Pubspeaks

True Crime Writing

By Melissa Dittmann, WIW Member

A nine-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in 1984. Kirk Bloodsworth, an innocent man, was tried for the murder, convicted and sentenced to die in Maryland's gas chamber. After almost 10 years in prison, Bloodsworth became the first death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA. After his release, Bloodsworth found the real perpetrator of the crime.

Attorney and novelist Tim Junkin was looking for his next writing project when he stumbled across the story in the Washington Post. Junkin became captivated by the story and knew he had found his next novel. Junkin investigated court documents, forensic photographs and police reports, and conducted countless interviews to recount the true story. He said, "It was a classic for a writer looking for a new project. I was in the right place at the right time to find all the pieces of the story there waiting for the detailed work of research and development."

Junkin spoke at WIW's October Pubspeak, highlighting Bloodsworth's story, which he documents in his new book Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA (Algonquin Books, 2004). Since the book's release, Junkin and Bloodsworth have been touring across the country promoting the book.

Junkin felt he was a good fit to write about Bloodsworth's story. After all, he was a former public defender in Washington, D.C., who knew about the death penalty and the justice system, a friend of the lawyer who helped gain Bloodsworth's freedom, and a former Chesapeake Bay waterman, just like Bloodsworth.

Before he'd commit to the project, Junkin had to convince Bloodsworth to agree to work with him and give him complete editorial control. "I was convinced that in this book the facts were so powerful that they could speak for themselves," Junkin said.

The book took Junkin one year to research. While Junkin took eight years to write his first novel, The Waterman (Algonquin Books, 1999), Bloodsworth only took him 3—4 months to write.

"It was like an addiction," he said. "I was not happy unless I was working on it. Twelve hours would just fly by like that. I couldn't get away from it because I felt like I had something really important to write."

He wanted to write a powerful literary book, and to do that, he knew he needed strong characters that readers could care about. In this case, Junkin used Bloodsworth, defense attorneys and prosecutors to draw readers into the story.

He hooked readers by opening with a recount of the day Bloodsworth heard he was a free man, and then backtracked to tell the backstory of how he was convicted of murder.

"Tears were coming down my face as I was writing it," says Junkin, adding that his novelist instinct told him that he had a gripping story that could be written to inspire and educate. As one of his friends told him: "You have the story of a lifetime."

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