Dennis McDougal - In the Best of Families: The Anatomy of a True Tragedy

The journey through time and fact that a book represents is almost never a solo voyage. Coauthors may be as few as the patient spouse who trudges through the first draft without wincing, or the close friends and family who spot an inconsistency or a jarring phrase in the second, third or fifteenth revision. In fact, a book without acknowledgments is a book with a missing chapter.

My chapter of thank-yous for the help I had in writing In the Best of Families begins with the best of families: my remarkable wife and partner, Sharon McDougal; my unceasingly supportive parents, Carl and Lola McDougal; my wonderful, opinionated sister, Colleen Seliger; my brothers, Neal and Pat; my children, Jennifer, Amy, Kate and Fitz, who have taught me so very much about human nature.

Friends and professional peers who demonstrated their understanding of the unrelenting angst of the professional journalist/ author by never giving in to the impulse to hang up on me while I was whining: Pat Broeske, Bill Knoedelseder, Bryn Freedman, Katherine Lowrie, Julie Payne, Dorothy Korber, Paul Ciotti, Brian Zoccola, David Levinson, Larry Lynch, Kathy Cairns, Bob Sipchen, Steve Weinstein, John Horn, Tim Fall, Wayne Rosso, Jamie Masada, Richard Lewis, Laurie Pike, Daniela Wild, Jill Stewart, Corinne Lynch, Ray Richmond, Lisa Sonne, Mark Gladstone, Pierce ODonnell, Tom Szollosi, Brian Taggert and Zazi Pope.

A special thanks to Janet Kaye, a splendid reporter, who gave generously of her time, memory and notes in helping me piece together an eleven-year-old murder mystery. Her former professional home, the late and lamented Los Angeles Herald Examiner, was the conscience of L.A. journalism. Its demise has brought predictable journalistic sloth to a one-newspaper town.

Thanks to my researchers Marina Lakhman, Anna Shen and Alexandra Matisoff, whose on-the-job training as young reporters helped me chip away at the concrete wall of family denial and the awesome power of a major law firm. Their jobs, as well as my own, would have been sorely limited without the cooperation of the library staffs at the Los Angeles Times, South Bay Daily Breeze and the Long Beach Press-Telegram. My gratitude, too, to the staffs of the Hannold Library at the Claremont Colleges, Claremont Heritage Association, Dartmouth College library, Stanford University law library, Drake University library, the Palos Verdes public library and Iacobani Library in Lakewood, California.

Thanks to Frank Dana, the unofficial archivist of the American Institute of Hypnosis, who opened up his treasure trove of documents to me, and retired Sgt. Al Sett of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department, whose cynical sense of humor is matched only by his genuine compassion for the victims of horrifying crimes. Thanks to Dep. District Attorney Richard de la Sota, who went the extra mile at my request to get the Michael Miller case file unsealed. And thanks to Judge Cecil Mills of the Los Angeles Superior Court, who finally let me examine the story of a murder that was tried in virtual secrecy in the public court system.

Thanks to Dave Johnston, who believed that the story of the Miller family was as important a tale of our dysfunctional times as I did and coaxed me on when doors were slamming in my face at every turn. Thanks to Leo Hetzel, crusader with a camera and my photographic mentor. Thanks to Michelle Winterstein, whose professional detachment gave perspective, but whose personal compassion never wavered. And, though their hands were tied by a legal system that prizes privacy over truth, staff members at Patton State Hospital, as well as Drs. Saul Faerstein and Michael Maloney, deserve my thanks and gratitude for their insights into the dark recesses of the human psyche.

To my editors, Rick Horgan, who launched and molded the project through its early stages, and Anne Milburn, who picked up the book midway when Rick moved on to another publishing house and brought as much enthusiasm and skill to the mission as her predecessor. To William Betts, a copy editor with an eagle eye and a CD-ROM memory for detail. To Alice Martell, that rare and special agent who stands by clients in good times and bad and actually does what she says she will do.

And thanks, as always, to Irv Letofskystill the best editor Ive ever worked with in my life.