Criminal Voices

When I started writing "Walking Between The Raindrops," I thought there would only be two voices telling the story - Paul's and mine. But then I requested everything I could get my hands on through the "Open Records Act" from every agency I could think of. As documents, CD's, transcripts and videos were released to me, I began to see that there were many voices to this story - voices that needed to be heard. Detective James Maugham and Ranger Matt Lindemann, Lance Self, many, many law enforcement personnel, former Williamson County First Assistant DA Jana McCown,  Assistant DA Michael Jarrett, our family, friends and the five people arrested and convicted for this terrible crime.

I've tried to be true to each voice and represent them accurately so that my readers will "hear" their words. The hardest part, for me, was listening to the suspect interviews, especially when so much said only showed their patent disrespect for Paul, Tom and themselves. Even so, there were times when they caught me off guard and made me laugh. One of these was an interview with Abraham "AB" Weber by Detective Maugham and Ranger Lindemann:

JAMES: Who, uh, who decided to make the first phone call that morning?

AB: What morning?

JAMES: The morning of, the Wednesday morning at six forty-five in the morning.

AB: Wednesday morning or Thursday morning?

JAMES: Wednesday morning.

AB: I thought he was kidnapped on Tuesday?

JAMES: He was.

MATT: But, nobody called until Wednesday morning.

AB: (surprised) Wednesday?

JAMES: Yup.

AB: Are you sure it was Wednesday morning?

JAMES: A hundred percent, brother.

AB: The first phone call to his brother was Wednesday morning?

MATT: Yup.

AB: Oh.