Research and Investigation – Part 5

My Investigation Begins While I was researching Steve’s trial, I was, of course, doing regular “real life” things (helping my wife care for her elderly parents, working at Rice University until late-2009 and then retiring, writing novels, etc.), but Steve’s situation, was always in the back of my mind. I felt like there should be …

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Research and Investigation – Part 2

Piles of Paper During our early discussions (circa 2007-2008) Steve had given me a basic idea of what his accuser, Hanna Penderfield, claimed, but I found it impossible to believe. She said there had been 80 to 90 incidents of sexual assault, sometimes occurring in front of Steve’s wife and children, and sometimes in public …

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Blake Goudy – The Other Expert Witness

Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. The prosecution called two expert witnesses. We’ve already covered Ada Dixon. This post is about the other one, Blake Goudy, the man who gave the speech that day at Hanna’s school. Goudy said he only spoke to Hanna for fifteen minutes, so all he could say was …

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Hanna’s Bad Thing

Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. During Trial #2, Hanna tried to slip some extra information into one of her answers, but it didn’t work. Here’s how that happened. Elmer Ross had just finished questioning her about some incidents that she claimed happened after Beau’s 21st birthday party. She described several things, two …

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The Night of the Rodeo Expanded Fact List

Parts of this post were used in Aggravated. In the chapter, The Night of the Rodeo, I included a Top Ten list of the most important facts in that chapter. That list began as roughly twenty-five facts before I whittled them down for the book. If some of these don’t make much sense, read the …

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