The Forest City Killer

September 2, 2019
In 1969, in the town of London, Ontario, the bludgeoned body of 15-year-old Jackie English was found in Big Otter Creek, and Det. Dennis Alsop spent the next 40 years hunting for her killer until his death. In this moving account, Brown (The Grand Old Lady: A History of Hotel London) gains access to Alsop’s files, reexamines the still open case, and interviews the surviving witnesses and suspects. What she finds is that the so-called Forest City Killer may have been active before English’s death and continued into the ’70s, and can be connected to several suspicious fires that claimed the lives of witnesses and friends of English. Alsop eventually links seven homicides, but was the Forest City Killer one man or two? After five years of research, Brown thinks there may have been two men who were “like-minded murderers”: David Bodemer, who confessed and was sentenced to life in prison for the non-capital murder of one of the seven victims, and Glen Fryer, who was acquitted on a charge of attacking a witness to one of the murders. Both men are currently alive. Brown thinks it’s possible that through message boards and true crime sites further facts may come to light, but the Forest City Killer case is still unsolved. Brown’s smooth prose is a plus. True crime fans who don’t need conclusive answers will be well satisfied.

October 15, 2019
In late 1960s-early 1970s London, Ontario, panic filled the streets as young women and children were disappearing at an alarming rate, and even today their murders largely remain unsolved. Brown, a lifelong resident, is an established researcher and her knowledge of the area comes through with her own personal interjections about parts of the city. Brown takes the reader down many different paths, which all converge near the end of the book. First readers are introduced to Jackie English, a young lady who went missing in October 1969. After that, Brown covers others who went missing, whose bodies were found days, or even months later. Each victim is introduced to allow readers to get to know them as people, rather than just victims. Brown delves into their backgrounds, and even interviews friends and relatives to get their perspectives on the crimes. Though Brown proposes her own theory about the Forest City Killer, she presents evidence in such a way to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. A must for true crime fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)