The Killing Jar is based on the true story of Ted Lynch (his fictitious name), one of the youngest Americans to be charged with a capital crime and sentenced to death. In 1978 in the insular hollows of Eastern Kentucky, neighbors know that Ted is being starved, living in squalor and being verbally abused by his fanatically religious mother. But instead of intervening they make his plight grist for the local gossip mill. Ted’s teachers are aware that this straight-A student is growing strange and using drugs and alcohol to cope, but they do little to change the situation. It isn’t until fifteen-year-old Ted murders his seven-year-old neighbor that anyone pays much attention to the abhorrent conditions under which he has been living. The resulting swirl of anger and desire for vengeance, along with moral indignation and blind religiosity of the community, turn Ted’s first trial into a circus. With a weak court-appointed attorney representing him and a corrupt judge as overseer, Ted is found guilty and sentenced to death at the age of sixteen. While spending nine years of his young life in the foreboding Kentucky State Penitentiary, known as “The Castle of Cumberland”, Ted makes friends with the men on the row. Among them is a notorious rapist and murderer who becomes Ted’s closest friend, remarkably showing him a kindness that he has never experienced before. With poor psychological help on the inside, Ted’s delusions fester. There is little hope until the defense team of Glenda and Devon McKnight, together with psychologist Robert Newport, becomes involved. They are determined to save the life of this troubled and mentally ill young man, but can they convince a jury of Ted’s insanity? Co-authored by Ted’s psychologist, this telling looks at the circumstances, the pathology, the warning signs, and the trigger of a heartbreaking and senseless tragedy compounded by the ignorance of a community bent on blind revenge.

The Killing Jar - Based on a True Story

Biographies & Memoirs

Nixon-John, Gloria

Noelker Ph.D., Robert Skip

True Crime

Neverland Publishing Company, LLC

Think 1950s: a time when movie starlets had coke bottle bodies, wavy hair, legs as long as the state of Florida. You get the picture, the picture that was everywhere but in the mirror propped on the dresser in Gloria’s sad bedroom in her make-do bungalow. To make matters worse she is the daughter of Italian immigrants in a Wonder Bread neighborhood. What sets Gloria apart is the fact that she pays attention, enough attention to discover that the neighborhood local war hero is a pedophile, that her best friend’s mother is a Nazi sympathizer. What makes her different is what she learns from her father when the first black family moves into the neighborhood on Detroit’s east side, and what she learns about her own, sometimes dark heart when the homes of the affluent kids are literally picked up and moved to make way for the I-94 Expressway. What makes her different is what she learns from the books she sneaks out of the adult section of the public library. Books about love, sex, and sorrow. What makes her just like every other girl is the crush she has on the neighborhood leather-clad bad-boy. Written in accessible narrative verse, the subtle rhythms and metaphors are engaging. As a glimpse into the profound and often melancholy moments in a young girl’s life, the theme is timeless.

Learning From Lady Chatterley

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

The Dark Safekeeping

Literary

Mayapple Press

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Books by Nixon-John, Gloria