Review: Total Recall Murders

Total Recall Murders by Mike Stowell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"SON IMPLICATES PAIR IN '75 KILLING OF DAD
NOW 20, HE HAS 'TOTAL RECALL,' POLICE SAY"

New murder charges have been filed in a 15-year-old slaying based on the
recollections of the victim's son, who was 5 years old at the time.;
Authorities said the boy's mother and a former neighbor with whom police said
she was romantically linked were implicated by the "total recall" of John Mudd
Jr., who remembered the night of the killing in a conversation with an uncle
five months ago.

Allegheny County police issued an arrest warrant Tuesday for Steven G.
Slutzker, the former neighbor who initially was charged in the shooting death
but who was not tried because of lack of evidence.; Arlene Mudd, the
child's mother, was arraigned Tuesday on charges of criminal homicide and
criminal conspiracy and held in the Allegheny County Jail.; At the time of
the shooting, family members would not allow police to question the child, now
20, about what he remembered seeing Dec. 28, 1975, the night his father was
found dead in the basement of the family's suburban Pittsburgh home here.;
The new evidence came to light in November when they received a call from
James Mudd, the victim's brother and the younger Mudd's uncle, police said.;
James Mudd told police his nephew began to relate to him all that he
remembered about the night his father, John Mudd Sr., then 28, was found dead
with six gunshot wounds to the head and chest.; The younger Mudd recalled
hearing seven "loud noises" and saw a man he identified as Slutzker walk from
the kitchen and into the living room, according to an affidavit.; Mudd
recognized Slutzker as "the man who he had seen trying to kiss his mother not
too long before his father was killed," the affidavit stated.; The younger
Mudd recalled looking down the cellar steps at his father's body and his
description of the victim's body matched a police photo of the murder scene.;
Arlene Mudd, 39, had blamed the slaying on a burglar.
-- Associated Press, Wednesday April 10, 1991

The book tells the story of the two decades case development and court action that led to Slutzker's conviction. The reporting and title suggest a complete, photographic recall. However, the realities are more vague, incomplete and hallucinatory becoming a considered rumination on recovered memory: a memory of a traumatic event (such as sexual abuse) experienced typically during childhood that is forgotten and then recalled many years later that is sometimes held to be an invalid or false remembrance generated by outside influence.

View all my reviews