Up here in Maine (“The Way Life Should Be”), Thomas H. Mitchell Jr. was sent back to prison for good this week. No more little field trips to court, where he and his lawyer (only doing his job, I understand) came up with a preposterous defense in Mitchell’s murder trial.
Tommy Mitchell, a creepy-looking guy with a gumdrop-shaped shaved head, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Judith Flagg, 26 years ago in the small Maine town of Fayette. Mitchell, a classic serial-stalker sex criminal, waited until Judy was alone with her 13-month old son, then lied his way into the house where he had lived years before. He assaulted and slashed the young mother, with the toddler in the home. DNA eventually tied him to the crime like he’d been caught red-handed.
His defense was that the DNA could have been his father’s. Or that he had cut himself years earlier and bled all over the house. His own mom said it never happened.
Mitchell is a serious dirtbag. When they arrested him for this murder, he was months away from being released from prison for a similar assault on a 17-year-old, the only difference being that the teenager survived. This is a man who should not release from prison ever. Justice Joseph Jabar made sure of that.
I bring this up here because on my rounds in past weeks, I’ve been talking about crimes and criminals. I’ve said that some criminals aren’t really bad people, they just did a bad thing. Some, I’ve said, are smart and personable and actually pretty good company. And then there are the exceptions: criminals who are broken human beings who, for whatever reason, can’t live in society. Mitchell is one.
Cases like these make me thankful there are prosecutors and investigators who work tirelessly to get justice for families of victims, and protect all of us from the Tommy Mitchells of the world. When I read of cases like this, I (and perhaps many other crime novelists) wish, at least for a moment or two, that, instead of making those cops up, I was one of those cops who put real bad guys away.
My hat is off to them.
In PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel, Brandon gets a full dose of bad guys. A brawl in a funeral home introduces him to Joel Fuller, a sociopathic hustler. Fuller is fresh out of jail and determined to take Brandon out—after Fuller and his sidekick Kelvin shake him down.
Rocky isn’t a tough guy. He’s a skinny little kid with crooked glasses, and he shouldn’t be homeless in Portland, Maine. When McMorrow and Roxanne pluck him from under the stomping feet of a gang of street kids, Rocky latches onto McMorrow–and drags him into a world of murder, both old and new. Why is McMorrow protecting Rocky? The cops want to know. Why is Rocky on the run? McMorrow wants to know. Why does death follow in Rocky’s wake? Jack and Roxanne need to find out before they’re added to the list. 
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