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Welcome
Taphophilia (dot) Com...
A repository of morbid curiosities:
Thanatology and Taphophile Issues, Cemetery,
Funeral Industry and Death Related News.
What's New at Arcadia
Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 14 May 2006 |
A Death in Belmont By Sebastian Junger (Norton, $23.95)
Review by John Dicker
One autumn day in 1963, the mother of a yet-to-be best-selling author was invited down to her basement by an as-yet-to-be-convicted rapist-murderer. Something was wrong with the washing machine, he claimed, with a look she would later say was "indescribable"—in a bad way. Her instinct was that if she'd gone down the stairs, she'd never have made it back. However, she opted not to report the incident, since nothing technically happened.
That man was the Boston Strangler.
Albert DeSalvo was then part of a small construction crew working on the house of the parents of Sebastian Junger, still in diapers and three decades away from writing A Perfect Storm. What a coincidence! Not a bad book idea either, right?
And it gets even more lurid. The next day, neighbor Bessie Goldberg was raped and murdered only a few blocks from the Junger's home. The killing had all the signatures of a series of crimes that had been plaguing Boston for the last two years, and yet DeSalvo was never linked to it. Instead, the man charged and convicted was a petty criminal and alcoholic named Roy Smith, the last person inside the Goldberg's home. He'd been dispatched by an employment agency to do some cleaning work. An African American in a city so racially polarized, his very presence on the streets of Belmont inspired a phone call to the police. Smith was subsequently sentenced to life for murder (but not rape). He died soon after his pardon in 1976. Meanwhile, DeSalvo's sensational confessions weren't always supported by the evidence; convicted for other slayings, he was killed in prison in 1973, but never mentioned the Goldberg murder.
OK, by now you're probably thinking, like me: Wow, this is going to be a great true-crime account, in the tradition of In Cold Blood. Unlike Capote, however, Junger wasn't there—not for the crime, trial, or aftermath, which is Belmont's great shortcoming. In Junger's comprehensive exhumation of the Boston Strangler case, he explores many possibilities about the Goldberg murder, and while the book's starting point is his personal connection, this element is never overplayed. Belmont covers a lot of ground, from the pathology of serial killers to race relations in northern cities of the early '60s to the Mississippi of Smith's youth. It's also very much about an imperfect justice system. While at times the book feels thin and occasionally delves into melodrama, there's seldom a dull paragraph.
Goldberg's family has criticized Junger for factual inaccuracies and accused him of trying to exonerate Smith and indict DeSalvo, which Junger has denied. Reading Belmont, it seems clear that Junger believes, with a lot less than absolute conviction, that DeSalvo likely was the killer. In this way, the book is at odds with itself: The author posits a fascinating story with more than a few speculative scenarios, but the reporter can't back it up. http://seattleweekly.com/arts/0618/belmont.php
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