The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts

Starred review from February 22, 2016
When Tillman moved to Brownsville, Tex., in 2008 for a job at a local newspaper, she was assigned to write a story about the local debate over whether to demolish an apartment building where, in 2003, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered and decapitated their three small children. Tillman becomes increasingly interested in the crime and how the proposed destruction of the building was the catalyst for the community to wrestle with it. In order to fully understand the family involved in the crime, she traces their place in their south Texas community and explores the violent history of the region. Did Rubio, who orchestrated the murders, truly believe his children were possessed by demons? Why did Camacho go along with it? Tillman's persistent, gritty journalism reveals that the case is more complicated and nuanced than the headlines would indicate. But still another question persists: how does a community cope with the long lasting effects of such a revolting crime? This thought-provoking portrait of a murder implicates the community at large and forces the reader to grapple with the death penalty, which Rubio is sentenced to. Tillman's book exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that does not settle for easy answers. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.

March 1, 2016

The best true crime can be gutting to read. Journalist Tillman's intense, well-written, and yet horrific account explores the lives of a young couple who murdered their three children. The author examines the building in which the family lived, the neighborhood, its residents, and the border town in which they all reside. Tillman goes beyond the question of "why" and delves into the geographic, racial, class, and cultural divides that shape poverty-stricken Brownsville, TX. Her correspondence and meetings with the children's father are at once heartbreaking and disturbing, and Tillman's explanation of her own feelings as she engages with him deepens the narrative rather than distracts. She follows the shockwaves of his actions through the community and local justice system, interviewing lawyers for both sides and documenting their philosophical and moral attitudes about crime, mental illness, the death penalty, and the nature of good and evil. VERDICT For readers who prefer thoughtfulness to titillation. The murders may not have been widely known outside of Brownsville, but this book will be.--Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT

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