MY STORY by Marilyn Chambers

PUBLISHER: BearManor Media, 7/2014, updated
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: Warner Books, 1975
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir/Pornography
MARILYN ARCHIVE: link
MY GRADE: D

FROM PUBLISHER: The intimate, uncensored reissued erotobiography that is pure-as-Ivory Snow. The sexy girl next door who turned on the world talks openly in detail about her fantasies and what turns her on. Twenty-six pages of personal photos of the star of Behind the Green Door and The Resurrection of Eve.

MY THOUGHTS: This autobiography started out good with all the stuff you'd expect in one. Where she grew up, what her childhood was like, how she got into the sex business, and so on but damn, it's a nonstop sex fest and I got so sick of reading it, and it's a short book...couldn't wait for it to end. Literally almost every single page was just graphic sexual ramblings of how horny she is. We get it, Marilyn, you like sex, but your filthy language was too much.

The page count for the original publication of this book was around 200 and nineteen of those was taken up by sexually graphic fan mail letters she received, which I didn't care at all about. Another twelve pages was taken up by letters people wrote to her for her sex advise column in Genesis magazine in the 70's. Total waste of space.

There's a three-page forward by her daughter that was really pointless and unnecessary and just a two-page afterward/epilogue. Since this book was written thirty-nine years before the reissue in 2014, the epilogue should have been at least a chapter long and should have been written by someone who actually knows something about her and could have given some useful, interesting information on the woman, who is a legend in the porn world.

Wikipedia has more info on her, like her drug addition that wasn't even mentioned in the epilogue, and her death in 2009.

You can read her adult fimography here.

You can read my review for her 1980 porn Insatiable here.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

DEATH OF INNOCENCE: The True Story of an Unspeakable Teenage Crime by Peter Meyer

PUBLISHING INFO: Berkley, 7/1986
ORIGINAL PUB: Putnam, 4/1985
GENRE: Nonfiction/True Crime/Rape/Murder
SETTING: Vermont, 1981
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: A

FROM PUBLISHER: One early spring day, two young girls took a short-cut home from school through the woods. Then in a few horrifying moments, the tranquility of the day was shattered by rape, torture and murder. A small Vermont town and the entire nation was stunned - these gruesome crimes had been committed not by hardened criminals but by two young boys, fifteen and sixteen years old.

One of America's finest investigative journalists, Peter Meyer, recounts this provocative true story of terror in the small Vermont town of Essex Junction. He powerfully recreates this tragic case and its complex emotional aftermath - the statewide manhunt, the trial, and the chilling results that sent one teenage killer to prison for life and set the other free after two and a half years. Here is the shocking story.

BOOK SUMMARY: On Friday May 15, 1981, twelve-year old friends Melissa Walbridge and Meghan O'Rourke, almost nine months apart in age, were raped, and one was murdered, by teenage friends, fifteen-year old Jamie Savage, and sixteen-year old Louis 'Louie' Hamlin. Both girls were very thin and under 5' tall.

Both girls were raped, sodomized, shot multiple times with a BB gun (Melissa was shot through the eye), strangled, and stabbed multiple times. A stab through the heart is what killed Melissa, the older of the two, born 7/17/68. Meghan survived because she's passed out and Jamie and Louie though she was dead, so they left her and put an old mattress over her and Melissa's bodies. Meghan came to, and walked out of the woods, naked and bleeding badly. A flagman working a few yards away at the railroad tracks, Alton Bruso, saw her, ran over to her, she asked for help, and he and a few coworkers, Howard Constantine and Alfred Laidman, called the police. From a distance Alton thought Meghan was wearing a red bathing suit, she was that bloody.

It took just over a week to find Jamie and Louie. Neither showed any remorse and neither seems to have a conscience.

After they were arrested and Louie's house was searched, officers found in the basement a lot of pornographic photos of Louie's fifteen-year old sister, Lisa, that her father had taken. She said he'd been molesting her since she was four and told her she'd only have to 'do it' until she was eighteen. Louie and his older brother said they'd been molested by their father too. The father, Butch, got a prison sentence of only 6-15 years for molesting Lisa, so he's been out a really long time. I don't know if he was questioned about molesting his other children.

Louis- Born 10/29/64. He's 5'7", stocky, very dark hair with thick eyebrows and a unibrow. He's been violent his whole life. He didn't say how long he'd been molested by his father. He came from a poor family. There was no mention of what his IQ was. He's the second oldest of five children, and was born to teenage parents. At the time of his arrest he was on probation for assaulting a college girl, Candy Hackett, four months before. She was walking along one day when Louie showed up beside her. She got scared so engaged him in conversation in hopes he wouldn't hurt her and it worked for awhile. He later confessed to the author via telephone from prison that he'd intended to rape Candy.

Almost two years before killing Melissa, days before his fifteenth birthday, he'd been arrested for attempting to rape his thirteen-year old sister, Lisa. One day at home he forced her to get naked, he got naked too and laid on top of her but didn't penetrate her. She told their mother and the mother called the police. I don't understand why Lisa told on him yet didn't tell on her father for molesting her for years.

He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 45 years, which was the maximum sentence he could have been given. He was imprisoned in Missouri, then Wisconsin though I don't know where he's currently incarcerated nor can I find an inmate photo. He'll be 51 this October.

Jamie- Born 9/20/65. He's blond, 6' tall, lanky with acne pitting on his face. He has a low IQ of only 78, which is 'borderline impaired to delayed'. He reads at the first grade level. There was no mention of physical or sexual abuse in his past. He's violent too, at least with his siblings, but there was never any attempted rape. I don't think he actually raped Meghan though he tried but said his penis wouldn't fit. I wish who did what had been made a bit more clear.

He was released from a juvenile facility when he turned eighteen in 1983. He has no prison record and his crimes have been erased from the records since he was under the age of sixteen when the crimes were commited.

An Arizona newspaper headline from May 1984 read 'You can rape, and you can kill, and then you can move to Arizona and change your name'. That's the first time anyone knew where Jamie was located since he was arrested. It was rumored that after his arrest he was sent to Pennsylvania to serve his measly two year sentence. Maricopa County Superior Courts (Arizona) records showed that in December 1983, shortly after his release, he'd applied to have his name legally changed and his wish was granted the following month. His name was changed to John W. Barber. He'd lived with someone for a short time in an apartment in Arizona and after moving, left a forwarding address in Vermont. He'll be 50 this September.

In 1984 Jamie's twenty-year old brother was murdered. You can read about that here.

MY THOUGHTS: This was a really well written book. I learned of it by searching older true crime books at Amazon very recently. Jamie and Louis's backgrounds were explored, as were the backgrounds of the parents.

Unfortunately there aren't any photos of Jamie, Louie, or Melissa in it but there are online newspaper articles with Jamie and Louie in them, but they're hard to make out. I wish the author had interviewed the parents of Jamie and Louie.

You can see Melissa's grave here.
This story was done on Killer Kids in 2011. It's season 1, episode 3. 7:30 into the episode this story starts. You can watch it here. The author is interviewed for it.

You can read the case summary at Valley News.
In 2007 Melissa's younger brother, Judd, was arrested for sexual assault. You can see his photo here. I found a Vermont television station's post on Facebook from 2012 advertising a 'where are they now' update on the case but couldn't find the actual update video so I have no idea what's going on with anyone involved with the case.

EDIT: I did find a story from 2013 that the station did. It says that Meghan is living a 'full rich life'. It says too that Louie has been in a Colorado prison since 2000 but I can't find him listed on the Colorado Department of Corrections site.

BURIED MEMORIES: MY STORY, REVISED EDITION by Katie Beers and Carolyn Gusoff

PUBLISHING INFO: Beaufort Books, 4/2015
ORIGINALLY PUB: Titletown Publishing, 2/2013
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir/True Crime
SETTING: New York & Pennsylvania
MY GRADE: A

FROM PUBLISHER: In 1992, nine-year-old Katie Beers was kidnapped by a family friend and locked in an underground box for 17 days. Katie has now come forward to tell the story that created a national media storm as reporters uncovered the truth about her pre-kidnapping life of neglect and sexual abuse and the details of her rescue. She shares how this experience and the recent death of her kidnapper, John Esposito, has affected her life. Despite the horrible reality of Katie's days of being chained in darkness, the kidnapping was, in fact, the climactic end of a tragic childhood and the beginning of a new life. Katie breaks her silence and reveals her inspiring healing process to the journalist who covered the story of the disappearance more than twenty years ago. "Buried Memories" is the only source that includes the complete details of her traumatic childhood, transcriptions of recordings from Esposito, a first-hand account of how Katie felt after Esposito's death in 2013, and Katie's hopeful view of the future as she looks back into her dark past.

MY THOUGHTS: What a disturbing read. I like that the narration shifts from Katie to Carolyn Gusoff, who was a television reporter who actually covered Katie's case. We get more than one person's perspective on the story. One chapter will be written by Carolyn and will be about her experiences with reporting on this case at the time it was happening, and the next chapter will be written by Katie, and so on throughout the entire book. The revised edition has a few extra chapters with both authors. I thought it was very well written and informative, honest and very sad. There were many black and white photos of most of the people talked about in the book, peppered throughout the book.

The only thing that could have made this book better is if Katie's mother, brother, and piece of sh!t godmother had been interviewed for this. I really would have liked to hear what her brother had to say about his own childhood. A pretty brief summary on this case can be found at Wikipedia. You can see interviews with Katie on Youtube.

This case is similar to one from the 1970's involving a fourteen-year old boy named Paul Martin Andrews.

I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.