{"id":2485,"date":"2023-11-17T13:10:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-17T13:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2023\/11\/17\/book-proposal-nonfiction-narrative-literary-agents-publishing\/"},"modified":"2025-02-15T18:44:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T18:44:42","slug":"book-proposal-nonfiction-narrative-literary-agents-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2023\/11\/17\/book-proposal-nonfiction-narrative-literary-agents-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Peek inside a successful book proposal"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
\n
\n \n

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:<\/strong> This is one of two posts featuring Kim Cross on the successful pitch-and-proposal process that led to her new book, \u2018In Light of All Darkness.\u2019<\/a> In this post, Cross annotates the proposal that landed her a contract after previous pitches fell short. In a companion piece, Cross answers questions about agents, timing and money.<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
\n \n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n

Annotation: Storyboard\u2019s questions are in red; Cross\u2019s comments in blue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
\n \n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n

In Light of All Darkness<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n

Inside the FBI Polly Klaas Investigation<\/h3>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n

By Kim Cross
New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Best-Selling Author of\u00a0What Stands in a Storm<\/em>
Represented by Leslie Meredith Dystel, Goderich & Bourret<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
\n \n\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
\n
\n \n

OVERVIEW<\/h4>\nOn the night of October 1, 1993, a stranger with a kitchen knife abducted a twelve-year-old girl from her bedroom during a sleepover with two friends. It was the rarest of all kidnappings: a stranger abduction from the home.
\n
\nThe kidnapping of Polly Klaas is one of the most famous true-crime stories of our generation, a landmark case as significant in the history of the FBI as the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the World Trade Center attacks. The two-month search for \u201cAmerica\u2019s Child\u201d was every agent\u2019s nightmare. <\/strong><\/a>Why did you decide to use bold text on and off throughout?<\/span>That was my agent\u2019s edit. I think it just makes the key points jump out for an editor who may be scanning.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0The desperate chase was riddled with red herrings, dead ends, and false summits, from bogus ransom calls to the SWAT team raid where FBI agents kicked in the doors of an empty house.
\n
\nNot since the Lindbergh baby in 1932 had an abduction so engrossed America, compelling thousands of volunteers to help\u2014then and now. The Klaas case also changed the FBI: Investigative methods tested and proven in this case would forever transform the bureau\u2019s<\/strong> approach to crime scene investigation, forensics, behavioral science, rapid response, and kidnapping protocols. Many of those methods are still taught today, around the world, by the same pioneering agents who solved the case. And those agents have never shared their story in a comprehensive book.<\/strong><\/a>There are so many key threads to this story. Why was it important to introduce this particular point so early in your overview?<\/span>It answers some key questions that an editor will be asking: \u201cSo what?\u201d \u201cWhy now?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s new?\u201d<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nNow, for the first time in three decades, key people at the heart of the case are willing to talk about it.<\/strong> They have refused all previous requests to participate in a book. Author Kim Cross has unprecedented access to inside sources and their files, including never-before-public crime scene photos, documents, and a videotaped murder confession.<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/a>Why did you choose to describe yourself in the third person (and then shift to first person in the next section, \u2018The Case\u2019)?<\/span>The first page is a summary, much like book-jacket copy. When the proposal begins, I want to bring the reader into the story-world with a scene and a bit more voice.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nCross is the daughter-in-law of Eddie Freyer, the FBI agent who solved the case, and who has taught thousands of agents his crime-solving strategy over the years. (While Freyer has opened doors to key sources, he is not cowriting or editing the MS.) <\/a>I thought it was important to state this outright. I was raised in an era when journalists were trained to avoid writing about family members or friends, so I was concerned that some readers might assume the familial relationship would compromise my credibility and ability to be objective.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nIn Light of All Darkness<\/em> can be published in time for the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the crime in 2023. It will be the book of record on the Polly Klaas case and its legacy<\/strong>: the insights, methods, and changes that have saved the lives of thousands of children. <\/a>How did you come up with the framing \u201cbook of record?\u201d<\/span>There were two books written about this case around 1994, before the trial, and both are riddled with gaps and errors. I had unprecedented access to primary sources that would enable the most comprehensive account.<\/span><\/span> <\/a>What were the merits of stating that ouright up top, vs. letting the reader come to that conclusion throughout as your \u201cproved\u201d that to them?<\/span>Editors must read a vast number of proposals and I always imagine them skimming and deciding within the first three pages whether it\u2019s worth it to keep reading. Out of respect for their time, it\u2019s important to get to the point quickly and clearly. It\u2019s kind of like a nut graf.<\/span><\/span>\n

THE CASE<\/h4>\nOne Sunday in July 2021, I ushered two retired FBI agents into my living room in Boise, Idaho. We\u2019d never met, but I had been studying their professional legacy for more than six years. One of them had lifted an invisible palm print of the kidnapper from Polly Klaas\u2019s bedroom\u2014the pivotal break in the case\u2014and his discovery of this hard evidence had opened the door to the perpetrator\u2019s confession. The other agent had conducted the interview that elicited the confession. These two men were directly responsible for the conviction of a murderer in one of the most famous cases in true-crime history. But their names were missing from everything I\u2019d read or heard about the murder. <\/a>Why did you choose to open the summary of the case, in the proposal, with this scene?<\/span>I almost always start with a scene that draws the reader into the story-world. This one (which I also included in the Author\u2019s Note of the book) shows the intimate nature of the access I was given, and it offers transparency into my reporting process. Especially in true crime stories, I feel these two things are important.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nWe settled into my living room to watch a copy of the videotaped confession, which had been extremely difficult to come by. Not even the lead FBI agent on the case was able to obtain a copy. <\/a>I appreciate you stating that it was difficult \u2013 I think so much of reporting is shrouded and kept from the reader, so it\u2019s not always clear what kind of hoop-jumping journalists have to do to get information.<\/span>Thanks! I told the whole story in the End Notes, which include a brief narrative that explains how each chapter was reported and written, plus a list of sources. I wanted the End Notes to be worth reading in and of themselves, like a story-behind-the-story.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nLarry Taylor, the agent who appeared in the tape, was now 80 years old, a barrel-shaped Texan with a dry sense of humor and a Dallas drawl. He had not seen this tape in almost three decades. Tony Maxwell, the agent who lifted the print, was a spry, exuberantly kind, religious man of Spanish, Irish, and Native American descent. Even though he had been intimately involved in every step of this case, from fingerprinting Polly\u2019s bedroom to participating in the autopsy, had never laid eyes on this tape.
\n
\nI had been searching for Larry for years, but it was Tony who finally found him living a few miles from my house in Boise. Larry agreed to talk to me, but only if Tony were present. So, Tony bought himself a ticket from New Mexico to Boise. \u201cWhy are you so invested in this book?\u201d I asked him. He thought for a minute and said, \u201cI think it\u2019s my last chance to tell the story. I\u2019m over 70. My doctor says, \u2018If you got COVID now, you wouldn\u2019t last a week.\u2019\u201d
\n
\nWhen I\u2019d first interviewed Tony on Skype in 2015, he wept as he recalled the impact Polly Klaas had made on his profession, his career, and his heart. <\/a>I like how you convey why this story matters to him \u2014 which can also serve as a conduit to persuade the reader why this story matters writ large.<\/span>I interviewed about 50 FBI agents and detectives who worked on this case, and I\u2019d say about half of them wept, sometimes surprising themselves with the magnitude of their emotions. I was touched by that and felt it was important for the reader to know how personal this story was for them.<\/span><\/span> He remembered minute details and wanted to ensure that this story is told as comprehensively and accurately as possible. He spent hours actively locating other key sources in the case and vouching for me. \u201cTony, you\u2019ve never talked to the press before,\u201d I said one day. \u201cWhy are you talking to me?\u201d He smiled. \u201cBecause you\u2019re family.\u201d Then he confessed that FBI habits die hard\u2014he\u2019d thoroughly vetted me and my work.
\n
\nI\u2019d watched the confession tape <\/a>Every time I read this now, I hear Greg Jacobs in my head: It was technically an admission<\/em>, not a confession<\/em>. But no one ever calls it \u201cthe admission tape.\u201d<\/span><\/span> only once before, a couple years earlier, with my father-in-law, Eddie Freyer. Even though this was Eddie\u2019s case, he hadn\u2019t been able to get his hands on a copy of the tape. I myself had spent several years searching for a copy. I couldn\u2019t find it anywhere online or in the possession of the FBI agents or cops who worked the case. Finally, through dogged reporting and sources outside the FBI, I obtained one.
\n
\nThis tape is not only rare, but unusual: longstanding FBI policy prohibited agents from recording or videotaping interviews. The culture of Hoover\u2019s FBI held that an agent\u2019s word should be enough to stand up in court. For decades, it was. This videotape only exists because the interview was conducted by an FBI agent and a Petaluma Police detective. Standard practice for local police was to record interviews, either by audio or video, preferably both. Yet Eddie had asked the Sonoma County District Attorney for a copy to use as a teaching tool in the 40-hour Interviewing and Interrogation course he teaches for the Behavioral Analysis Training Institute (BATI). The D.A. had declined. Even though the case is closed, and the murderer is on Death Row in San Quentin, the D.A. refused to release it for fear of future litigation.
\n
\nWhen Eddie and I sat down to watch it, he had not seen the recording in more than two decades. <\/a>Is it common to use footnotes in a proposal?<\/span>I have no idea! I did use them, judiciously, in the book, so looking back I do think it shows the editor how I think and address little diversions that are ancillary to the main narrative, yet too interesting to leave out.<\/span><\/span> With his commentary, it was like watching a Director\u2019s Cut. He paused the tape to identify interviewing tactics and point out body language and behavioral cues used to detect lying. He explained the extraordinary sequence of events that led to this legally admissible confession\u2014even after the suspect had invoked his Miranda rights. That\u2019s just one of the parts of this story that has never been reported.<\/strong> <\/a>How do you balance the insertion of bold text with a belief in trusting the reader to determine what\u2019s most important to them?<\/span>Ask my literary agent, Leslie Meredith! I think it\u2019s a way to help a time-starved editor who is probably skimming. I obviously wouldn\u2019t use such a treatment in a book, where the engaged reader has more time and is expecting nuanced storytelling.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nWhen I watched the confession again with Tony and Larry, they added another layer of insight that has never been reported. Larry was a kidnapping specialist assigned to high-profile cases including Amber Swartz Garcia, and Ileane Mischeloff. He was the agent who, in 1992, opened a closet door to find Charles Geschke\u2014the Adobe CEO who had been kidnapped at gunpoint and held for ransom\u2014gagged and chained to the floor, alive.
\n
\nAs Larry watched the tape, it shook loose some long-forgotten memories of the moments before recording commenced. Suspect Richard Allen Davis, a repeat offender who had been in and out of prison for most of his adult life, had recognized the deputy who arrived to take his fingerprints. \u201cThe deputy had been a guard at Folsom Prison,\u201d Taylor recalled. \u201cAnd it was sort of like a class reunion. Davis lit up. He said, \u2018Hey! Did you know so-and-so?\u2019 It was like old lodge brothers coming together. He felt that comfortable within the prison system.\u201d
\n
\nLarry recalled driving the kidnapper to the body recovery site with Petaluma Detective Mike Meese, his partner in conducting the confession interview. Mike Meese is deceased, but he was a notorious hoarder of case files (including the confession tape). I\u2019m working to track down his family and obtain a copy of the recording from the drive. <\/a>I like how you show you\u2019re doing your homework here, and have other means of obtaining more info in the works.<\/span>Mike\u2019s widow entrusted me with several of his hard drives and a very useful PowerPoint presentation with a few crime scene photos, facts and bits of info I didn\u2019t find anywhere else.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nTony, in turn, recalled the behind-the-scenes drama never shared with the press. On the night that Polly was found, his supervisors ordered him to transport her body to the morgue before dawn, to keep it out of sight of the media. At the risk of losing his job, Tony refused. Too much trace evidence would be lost in the dark. Rushing felt not only risky but disrespectful, and he wanted to do it right, with care and dignity. On that cold night, he sat in the dark beside Polly\u2019s body, praying and talking to her softly. \u201cWe found you, Polly,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to bring you home.\u201d
\n
\nIn the six years I\u2019ve spent researching this story, I\u2019ve been struck, again and again, by the deeply personal nature of this case. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the most significant things I\u2019ve ever done in my life,\u201d said Jay Silverberg, who lived in Petaluma and helped organize the volunteer center. \u201cAside from my kids, there\u2019s nothing else I could do with that much impact, that kind of legacy.\u201d
\n
\nThe emotional gravity touched every agent, every cop, every forensic technician who worked this case, no matter how seasoned. The pain still echoes today. Tony Maxwell still thinks about Polly Klaas \u201cevery single day.\u201d District Attorney Greg Jacobs, who prosecuted her murderer, Richard Allen Davis, said this case is the reason \u201cI\u2019m still in therapy.\u201d
\n
\nEddie Freyer and I have driven to Polly\u2019s house, which looks today much as it did in 1993. The owner of the house invited us in to look around, and said her house is not haunted.
\n
\nBut Eddie is.
\n
\nEddie and I have also walked through the brambles of a vacant field outside Cloverdale, where the roar of semis on Highway 101 drowned out the birdsong. We stood by an oak tree and looked at the stones that strangers had placed there, the painted-on messages faded by sun and time. Eddie comes here from time to time, alone, to think. This is the spot where he stood, one December night, and lifted a piece of plywood. Underneath it lay a small body in a flannel nightgown, an answer to the 2-month-long search. The lights of media trucks lined the service road by the highway. The command post was on alert, the Evidence Response Team poised to act. Polly\u2019s family was waiting.
\n
\nOn the night that Polly vanished, Eddie had sat down in the living room next to her mother and made a promise that echoes in his ears today. \u201cEve,\u201d he said gently, \u201cI promise you we\u2019ll do everything humanly possible to find your daughter.\u201d Everything he did in the following days was in the service of his word. Still, he wonders. Was there anything they could have done differently to find her alive<\/em>? He goes through the events, yet again, in his mind, reviewing every juncture. He reevaluates the early clues. The decisions made with incomplete information. The flaws in the system. The errors they made. How tragically close they came to saving her. The lessons that changed everything.
\n
\nHe is ready, at last, to tell the whole story. <\/a>You build this up in a quite propulsive way. What influenced your thought process here in terms of ending the intro on him?<\/span>At this point in the reporting, I expected Eddie to be the central character. As I dove deeper into the documents, I realized\u2014with considerable chagrin\u2014that he wasn\u2019t going to get as much airtime as I originally anticipated. As a supervisor, he didn\u2019t leave as much of a paper trail as the agents and detectives doing the hands-on work. His role as Case Agent made him a sort of Wizard of Oz, orchestrating the massive investigation outside of the public eye. (He\u2019s not mentioned in any press coverage from 1993.) Eddie\u2019s job was to manage the agents and cops who were conducting interviews and writing reports. They were the ones who left the paper trail of records that contained the facts, details, and (most importantly) dialogue that allowed me to write in-scene. I had to rely on his memory of events from three decades earlier in order to write him into a scene.<\/span><\/span>\n

THE STORY<\/h4>\nOn a Friday night in October 1993, three seventh-grade girls at Petaluma Junior High were planning a sleepover. The hostess, twelve-year-old Polly Klaas, a brown-eyed girl who still possessed the dimples and figure of a child, rushed home to clean the small house she shared with her mother and six-year-old sister. Her friends, Gillian Pelham and Kate McLean, arrived with sleeping bags and games, planning to stay up late. In a small room with a wooden bunk bed, they giggled as they put makeup on each other and played board games. Polly\u2019s mother, Eve Nichol, told the girls to quiet down. Before going to bed, she checked the front door to make sure it was locked.
\n
\nEve closed both doors to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that separated the two bedrooms, and crawled into bed next to Polly\u2019s little sister, Annie. She could still hear muffled laughter through the walls. Eve took a sleeping pill, read for a while, and sank into a deep sleep.
\n
\nAround 10:30 p.m. Polly stood up to get the sleeping bags from the living room. She opened her bedroom door to face a stranger in the hallway. Dressed all in black, he seemed over six feet tall. Black eyes. Black hair. Salt-and-pepper beard. In his right hand was a black bag. In his left, a kitchen knife.
\n
\n\u201cDon\u2019t scream,\u201d he said, \u201cor I\u2019ll slit your throats.\u201d <\/a>The dialogue in this scene (and subsequent book chapter) came from interviews detectives conducted with Kate and Gillian the night of the abduction and from trial transcripts of their testimony on the witness stand three years after the event. I read the chapters to Kate and Gillian to fact-check and make sure they were comfortable with how they were portrayed. If my memory serves, they made two factual corrections.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nHe made the three girls lie face down on the floor and he bound their hands behind their backs, first with torn strips of silky white cloth, and then with black cords he cut from a Nintendo game in the room and a strap he sliced from Polly\u2019s purse. He pulled pillowcases over their heads.
\n
\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry, I won\u2019t hurt you,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m just doing this for the money.\u201d
\n
\nPolly offered him thirty dollars stashed in a jewelry box, but he made no move to find it. Instead, he took Polly. He told Kate and Gillian to count to one thousand. By the time they were done, he promised them, Polly would be back.
\n
\nWhen the screen door slammed, the girls stopped counting and struggled to untie themselves, biting the ligatures to work the knots loose. They ran to the next room and woke Polly\u2019s mom. As Eve surfaced from sleep, a fog of disorientation gave way to panic. She grabbed the phone and dialed 911.
\n
\nSix minutes later, a Petaluma Police deputy knocked on her door. Shortly after midnight, two FBI agents arrived. It was too late. Polly was gone.
\n
\n***
\n
\nThe two-month search that followed remains one of the biggest manhunts in the history of California\u2014and the FBI. It involved more than one hundred agents and dozens of local cops and detectives, who followed a non-stop stream of leads\u2014tips that may or may not warrant investigative action. Their actions ranged from hour-long interviews to a full-blown investigation with surveillance teams, SWAT operations, and a grid search over many square miles. A \u201cbig\u201d FBI case might involve 5,000 tips. The Klaas case had 60,000 tips and 12,000 actionable leads.
\n
\nThe public, outraged, came out in full force to help. Four thousand civilian volunteers beat the bushes along every creek and country road in Sonoma County. One of them was actress Winona Ryder, who grew up in Petaluma, had attended Polly\u2019s junior high, and signed a check for a $200,000 reward.
\n
\n\u201cThe nature of this case was so shocking, so bold on the part of the offender, it struck at the heart of every family in this country,\u201d says FBI Senior Resident Agent Eddie Freyer. The first FBI agent to arrive on the scene, Freyer became the lead agent in charge of the Polly Klaas case.
\n
\nVolunteers manning a twenty-four-hour telephone bank took calls and passed tips and leads to police. Eight million Missing Person fliers were distributed nationwide and abroad. The Polly Klaas Foundation, a 501(c)(3), was rushed through the IRS paperwork in just a few days to manage donations that topped $250,000 almost overnight. When, two months into the case, the overtime expense threatened to bankrupt the Petaluma Police Department, the Foundation offered the city $50,000 to keep the search going strong. <\/a>These small details are super effective.<\/span>I try to use specificity and telling details as a way to avoid cliches and platitudes.<\/span><\/span>
\nEveryday citizens played a critical role in this case. They were instrumental in keeping the search\u2014and just as importantly, the story\u2014alive. The volunteers held the media\u2019s interest, and the media, in turn, kept leads streaming in from the public. One of those leads helped to solve the case.
\n
\nOn the 59th day, a Sonoma County resident called in a tip that altered the course of the investigation. She had stumbled upon suspicious items on her property, key evidence that led quickly and directly to the identification of the kidnapper. This citizen might not have recognized the connection and called the cops had she not seen the media coverage. <\/a>Were you worried about giving key details of the story away?<\/span>Not so much here as in the book itself. I wrangled with the decision of when to let the reader know about a key event that transpired on the night of Polly\u2019s abduction. Two sheriff\u2019s deputies responded to a trespassing call from a woman named Dana Jaffe, who encountered a man whose car was stuck in a ditch on her property. The deputies freed the man\u2019s car and sent him on his way. The trespasser turned out to be Polly\u2019s kidnapper. But investigators didn\u2019t know this until two months later, when Dana Jaffe found suspicious items on her property. She called the sheriff\u2019s again and they linked the items to the trespasser. I had a tough choice to make: When do I tell the reader this? When the investigators find out? Or when it happens? I chose the latter, a form of dramatic irony used in Shakespearean plays and Greek tragedies, because it amped up the tension.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nThe first kidnapping to be publicized internationally<\/em>, this unfolding drama dominated the news for months and etched itself in popular memory. It\u2019s hard to find anyone alive in 1993 who doesn\u2019t recognize Polly\u2019s smiling face, so often was it flashed on TV and printed under the headlines.
\n
\nThat face reminded everyone of someone they cared about: a daughter, a sister, a student, a friend. Polly Klaas was the all-American girl next door, and her abduction signaled the end of a collective innocence. A woman in Bulgaria recalled that her mother took her bike away because of this case 6,500 miles away.
\n
\nThe bad guy\u2014Richard Allen Davis\u2014was the quintessential boogeyman. \u201cHe was a Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy type of offender,\u201d Freyer said. \u201cThe worst of the worst.\u201d Davis was a career criminal who had spent nearly his entire adult life in and out of prison. As a child, he set cats on fire and cut stray dogs with a knife. At 12, he was arrested for burglary, a crime he\u2019d repeat more than 20 times. His crimes escalated. In his twenties, he attempted\u2014and failed repeatedly\u2014to kidnap or rape at least three different women. One ran away and flagged down a car that happened to contain a highway patrolman. Another pulled a gun and shot at Davis\u2019s back as he fled. At the time of Polly\u2019s kidnapping, Davis was on parole for his second 8-year prison sentence, convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman. Experts characterized him as a frustrated sexual sadist who turned to younger and more vulnerable prey.
\n
\n***
\n
\nEveryone cared. Joan Baez sang \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d at the memorial. The church could only hold 1,500 people, so hundreds stood in the rain to watch the service, which was directed by a producer of the Grammys. Winona Ryder dedicated her film, \u201cLittle Women,\u201d to Polly Klaas. Robin Williams made a surprise appearance at a benefit to help raise money for her search. Mark McGuire wore a special wristband honoring missing kids and wrote a $75,000 check to the Polly Klaas Foundation.
\n
\nPeople still care.
\n
\n\u201cAt the twenty-year remembrance, I made the comment, \u2018Why us? Why did this happen to us?\u2019\u201d says Jay Silverberg, a former journalist who became the media liaison for the Polly Klaas Foundation as the search began, served as a founding board member, and remains an advisor to the board today. \u201cBut look at what we did with it. My grandkids may be safer because of this.\u201d It was a case that changed America.
\n
\nIt was also a case that changed the FBI.
\n
\nWHAT\u2019S NEW? <\/a>Why did you decide to make this a header?<\/span> It\u2019s the number one question editors will be asking about a 30-year-old story. What new information will this book reveal? The tricky part about answering this question in a proposal is that you haven\u2019t done the years of research that will uncover all the answers. But that\u2019s why I do a ton of pre-reporting before every story pitch or book proposal. (As a result, I have a pretty good batting average.) The \u201cWhat\u2019s new?\u201d also comes into play during the marketing and publicity phase of publishing. When my publicist pitched a 20\/20 producer the two-hour documentary, I started with the list from the proposal and added insights I discovered later in the reporting of the book.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nFeaturing a cast of investigators working ceaselessly\u2014FBI agents, detectives, and forensic technicians sharing never-before-published details\u2014this book will be the first narrative to take readers through every beat of the case through the Go-Pro point of view of the people who lived it. <\/strong><\/a>I love the term \u201cGo-Pro point of view.\u201d So vivid!<\/span>Full disclosure: Pretty sure I borrowed\/stole that phrase from my friend and fellow investigative reporter Bronwen Dickey, who supported me throughout this book project.<\/span><\/span> With Eddie Freyer at the helm, central characters include a FBI\u2019s behavioral science expert who conducted key interviews, a pioneering police sketch artist who rendered the suspect\u2019s face with stunning accuracy, the forensic specialist who lifted the palm print that led to a confession, and the agent who elicited the confession that led to a conviction and a death penalty sentence.
\n
\nWritten with the cinematic scenes and suspense of a thriller, and fact-checked with primary sources, the search is a narrative vehicle for a more expansive story<\/strong>: How the Polly Klaas kidnapping was a proving ground for investigative tools, procedures, and people who forever changed how the FBI gathers evidence and solves crimes. The history and science of CSI methods will be woven throughout the story, adding narrative pacing, depth, and insider details that true crime readers obsess about.<\/strong> (I used a similar approach in What Stands in a Storm<\/em>, which laced the fast-paced narrative tornado narrative with bits of exposition about the history and science of severe weather; the book is now required reading in high schools and colleges in at least four states.)
\n
\nNo podcast, TV show, or story has ever delivered so much unique information or demonstrated why this case was so pivotal in the history of the FBI.<\/strong> <\/a>To me, these paragraphs feel like the most important, and urgent, yet in the proposal.<\/span>Maybe I should have moved them up higher! It\u2019s part of the \u201cWhat\u2019s new\u201d answer, and the more I dug, the more specific information I found to support this theme. In the book, several chapters contain historical asides that document insider FBI history I wasn\u2019t able to find written elsewhere.<\/span><\/span> It marked a major turning point when the bureau was forced to change how it responded to the most urgent and time-sensitive of all crimes. Kidnapping statistics paint a grim picture: 44 percent of abducted children die within the first hour; 74 percent die within the first three hours; 1 percent survive more than one day. Sadly, 40 percent are dead by the time they\u2019re even reported missing. <\/a>It\u2019s worth noting that the kidnapping statistics were one of the hardest things to report and fact-check. Exact numbers of stranger abductions<\/em> have always been controversial (and sometimes dramatically inflated as a result of multiple reporting systems). The numbers I used here came from a presentation given by one of the FBI agents who worked on the case. The ones that made it into the book survived rounds of fact-checking with various sources and consultation with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nWhen Polly went missing in October 1993, the nation was plagued with a string of unsolved stranger abductions, many of which took place in Northern California. Amber Swartz-Garcia. Ileane Mischeloff. Kevin Collins. Jaycee Dugard.
\n
\n\u201cThese children were in their homes or playing in their front yards or walking home from ice skating practice a few blocks away,\u201d Eddie Freyer says. \u201cThey vanished from the face of the earth. They were unsolved.\u201d
\n
\nThe community was demanding to know: When are you going to stop this? What are you going to do about these unsolved cases? <\/em><\/a>I like how you zoom out to paint the broader historical context here that was influencing this time.<\/span>I think it\u2019s important to \u201czoom out\u201d and paint the bigger picture framing the story-world. What else was happening in the world at the time? What pressures were unique to this moment in time? It provides important context and anchors the narrative in time and history.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nFBI kidnapping protocol required dispatching forensic experts from the lab in Quantico to conduct crime scene investigations. But during the time it took to get them there\u201424 hours or more in some cases\u2014trace evidence could deteriorate, disappear, or become contaminated inadvertently. Even more urgently, the first 24 hours after an abduction are the most critical. Odds of survival decline with each minute.
\n
\nA different approach was bubbling up from the ranks, who saw the need for \u201ca new way of doing business.\u201d Outside FBI headquarters, agents in field offices were assembling local teams that could arrive at a crime scene within hours or even minutes. This had led to the creation of the San Francisco FBI Evidence Response Team (ERT), among the first of its kind in the nation in 1991. <\/a>I don\u2019t know if it comes out clearly here, but this was one of the most pivotal ways in which this case \u201cchanged the way the FBI does business.\u201d I wasn\u2019t able to find a good written history of the ERT. Then I realized I was talking to the primary sources who wrote that chapter of history.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nThese ERT mavericks were considered rogues, at the time. Breaking protocol and outside the chain of command, they were experimenting with new forensic tools and methods. Many of their previously untested methods concerned the recovery of trace evidence: hair and fibers, fingerprints and DNA, \u201cthe evidence we can\u2019t see,\u201d says Senior Team Leader Tony Maxwell, the FBI\u2019s lead forensic investigator on the Polly Klaas case. \u201cBefore, you\u2019d want the gun. Now you want the smoke<\/em> from the gun.\u201d
\n
\nMaxwell, who has never before spoken to the press, is a forensic pioneer<\/strong> who would change how crime scene investigators gather trace evidence and protect it on its journey to the lab in Quantico. <\/a>Oops! As I corrected in the book, the FBI lab was located in Washington D.C. at the time of this case. (It was later moved to Quantico, Virginia.)<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\u201cThere are only two ways a guy goes to jail: witnesses and evidence,\u201d Maxwell told me. \u201cIf witnesses are compromised, it all comes down to evidence.\u201d
\n
\nCommitted to telling this story, Maxwell actively tracked down and recruited other characters central to the investigation,<\/strong> including Frank Doyle, a 33-year FBI veteran who co-founded the ERT program and went on to teach forensic investigation classes with Maxwell in more than 25 countries. <\/a>This is striking. Do you have a sense of why Maxwell was motivated to do this?<\/span>I think he may have felt the same imperative that Eddie and I did: If this story is to be told accurately and thoroughly, we need help from everyone who lived it\u2014while they\u2019re still alive and able to remember.<\/span><\/span> Doyle also served as the explosives expert for 56 episodes of the Mythbusters TV show. <\/a>Sadly, Frank Doyle died a few months ago. I attended his funeral with Eddie and FBI SWAT team leader Tom LaFreniere. The next day, we lost Lillian Zilius, who supervised Frank and Tony and the ERT. I was sad, and grateful I had recorded their interviews, which I shared with their families.<\/span><\/span> Maxwell and Doyle introduced me to Mike Stapleton, their FBI colleague and founder of Forensics R Us, a consulting firm through which he currently conducts fingerprint identification courses. Maxwell, Doyle, and Stapleton all say that<\/strong> what they learned from the Polly Klaas case would be crucial to their subsequent work on the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber, the Olympic bombing in Atlanta, and the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001.<\/strong> \u201cThis case was the most instrumental model used in all our case responses thereafter,\u201d Maxwell says.
\n
\nThe Polly Klaas case marked the FBI\u2019s first application of techniques such as cyanoacrylate fuming<\/strong>\u2014aka \u201cSupergluing\u201d\u2014a method in which a fine mist of superglue is sprayed on an object to permanently affix fragile, perishable fingerprints that can be destroyed by conventional dusting. Electrostatic dust collectors were used to gather hairs, fibers, and microscopic particles from every inch of Polly\u2019s room.
\n
\nThis was also the FBI\u2019s first use of fluorescent powder and alternate light source (ALS) to detect latent fingerprints invisible to the human eye<\/strong>. In the months before Polly\u2019s disappearance, Maxwell came home from work and practiced using fluorescent powder and a borrowed ALS\u2014which the FBI didn\u2019t yet own\u2014in his living room, where his wife ran a children\u2019s daycare. A day of Mrs. Maxwell\u2019s business as usual generated all sorts of trace evidence: DNA-rich body fluids, the finest human hair, and children\u2019s fingerprints, which are smaller, harder to find, and more perishable than those of adults. One hundred times more sensitive than traditional black powder treatments, fluorescent powder could pick up prints missed by an everyday fingerprint dusting. In Polly\u2019s room, Maxwell and his team would use this new technique to lift 48 fingerprints missed by the Petaluma Police. One of them would be the palm print that linked the killer to the crime scene, prompted his confession, and led to his conviction.
\n
\nBut even as these teams were making forensic history<\/strong>, they faced considerable resistance within their own organization. \u201cThis new team concept was not received warmly by either the Laboratory Division or the agents in the field,\u201d Maxwell says. \u201cWe had to win the support of our colleagues one by one, case by case.\u201d Once they did, the San Francisco ERT would become a model for other such teams across the nation. Today, the bureau employs 1,000 trained ERT agents nationwide, and every local office has a dedicated team.
\n
\nConcurrently emerging in the FBI was the use of behavioral science in criminal investigations, particularly those involving threats or acts of violence. The Polly Klaas case marked the first time a profiler was embedded within the forensic team, which sped up the investigation<\/strong>. It marked the merging of forensic science and behavioral science for the first time in the FBI. <\/a>From a fact-checking perspective, how did you verify all of these \u201cfirsts\u201d to make these assertions with confidence?<\/span>I interviewed an FBI historian and also emailed Louis Freeh, who was the Director of the FBI at the time. Both of them said I knew more about this case than they did. So I corroborated the assertions made in separate interviews by Tony Maxwell, Frank Doyle, David Alford, Mike Stapleton, and Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole\u2014all pioneers who most likely would have been aware of all the precedents.<\/span><\/span> Special Agent Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole, an expert in criminal profiling and psychopathy, worked closely with the Evidence Response Team throughout the entire case\u2014and beyond. \u201cMary Ellen would sit across from me,\u201d Maxwell says. \u201cI would do the forensic side. She would do the \u2018voodoo\u2019 side. She has worked almost every kidnapping since.\u201d O\u2019Toole used new profiling methods to get inside the mind of the killer, including an approach called \u201cvictimology,\u201d<\/strong> which involved analyzing Polly\u2019s artwork to characterize what kind of child she was, and then deduce what kind of criminal might prey on such a child.
\n
\nPaired with forensic evidence, behavioral analysis helped focus the investigation and support the prosecution. \u201cTony and I worked side by side,\u201d O\u2019Toole said. \u201cNow, it\u2019s clear you have to blend the empirical and behavioral sciences.\u201d But in 1993, that concept broke new ground. After Polly\u2019s case, O\u2019Toole went on to work for the FBI\u2019s new Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), which became the focus of the hit crime serious \u201cCriminal Minds.\u201d She later worked on the Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway disappearances, the Columbine shootings, and many other high-profile cases. A Fellow with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, she continues to lecture at the FBI Academy, the FBI\u2019s Leadership Development Institute, and the Smithsonian Institute. She is the director of the Foresnic Science Program at George Mason University, where she is heading up the creation of the nation\u2019s second \u201cBody Farm,\u201d where forensic scientists use donated corpses to study the decomposition of bodies. (The first Body Farm, run by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, was featured in Mary Roach\u2019s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers<\/em>.)
\n
\nAfter the Polly Klaas case, O\u2019Toole went on to write the Child Abduction Response protocols for the entire Bureau. The ERT techniques and protocols established in this case would be rolled out nationwide, and eventually internationally, when FBI technicians (including Maxwell and his colleagues) began training foreign governments to respond to bombings and terrorism attacks. <\/strong><\/a>At this point, you\u2019ve spent quite a bulk of space detailing FBI\/investigative methods. How did you think about keeping the reader\u2019s attention?<\/span>I did enough research on successful true crime books to appreciate that avid readers of this genre love the nitty-gritty details of forensic science and investigative tools. I also saw expository asides as a means of narrative pacing. Many of the scenes are fast-paced and extremely emotionally intense, so these asides give readers a moment to catch their breath.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\u201cAll that comes from Polly,\u201d Maxwell says.
\n
\n***
\n
\nOutside the FBI, independent forensic artist Jeanne Boylan was developing new methods of cognitive interviewing to elicit the faces of criminals, images buried deep within the subconscious of a traumatized witness. Trauma affects the mind\u2019s ability to encode\u2014and retrieve\u2014a memory, and Boylan understood that the act of trying to remember a traumatic memory could inadvertently distort that memory. She explained that, after witnessing a traumatic crime, \u201cthe mind, as a survival measure, acts with determination to protect the victim from reexperiencing the event by repressing the image that induced the trauma.\u201d In this post-traumatic state, eyewitnesses\u2019 memories were very fragile, highly susceptible to suggestions that could overwrite the memory and compromise its accuracy. <\/a>What an effective, clear and compelling way in which you described how trauma affects memory. I appreciate the precision of your language while still putting this explanation in layman\u2019s terms.<\/span>If I learned anything in this project, it\u2019s the extent to which memory is susceptible to suggestion, distorted by trauma, and eroded by the passage of time. For the book, I interviewed a scientist who studies the impact of trauma on memory, and he offered a theory about why one of the two 12-year-old girls who witnessed Polly\u2019s abduction recalled the kidnapper wearing neon yellow bandana across his forehead, and the other did not.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nBoylan\u2019s insight, supported by research by University of Washington psychology professor Dr. Elizabeth Loftus on the fallibility of eyewitness recall, unearthed flaws in the longstanding approach of forensic artists. The standard procedure was to show the eyewitness a selection of noses, eyes, chins (et cetera) from which they could select features, which an artist would then combine in a sketch that purported to resemble the perpetrator\u2019s face. This method often produced sketches that eyewitnesses declared \u201cnot right.\u201d Even worse, Boylan said, it could potentially \u201cdamage the evidence\u201d by \u201chanding to the eyewitness\u2014at the very height of that person\u2019s vulnerability to suggestion and influence\u2014the visual tools to effectively discard, distort, or further entomb the actual image that created the trauma.\u201d
\n
\nBoylan\u2019s techniques defied convention, which caused law enforcement officials to mistrust and criticize them. The officials tended to view any success on her part as an indication of failure on theirs. Boylan was summoned to Petaluma by the FBI at the insistence of an ABC Television producer named Debbie Alpert, who became interested in the Polly Klaas case and remembered Boylan from a previous story. Boylan\u2019s reception in the command center was lukewarm, at best. By the time she arrived, thousands of fliers had already been disseminated with the sketch of a local police artist, who had used the old techniques.
\n
\n\u201cThe girls say the sketch is wrong,\u201d Polly\u2019s mother, Eve, told Boylan. \u201cDid they tell you that?\u201d
\n
\nIt wasn\u2019t a bad sketch, Boylan thought, but it looked like it could be anyone.<\/em> The height mentioned in the flyer\u2014six-foot-three\u2014also bothered her. What does six feet three inches mean to a twelve-year-old child seated on a bedroom floor looking up at a man with a weapon?<\/em>
\n
\n\u201cI\u2019ll bet he\u2019s a shorter man,\u201d Boylan said. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to need to open that up.\u201d
\n
\nAt first, Mark Mershon, the same FBI agent who had been pressured to have Boylan join the team told her that she would not be permitted to interview the eyewitnesses. After flying home to Washington\u2014and back a day later\u2014she was finally allowed to interview Kate and Gillian. That\u2019s when she realized how much damage had been done. The girls had been interviewed together. When this happens, the dominant witness often influences the recollection of the less-dominant personality. Minor discrepancies trigger suspicion in the minds of the investigators, and that suspicion erodes the confidence of both witnesses. From there, things tend to go downhill, which is precisely what had already happened. Minor inconsistencies in the girls\u2019 perceptions\u2014which should have validated their honesty\u2014were treated as lies by the investigators.
\n
\nIt was one of their biggest mistakes, admits FBI agent Eddie Freyer. \u201cWe roughed them up,\u201d he says, almost thirty years later, to every class of new investigators. \u201cWe almost lost them, as witnesses, as we dug into the weeds. There were minor inconsistencies. We thought those differences meant lying.\u201d
\n
\nEddie Freyer knows every mistake, every red herring, and every small step in the right direction, because he was the FBI agent in charge of the Polly Klaas case<\/strong>. <\/a>When you were interviewing him, what signaled to you that he would be honest, as a source, about his personal mistakes and oversights?<\/span>Before I wrote the proposal, I sat in on his Interviewing and Interrogation class for the Behavioral Analysis Training Institute (when he made the remarks noted above). He was frank with his students about those mistakes. I told him at the outset of the project that the book would have to acknowledge what went wrong as well as what went right in the case. He agreed. I needed to avoid writing an FBI puff piece, or what some journalists call \u201ccopaganda.\u201d So I made sure to fact-check his memories as thoroughly as I did every other source.<\/span><\/span> As Senior Resident Agent (SRA) in Santa Rosa, he oversaw the efforts of Tony Maxwell, Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole, Jeanne Boylan, and more than one hundred agents\u2014a team that worked in concert (and sometimes at odds) with local police toward a common goal: Find Polly. For 61 straight days, many of them sleepless, Freyer called in the polygraphers, green-lighted the SWAT raids, and made sure key evidence was hand-delivered to the FBI lab in Quantico.
\n
\nIn charge of the command post\u2014the brain of the investigation\u2014he orchestrated its transformation from the \u201cold way of doing business\u201d (butcher paper hung in a break room, scribbled with hand-written leads) to the brand-new Rapid Start system, an electronic lead-tracking database that enabled Freyer to prioritize 60,000 tips and investigate 12,000 actionable leads over two relentless months. Rapid Start was pulled off the Unabomber case, its first application, and reassigned to Polly Klaas, operated by data analysts nicknamed \u201cthe mushroom heads\u201d by their colleagues.
\n
\nBehind the scenes, invisible to media, Freyer was making thousands of decisions in a case that would profoundly change the way we search for and find missing children. Throughout the entire investigation Freyer kept a low profile, insulated from the press by supervisors like FBI ASAC Mark Mershon, who became the official spokesperson, but was not as intimately involved in the day-to-day decisions that made this case so complex. Everyone who worked the Polly Klaas case says Freyer\u2019s leadership was the grease that kept the investigation running twenty-four hours a day. As Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole said years later, \u201cI think one of the reasons we all worked together so well and solved the case is because working for Eddie was wonderful. He is probably one of the best FBI agents I’ve ever worked for. He was low key. He listened. he was thoughtful, but very decisive. He always seemed to know exactly what to do. I haven’t seen that kind of competence since.\u201d
\n
\nBut it wasn\u2019t cold competence that set Eddie Freyer apart from the ranks of lead investigators. It was his humanity. When he realized how badly Kate and Gillian had been traumatized by the mistrust of early interviewers, he brought the girls flowers and, on bended knee, apologized for how they had been treated. As he learned how forensic artist Jeanne Boylan had helped the girls recover not only the face of the killer, but also their trust and confidence, he asked Boylan to please stay, because the girls needed her. Three years later, when Kate and Gillian were called to testify in the murder trial of the man who had bound and gagged them, each girl was allowed to choose one adult to accompany her on the witness stand. Both chose Jeanne Boylan. <\/a>Why did you choose to delve into the story so extensively in this section vs. leaning more on the sample chapters? How did you balance what extent of detail and context to disclose?<\/span>I wanted the sample chapters to showcase the writing, the storytelling, and specifically my ability to stay \u201cin-scene\u201d as much as possible, which makes a narrative read like fiction. But it\u2019s also essential in a proposal to convey to the editor what I call \u201cthe smart layer\u201d of nonfiction \u2013 the expository asides that add meaning, context, and insight to each scene.<\/span><\/span>

\nWHY NOW?<\/h4> <\/a>I love that this is a header.<\/span>I think about the \u2018why now\u2019 in every story pitch I craft and make sure to include a line acknowledging that, but I never state it quite so directly. I might take a leaf from your book!) KC: It\u2019s a key question every proposal must answer, along with \u201cWhy are you the best writer to tackle this book?\u201d<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nNearly three decades years after her abduction, people are still talking about Polly Klaas.\u00a0 And true crime stories are more popular than ever across media.
\n
\nAt least twenty-seven true crime podcasts have dedicated an episode to the Polly Klaas kidnapping. Netflix is filming an episode on the case for the upcoming series \u201cCrimes That Changed America.\u201d In her newest suspense novel, When the Stars Go Dark<\/em> (April 2021), New York Times<\/em> bestselling author Paula McLain writes about a detective obsessed with the search for a kidnapped girl. Set in Northern California in 1993, the story features fictional characters whose paths intersect with real-life kidnapping cases\u2014including Polly Klaas. McClain says her protagonist, a female detective, was shaped by research that she conducted on the Polly Klaas investigation.
\n
\nThis case has been covered extensively\u2014in newspapers, true crime TV shows, podcasts, and books. All of these stories lack the details known only to deep insiders\u2014the color of the powder that picked up the palm print, the moonless night a SWAT team member fell into a ravine, the way the kidnapper wiped his mouth every time he told a lie. True crime fans who think they know everything about this case will find plenty of new information in this book. <\/strong>It will also fascinate anyone interested in the history and evolution of crime scene investigation.
\n
\nIn Light of All Darkness<\/em><\/strong> can be delivered 12-18 months after contract signing. The hope is that it will be published in 2023, the 30th year since Polly\u2019s death.<\/strong> <\/a>How did you determine how long the delivery would take you?<\/span>I had reported and written three books (one of which I can\u2019t name, because of a non-disclosure agreement) so I knew what I could handle in that time frame. Plus, I had to work backward from the date of the 30-year anniversary of the crime, which gave the book a natural target pub date and a natural news-hook that would be useful for marketing and publicity.<\/span><\/span> It takes readers deep inside the FBI investigation of one of the most famous\u2014and perhaps the most pivotal\u2014kidnapping in the world. This case was the training ground for the people, methods, and procedures used to solve crimes today\u2014not only kidnapping cases, but also sex trafficking cases, serial murders, and terrorist bombings. \u201cIt changed the course of history,\u201d said Greg Jacobs, the district attorney who prosecuted Polly\u2019s kidnapper and murderer, Richard Allen Davis.
\n
\nPolly\u2019s case led to the Three-Strikes law and improved collaboration between Federal and local law enforcement. It informed the Amber Alert system now used in forty-eight states and responsible for saving 800 abducted children. It sparked the development of child abduction protocols taught nationwide. The Polly Klaas Foundation, a nonprofit founded by search volunteers, continues to work an average of 300 missing-child cases each year, helping families and law enforcement teams act quickly to respond to kidnappings. It is the only such organization assigned cases by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Since its inception, the Polly Klaas Foundation has searched for nearly 10,000 missing kids. It has a 97 percent recovery rate.\u00a0<\/strong>
\n
\nEddie Freyer uses the case to train the next generation of investigators. He has given his Polly Klaas presentation hundreds of times around the nation and the world: at FBI headquarters in Quantico; at more than ten agencies in Iraq; and at the Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas (the nation\u2019s largest conference on child safety), and for classes he instructs for the Institute of Criminal Investigation and POST (California\u2019s Commission for Police Officer Standards and Training). For the past three decades, he has been asked to give this presentation, on average, once a month.
\n
\nThe Polly Klaas case is still that relevant.<\/strong> <\/a>At this point in the proposal, did you think (or hope) that you\u2019d convinced the reader of this?<\/span>Yes, but a proposal is a sales document, so it\u2019s a good place to avoid erring on the side of subtlety!<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s time,\u201d Freyer says. \u201cThis story needs to be told before the people who can tell it are all gone.\u201d

\nEXCLUSIVE ACCESS<\/h4>\nPolly Klaas: The Murder of America\u2019s Child <\/em>(Pinnacle Books, 1995) and Who Killed Polly?<\/em> (Monterey Press, 1995) are the only two books published about the Polly Klaas case. Both rely heavily on widely known facts reported in the press and a handful of superficial interviews with FBI and police spokespersons, most of them supervisors who disclosed more platitudes than substance. Eddie Freyer\u2019s name is absent from both books. Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole, Jeanne Boylan, and other inside players are mentioned superficially, but the details and insights of their work have never been documented in a comprehensive book. No book, no TV show, no podcast has ever captured the inner workings of the entire investigation.<\/strong>
\n
\nThis book will.<\/strong>
\n
\nI have confirmed access to virtually all of the investigative insiders\u2014within the FBI as well as Petaluma Police Department\u2014who lived and breathed this case. Eddie Freyer has turned down all previous requests to participate in a book. Now, he is ready to tell the full story\u2014but only<\/em> to me, as a journalist and historian.<\/strong> <\/a>Your exclusive access and groundwork already done feels like a key selling point. Why did you choose to put the access section lower down, after others?<\/span>I heard someone (Tom French<\/a> or Kelley Benham French<\/a>, I believe) call a story \u201ca promise that the end is worth waiting for.\u201d In the summary, I made a promise of \u201cunprecedented access.\u201d I hoped that promise would keep the editor reading.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0Freyer does not expect to have narrative control, and he knows this will not be a puff piece that glosses over the many errors and problems in the investigation.
\n
\nFreyer has helped me forge relationships with other insiders who have been inaccessible to the media. ERT member Tony Maxwell, has declined all journalist requests for interviews about the Polly Klaas case. Maxwell has agreed to be a character in this book, and he is actively opening doors to other FBI insiders. Jay Silverberg, a former journalist who was the liaison between the volunteers and the media, is also connecting me with key leaders in the volunteer effort.
\n
\nIn addition to exclusive interviews with insiders, I have obtained access to case files, crime scene photographs, internal FBI documents, and never-before-heard recordings of 1993 interviews conducted by profiler Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole. Maxwell has given me crime scene photos, evidence recovery logs, and other primary documents. District Attorney Greg Jacobs, the winning prosecutor in the three-year trial, has entrusted me with his personal records: 12,000 pages of court transcripts from the murder trial.<\/strong>
\n
\nIn my preliminary research to confirm access and establish the main beats of the case, I conducted more than 50 interviews with more than a dozen characters, including FBI SWAT team leaders who conducted major raids, Petaluma police sergeants and detectives who canvassed the neighborhood and interviewed witnesses, and volunteers who were active in the community search effort and the Polly Klaas Foundation. <\/a>More than 50 is a lot! In your estimate, how much time had you spent on the reporting by this point?<\/span>I keep track of my interviews, documents and sources on a huge spreadsheet, so I don\u2019t have to estimate. Before submitting the proposal the first time in 2016, I\u2019d conducted 28 interviews for a total of 24 hours. When I decided to double down and revise the proposal in 2021, my tally ran up to 69 interviews and a total of 57 hours.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nIn addition to Eddie Freyer, the central character, the following individuals have agreed to participate in the book: <\/a>This is another key element the editor is looking for: Characters. And access to these characters.<\/span><\/span>
\n