Few people have heard about Duclod man, unless they were college girls who received one of the weird letters accusing them of sexual deviancy. I read the account of one student, Sarah Asell, with interest, particularly since I’d graduated Grinnell (Iowa) College some years before her. Duclod man’s letters, written in crude block characters you’d see in a ransom note, began in 1992.
These threatening, wacky missives then spread to students at Dartmouth and other colleges. The recipients were referred to by the serial writer as “duclods.” Duclod was surmised to be a contraction of “dually closeted,” referring to the girls’ sexuality. According to Sarah Aswell, writing in The Advocate, it was 14 years before she learned the identity of the Duclod man — and confronted him. You can do your own detective work into the case by starting at Wikipedia.
This is a teaser of a mystery and it was several years before I was able to weave it around a crime story featuring my Newark Detective Mike Mullally as the main character. You can read it now at Over My Dead Body!, at http://overmydeadbody.com/janus.html.
Mullally has appeared in several short stories, notably “Chain of Events,” also published by Over My Dead Body! in 2010 (at http://www.overmydeadbody.com/giersbch.htm). And he’s the MC in the novel Goodbye, Stockholm that’s nearing publication. True events are often the catalyst for my tackling a story. In the case of "Janus Man," fiction in no way trumps the strangeness of reality.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment