Kathryn Casey | |
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 Kathryn Casey at the 2009 Texas Book Festival | |
| Occupation | Crime writer, novelist |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Houston |
| Period | 1984–present |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
| Subject | True crime |
| Website | |
| www | |
Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.
In 1980, Casey moved with her husband to Texas, where she attended the University of Houston and earned a degree in journalism.
In 1984, Casey began writing as an intern at the now-defunct Houston City Magazine . She left two years later as a senior editor. She then worked for two years as editor of Ultra, a regional magazine geared toward wealthy Texans.
Casey wrote for Ladies' Home Journal , where she was a contributing editor for 18 years, [1] as well as More (magazine) , TV Guide , Rolling Stone , Seventeen , Reader's Digest , and Texas Monthly . During her years as a magazine journalist, Casey interviewed celebrities in the movie, television, and recording industry, plus presidents and first ladies. She covered subjects ranging from the Oklahoma City bombing, the aftermath of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, to infertility and the McCaughey Septuplets.
Casey's articles often examined sensational crimes. In the early 1990s, one case she covered for Ladies' Home Journal bout a serial rapist attacking Houston-area women, resulted in her first book, The Rapist's Wife. After its release, Casey concentrated on writing nonfiction, fact-based crime books.
Her seventh true-crime book covered the Matt Baker case in Waco, Texas, about the Baptist minister who was convicted of killing his wife and staging it to look like a suicide. [2] Baker, sentenced to 65 years, resides in the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a Texas state prison. Cy-Fair Magazine, upon the July 2012 release of the book Deadly Little Secrets , covered the Baker case and others in a feature article about Casey. [3] The Houston Chronicle also covered the release of the book. [4] Deadly Little Secrets was the inspiration for the film Sins of the Preacher, which aired on the Lifetime television network in September 2013. [5]
Casey then turned to crime fiction. In 2009, Booklist, the publication of the American Library Association, named Casey's debut novel, Singularity, one of the "Best Crime Novel Debuts of 2009" on its Bestseller Lists. [6] The main character in her mystery series is Sarah Armstrong, a Texas Ranger and a criminal profiler. In Singularity, Armstrong travels across Texas hunting a serial killer. Library Journal picked the third in the series, The Killing Storm, as a best book of 2010 in its mystery category. [7]
Casey's 11th book, Deliver Us, released January 2015 by HarperCollins, is based on murders along the Texas Killing Fields and Interstate 45. [8] In March 2014, Elle Magazine included Casey along with Agatha Christie, Jane Smiley, Edna Buchanan, Joyce Carol Oates, Gillian Flynn, Ann Rule and others, in a list of "The Ten Best Thrillers and Crime Writing by Women." [9]
Casey was a co-founder of Women in Crime Ink , which has been described by the Wall Street Journal as "a blog worth reading." [10]
In July 2011, she wrote an article for Forbes Woman about new options available to authors with the advent of eBooks and independent publishing. [11]
Her first foray into historical fiction, released in September 2023, was Angel Falls , inspired by the life of Ruth Robertson, a photojournalist whose 1949 expedition successfully measured Angel Falls in Venezuela as the tallest waterfall in the world. [12]
Author Ann Rule called her "one of the best in the true crime genre." [13]
She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband.
In 1995, Casey appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss The Rapist's Wife along with the subject in the title, Linda Bergstrom. In the years since, Casey has appeared on Oprah Winfrey's Oxygen Network, Court TV, Biography, Nancy Grace, E! Network, Investigation Discovery and the A&E.
In October 2006, she appeared on The Montel Williams Show to discuss women who unknowingly dated wanted criminals. [14]
She appeared in ABC's 20/20 November 2022 episode "Tainted Love" about the murder of millionaire businessman Steve Beard at the hands of his younger wife Celeste Beard. [15]
Casey was featured in the 2022 Netflix documentary miniseries Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields, directed by Jessica Dimmock. [16]
She speaks at book festivals and events, including the Texas Library Association convention, Southwest Louisiana Writer's Conference, Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend book conference, and the Texas Book Festival. [17]
Ann Rae Rule was an American author of true crime books and articles. She is best known for The Stranger Beside Me (1980), about the serial killer Ted Bundy, with whom Rule worked and whom she considered a friend, but was later revealed to be a murderer. Rule wrote over 30 true crime books, including Small Sacrifices, about Oregon child murderer Diane Downs. Many of Rule's books center on murder cases that occurred in the Pacific Northwest and her adopted home state of Washington.
Lisa Pulitzer is an American author and journalist. Pulitzer is a former correspondent for The New York Times newspaper. She is the author/ghostwriter of more than fifteen non-fiction books. In addition to her own books, Pulitzer has written a number of memoirs including several about young women who have escaped fundamentalist religion including Jenna Miscavige Hill, the former Scientologist, Lauren Drain, the ex-member of Westboro Baptist Church, and Elissa Wall, who wrote about her experiences after leaving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Pulitzer left journalism in 1998 while pregnant with her first child to concentrate on writing books and has had numerous publications on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Charlaine Harris Schulz is an American author who specializes in mysteries. She is best known for her book series The Southern Vampire Mysteries, which was adapted as the TV series True Blood. The television show was a critical and financial success for HBO, running seven seasons, from 2008 through 2014.
Diane Fanning is an American crime writer and author who writes nonfiction and mystery novels.
Snapped is an American true crime television series produced by Jupiter Entertainment which depicts high profile or bizarre cases of women accused of murder. Each episode outlines the motivation for murder, whether it be revenge against a cheating husband or lover, a large insurance payoff, or the ending to years of abuse, with each murder's circumstances as unique as the women profiled.
Cathleen Scott is a Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist who penned the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom, and was the first to report Shakur's death. She grew up in La Mesa, California, and later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr. Her hip-hop books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called the West Coast-East Coast war. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers.
Gregg Olsen is a New York Times, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal bestselling author of nonfiction books and novels, most of which are crime-related. The subjects of his true crime books include convicted child rapist and school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau, product tampering killer Stella Nickell, fasting specialist Linda Burfield Hazzard, and former Amishman and convicted murderer Eli Stutzman.
David Lynn Harris was an American orthodontist who owned a chain of offices along with his wife, Clara Suarez Harris. The chain was particularly successful, and the couple was able to afford an upscale home and lifestyle in Friendswood, Texas. On July 24, 2002, Clara Harris confronted her husband in a hotel parking lot over an extramarital affair, then struck and ran over him with her Mercedes-Benz sedan, killing him in an act of mariticide. She was convicted of sudden passion and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Steven Hayward Long, from Houston, Texas, was an American journalist, magazine publisher and author of three true crime books and one novel. He worked the three roles simultaneously, covering news events for magazines and newspapers while editing the monthly Horseback Magazine and researching books.
The Sarah Armstrong Mystery series is a fictional series created by true crime author-turned-novelist Kathryn Casey, first published by St. Martin's Minotaur in 2008. Booklist magazine named the first novel, Singularity, one of the top ten Best Crime Novel Debuts of 2009.
Mathew William Phelps is an American crime writer and investigative journalist, podcaster, and TV presenter.
Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder, by author and novelist Kathryn Casey, is a true-crime account of the killing of a pregnant woman whose body was discovered in 1999 in an upstairs closet in her home in Katy, Texas, near Houston. The book was published by HarperCollins in June 2010. Ms. Casey details numerous reasons that prove no one except David Temple had either motive or opportunity.
Deadly Little Secrets: The Minister, His Mistress, and a Heartless Texas Murder is a 2012 true crime book written by the non-fiction author and novelist Kathryn Casey and released by HarperCollins about the 2006 murder by Baptist minister Matt Baker of his 31-year-old wife, Kari Baker, and the staging of her death as a suicide.
The murder of Jennifer Cave occurred in the West Campus area of Austin, Texas. On August 18, 2005, Cave's body was discovered. In 2009, Chuck Lindell of the Austin American-Statesman called it the "most infamous West Campus crime".
True Crime Zine was an online magazine that reviews and critiques true-crime and fact-based books. It was also an online crime news aggregator. It was active between 2009 and 2013.
Michelle Eileen McNamara was an American true crime author. She was the author of the true crime book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, and helped coin the moniker "Golden State Killer" of the serial killer who was identified after her death as Joseph James DeAngelo. The book was released posthumously in February 2018 and later adapted into the 2020 HBO documentary series I'll Be Gone in the Dark.
Rebecca Morris is a New York Times bestselling true-crime author and a TV, radio and print journalist who lives in Seattle, Washington.
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer is a true crime book by the American writer Michelle McNamara about the investigation of the Golden State Killer. The book was released on February 27, 2018, nearly two years after McNamara's death and two months before an arrest would be made in the case.
Ali Mahmood Awad Irsan is a Jordanian-American convicted murderer held on Texas death row. He was sentenced for the murders of Iranian-American activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a friend of one of his daughters; and his son-in-law, Coty Beavers, in Greater Houston.
In Plain Sight: The Kaufman County Prosecutor Murders is a true crime account by American journalist and author Kathryn Casey of the 2013 murders of two prosecutors and a wife by a disgruntled justice of the peace. William Morrow released the book in March 2018.
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