Eric Francis

Who decides to be a crime photographer is the state with the lowest crime statistics? Eric did, and he takes us along for his sometimes harrowing, sometimes banal work in his state of Vermont. We see the effects of uniquely American and criminal structures on even the safest part of the country, and we meet those most dedicated to serving that community, despite its fractures. Dispatches from individual lives, as they happen: Each short book originates in short confidences recorded by individuals during borrowed moments from their interesting lives. Set amidst some of our most pressing contemporary predicaments and edited by award-winning writers Peter Orner and Laura Lampton Scott, Dispatches captures some of the highs and lows of daily human endurance.

Grand Junction, Colorado, 2001: When Michael Blagg's adoring wife, Jennifer, and his six year-old-daughter, Abby, disappeared from their home, Michael led the charge to find them, even going so far as to make a nationwide appeal on Good Morning America for information. But seven months later, investigators found Jennifer's remains in a Mesa County landfill, and things took a darker turn... Jennifer had been shot in the head, investigators discovered, and Abby was nowhere to be found. While Michael, a respected prayer-group leader, played the part of grieving survivor, authorities became increasingly suspicious There was blood evidence in the back of the family's van. Was Blagg a cold-blooded killer? A religious fanatic? This is the terrifying true story of what happened when Jennifer and Abby Blagg were...

Susan Wright was a victim...who admitted to killing her husband Jeffrey in their Harris County home in 2003, by stabbing him to death in self-defense. She recounted a harrowing tale of domestic abuse-one that the raging mother of two finally brought to an end-her way. But prosecutors had a story of their own... Susan Wright was a seductress...who set the mood for kinky sex with her unsuspecting husband. After tying Jeffrey to the bed, Susan straddled him, stabbed him 193 times with a butcher knife, then buried his body in a makeshift grave in their backyard. Justice would not come easy. The fury was just beginning. The bloodstained theatrics that unfolded in the Houston courtroom would stun jurors, make national headlines, and brand Susan Wright as both a desperate martyr on the edge and a brutal killer who would be brought to justice.

The wife of wrestler Owen Hart recounts their life together, her husband's wrestling career, and his death as he fell from the top of an arena doing a stunt during a televised wrestling match.