dosage I have written more childrens books, more books for writers, a sports book, and more magazine articles.

But I have also written three more true crime books, and Ill give you a quick rundown on them, as well as my current true crime project, now, because Ill be referring to them often in this book.

Finder: The True Story of a Private Investigator (with Marilyn Greene, Crown hardcover, 1988; Pocket Books softcover, 1990) is the true story of Marilyn Greene of Schenectady, New York, a private eye who specializes in missing persons cases. In fact, she is the nations leading finder of missing persons. I wrote this book about her career and her life in the first person, from Marilyns point of view. Ninety percent of my research for the book was interviews with Marilyn Greene.

Across the Border: The True Story of the Satanic Cult Killings in Matamoros, Mexico (Pocket Books softcover, 1989) begins with the disappearance of Mark Kilroy. Mark was a college student on spring break in Brownsville, Texas. He went to Matamoros, Mexico, across the border, where he was kidnapped, ritually murdered, and mutilated by a satanic drug cult led by Adolfo Constanzo. When Marks body was discovered, so were the bodies of twelve other victims. My book covers the investigation.

Without Mercy: The True Story of the First Woman From South Florida to Be Sentenced to the Electric Chair (Pocket, 1990) is the story of Dee Casteel. Dee, an alcoholic who was regarded by some as the nicest person you could ever want to meet, worked as a waitress at a south Florida pancake house. She helped arrange for the murder of the restaurants owner and his mother. For this, she and three men were sentenced to die in the electric chair.