February Meeting

Wednesday
February 11, 2009
7:00 p.m.
Borders Books and Music
91st and Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas
Speaker: Nicolette Bennett

Visitors Welcome. Please join us!

Attorney Nicolette Bennett will speak on Deadbeat Parents. She’ll talk about legal requirements and how offenders are apprehended. Ms. Bennett works for the Kansas Department of Social Services and Rehabilitation Services. She is the manager of twenty-seven other SRS attorneys.

Dinner
We meet at 5:30 at Macaroni Grill before the meeting. Please join us. Ask for the Partners in Crime table. No reservations required. The restaurant gives us separate checks.

Coupons
Everyone who attends the meeting receives a 20% coupon off all mysteries. You don’t need to be a member to attend the meeting or receive a coupon.

Membership
Please tell others about Partners in Crime. Until the last several years, we had large crowds, but they have dwindled—although our last two meetings were well attended. We need new members and new ideas if we are to continue as a chapter. Please submit your ideas for members, speakers, or publicity to anyone on the board and tell your friends, neighbors, and co-workers about Partners in Crime.

If you know a member who is not getting meeting reminders, please let me know his/her correct email. If you want to be removed from the list and not receive the Partners in Crime newsletters or meeting reminders, contact Marie at rmcgerules@msn.com and Bobbie at bsmith1900@aol.com , and we will remove your name. If you have a friend who is interested in joining and wants to receive a newsletter or a reminder to try out the group, let us know his/her email address.

Dues
Local dues are $10.00. To join, see Treasurer Lisa Harkrader or take a local membership application from the blue folder, complete it, and give it and your check to one of the officers or mail it to Lisa. National memberships applications are also available.Visitors Welcome—please join us!

January Meeting

Wednesday
January 14, 2009
7:00 p.m
Borders Books and Music
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, KS
Speaker: Norm Ledgin

Visitors Welcome—please join us!

Norm Ledgin will speak about his bestselling book, Diagnosing Jefferson: Evidence of a Condition that Guided His Beliefs, Behavior, and Personal Associations. Described as a “forensic biography,” Diagnosing Jefferson examines Thomas Jefferson, one of the United States’ most brilliant presidents and his many behaviors that match the Asperger’s Syndrome diagnosis. A second book, Asperger’s and Self-Esteem, published in 2002, has been translated for distribution in France.

Norm Ledgin was born Passaic, New Jersey, and holds degrees in journalism and political science from Rutgers University. In the early 1950s, his protests against the nuclear arms race and for civil rights led to Ledgin being blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. In his long and varied career, he has worked as a journalist, journalism professor, traffic safety manager, and newspaper editor and publisher. The parent of an autistic son, Ledgin is a nationwide speaker on autism, often with Dr. Temple Grandin, NY Times best-selling author of Animals in Translation. He is now semi-retired in Stanley, Kansas.

The meeting begins at 7:00 pm, but members and others are welcome to join us at 5:30 pm at the Macaroni Grill, across the parking lot from Borders.

New Officers
A new year means a new slate of Partners in Crime officers. These members have agreed to serve for 2009:

President: Jill Draper
Program Director: Marie Gerules
Treasurer, Web Maven, and Publicity Chair: Lisa Harkrader
Meeting Reminder Chair: Bobbie Smith
Booking Agent (Bookie for short): Janice Campbell

Upcoming Meetings
February 11, 2009
Our speaker is not yet confirmed, but we promise the program will be terrific.

March 11, 2009
Suzanne Lieurance, The Working Writer’s Coach, will speak about how to become a working freelance writer.

April 8, 2009
Thomas Fox Averill, award-winning author and Writer-in-residence and Professor of English at Washburn University in Topeka, will speak about his writing.

November Meeting

Wednesday
November 12, 2008
7:00 p.m
Borders Books and Music
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, KS
Speaker: Bill Ouseley

Visitors Welcome—please join us!

Bill Ouseley is a retired Supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad, Kansas City Field Division after a 25-year career with the FBI. He spent over 20 years in fighting organized crime activity. He will speak about his new book Open City: True Story of the KC Crime Family 1900-1950 and have copies of his book to autograph. See http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/764788.html.

Book Synopsis
A riveting new biography about organized crime in Kansas City, Open City documents an era that continues to hold great fascination for history buffs as well as lovers of mystery and drama. It relates the roots of the secret crime societies of southern Italy and Sicily. When they arrived in Kansas City, they became known as the Black Hand. From modest beginnings, the development of the criminal outfit is traced through Prohibition, its alliance with the Pendergast Machine, the roaring 20s and the birth of La Cosa Nostra. The story is told by a man who chose a career to fight the crime families of Kansas City. William Ouseley, who at one time held the position as Supervisor of the Organized Crime Squad, then spent years researching the rest of the stories and facts that led the city to be known as a center for organized crime activity in the first half of the twentieth century. The book that could be a novel is amazing in its detail. Many of these stories have never been published.

August Meeting

Wednesday
August 13, 2008
7:00 p.m.
Borders Books & Music
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas
Speaker: Marie Gerules 

Marie Gerules, one of the founders and first presidents of Partner in Crime, is a former skip tracer and debt collector. Marie will discuss Elderly Fraud.

Dinner
Join us for dinner at the Macaroni Grill at 5:30 PM before the meeting. Reservations are not required. Ask for the Partners in Crime table. The restaurant gives us separate checks.

July Meeting

Wednesday
July 9, 2008
7:00 p.m.
Borders Books
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas
Speaker: Frank Denning, Johnson County Sheriff

Our July speaker, Sheriff Frank Denning, will discuss DNA and DNA Legislation. Frank has been serving the law enforcement community for over 35 years. He joined the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department in 1978 as a Deputy serving in the Adult Detention Center. In 1996, he was appointed Chief of Police with the City of Roeland Park, Kansas, and served that community until his appointment as Undersheriff of Johnson County from August 2002 to April 2003.

Frank’s wife of 20 years, Robin Lewis, was a former Johnson County Prosecutor who is now an attorney in private practice.
 

June Meeting Report

Becky Ray, a paranormal investigator with the group Paranormal Activity Investigators, the Kansas City area representative for the American Ghost Society, and a co-host of the Internet radio program The Darker Side of the Moon, spoke at our meeting on Wednesday, June 11, 2008, about Ghost Stories and Urban Legends of Kansas City.

Becky explained that the term paranormal means beyond or outside the normal and covers anything that is unexplained. Her group visits sites, documents what goes on there, and tries to find out why things are happening. They first investigate whether odd occurrences have normal, natural causes, such as power surges or even mice in the attic. Ninety percent of their research takes place in the library as they track down the history of a reportedly haunted site, including the people who lived or visited there in the past, anyone died there, and whether tragic events ever happened there.

One of the problems paranormal investigators run into in this area is that Kansas City residents and business owners often do not want to talk about possible hauntings in their homes or businesses. They do not want negative publicity or the trespassing and vandalism that often occur at sites widely believed to be haunted.

One exception is Kansas City’s Union Station. Many people, including employees, have reported seeing and/or hearing ghostly activity in the station. In 1933, prisoner Frank Nash was killed in the infamous Union Station Massacre, his head nearly severed from his body by the gunfire. In years since, people have reported seeing a ghostly man sitting on a bench overlooking the grand hall—missing his head. Workers have heard mysterious foosteps and voices after hours when the station is deserted. They have reported faucets turning off and on in bathrooms when no one is there. The tunnels under station were used as temporary morgue for fallen soldiers during WWI. In those tunnels today, people report hearing voices and seeing a mysterious porter in an old-fashioned uniform. Other ghostly sightings include a blonde woman in black 1930s apparel walking up and down the stairs to what used to be the women’s washroom and a man’s face staring out of an upstairs office window when no one is in the office.

Other sites Becky’s group has investigated include the John Wornall House in Brookside, at the site of the Civil War Battle of Westport, and the historic 1859 Jackson County Jail in Independence. These two sites offer haunted tours at various times of the year.

June Meeting

Wednesday
June 11, 2008
7 p.m.
Borders Books and Music
9l08 Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas
Speaker: Becky Ray

Our June speaker, Becky Ray, will discuss Ghost Stories and Urban Legends of Kansas City. Becky is a paranormal investigator in the Kansas City Metro area with over 20 years of experience. She is a member of the local group Paranormal Activity Investigators and is also the Kansas City area representative for the American Ghost Society. She is also the co-host of the Internet radio program The Darker Side of the Moon.

Becky has visited many historically haunted locations including Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Cal-Neva resort in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Join us for dinner at the Macaroni Grill at 5:30 PM before the meeting. Reservations are not required. Ask for the Partners in Crime table.

Future Speaker
Johnson County Sheriff Frank Denning will speak at our meeting on Wednesday, July 9, 2008.

May Meeting

Wednesday
May 14, 2008
7 p.m.
Borders Books and Music
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas
Speaker: Joel Goldman

Our May speaker will be popular Kansas City author and retired attorney Joel Goldman, who will discuss “Writing Courtroom Thrillers.”

Joel Goldman is the author of a series of legal thrillers about criminal trial attorney Lou Mason, including Motion To Kill (2002), the Edgar-nominated The Last Witness (2003), Cold Truth (2004), and Deadlocked (2005), which was nominated for a Shamus award and has been optioned for film. His latest novel, Shakedown (2008), marks the beginning of a new series featuring FBI Special Agent Jack Davis.

He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and is an adjunct faculty member at Southern Methodist University where he teaches in SMU’s Masters Degree program in Conflict Management and Dispute Resolution.

Joel Goldman will be the Toastmaster at this year’s Great Manhattan Mystery Conclave, October 31–November 2, 2008, in Manhattan, Kansas.

PinC Member Wins William Allen White

Airball: My Life in Briefs, a middle-grade novel by Partners in Crime member L.D. (Lisa) Harkrader, has won this year’s William Allen White Award for 6th–8th graders.

Established in 1952 to honor the memory of renowned Emporia newspaper editor William Allen White, the White Awards program is the nation’s first statewide reader’s choice award. It is directed by Emporia State University. This year, over 50,000 Kansas students cast votes to select the winning books. A Dog’s Life: The Autobiography of a Stray, by Ann M. Martin, won the award in the 3rd–5th grade category.

The awards will be presented at the 56th annual William Allen White Children’s Book Awards ceremony Saturday, October 4, 2008, at William Lindsay White Auditorium in Emporia. The event caps two days of activities ranging from author autographs to story telling, attracting school children from across Kansas.

April Meeting

Wednesday
April 9, 2008
7 p.m.
Borders
91st & Metcalf
Overland Park, Kansas

Our April speaker Rose Marie Kinder is a writer, editor, and teacher. She earned her degrees at the University of Arizona at Tucson. After receiving her Ph.D. in 1990, she returned to the Midwest to teach at the University of Central Missouri (UCM), where she became editor of the then annual, in-house, student publication Pleiades (now Pleiades: a Journal of New Writing), and began its transition to a semiannual, national journal. Kinder developed and coordinated the creative writing program at UCM. She is currently editor emerita of Pleiades, reads fiction for that journal and for New Letters (University of Missouri, Kansas City). Professor emerita, she continues to teach at the university level, and leads workshops, discussions, and programs in various venues.

Kinder’s short fiction has appeared primarily in literary journals, most recently in Zone 3, Descant, and Notre Dame Review. Two collections of her stories have been published, A Near Perfect Gift (University of Michigan Press, 2005) and Sweet Angel Band (Helicon Nine Editions, 1991). She also writes genre pieces such as “Jeremy,” which appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and was anthologized in The Deadliest Games: Tales of Psychological Suspense, and “The Elm Witch” in After Hours. Her first novel, An Absolute Gentleman, is a literary thriller—a psychological study of a serial killer.