| Chapter 1: | The Traditional Story, the Revisionist Story, and the Story |
|
|
conclusions he wanted—and to have his readers reach them too. He read too selectively, omitted odd things that are all too present on the page but were unhelpful to his aims, willfully misinterpreted some very clear passages, and made specious arguments based upon his own erroneous premises. In other words, he seemed insufficiently disinterested to have undertaken this research in good faith. I wish I could say otherwise.
Meanwhile, the main problem stemming from the inadequacies of both versions of the story is not simply the inadequacies themselves. If it were, and if the real story were not such an interesting and important one, one could probably dismiss the discovery of these inadequacies as nothing much more than pedantry, maybe even only academic quibbling. The main problem is, rather, that a fascinating, historically significant, dark and twisted “true crime” story has never managed to get told at all. I try to tell it for the first time here, in all of its unbelievably bizarre detail.