Ripped from the headlines: Where do we draw the line?

Sandra Parshall

I know a woman who could be transferred to the pages of a novel exactly as she is, to become a marvelously twisted character. She would be a plausible killer because of her unmatched talent for holding a grudge and her relentless vindictiveness. She would make an even more believable victim because everyone who knows her longs to be rid of her.


I’ll probably use her in a book sooner or later. But regardless of how accurately I try to portray her, the minute she hits the page she’ll begin to morph into something else, a fictional woman. A character. She will live in a world the real woman has never known, and respond to events and pressures unique to the story she’s in. As the pages and scenes and chapters wear on, she will become less and less the real person I know and more a creation of my own imagination.


I was thinking about all this a few days ago while listening to Laura Lippman talk about her books, which she said were all inspired by actual events. When one book, What the Dead Know, was published, Laura felt she had to publicly acknowledge that the story was inspired by the disappearance of two young sisters in suburban Maryland in the 1970s. I’m not sure she had to address the issue at all. Children disappear every day. There have been other cases of young sisters disappearing together. At the time of the case Laura had in mind, the sisters’ disappearance was little known outside the Washington-Baltimore area where it happened. But what’s most important is that, other than the disappearance itself, her story had absolutely nothing in common with the actual events, or the lives of the real girls and their parents.


Today, of course, 24-hour cable TV would make the simultaneous disappearance of two young sisters an international story, and the whole world would hear about it, day after day, every hour on the hour. In far-flung locations, TV viewers would stare at photos of the smiling girls and grow teary-eyed when contemplating their probable fate. The voracious news machine would scoop up every scrap of information or gossip and put it on the air within minutes, without bothering to verify it. Crime stories, as reported on round-the-clock cable, can become so detailed and sensational that no writer’s imagination could envision anything to top them. Drawing inspiration from today’s news might mean laboring for a year on a story that will be stale by the time it appears in book form. Even if you change significant aspects of the crime and its solution, the story may still seem overly familiar to readers -- and the real people involved won’t look kindly on your creative endeavor.


The folks who put Law & Order’s “ripped from the headlines” shows on the air can snatch up a sensational story and turn it into fiction much faster than a novelist can, and an episode may go on the air while the horror of the real crime is still unbearably raw for the victims and their families. In a few cases, L&O has come up with its own version before the real crime was even solved. The “characters” are eerily like the real people, with no effort made to disguise them beyond name changes.


A recent Washington Post story – which you can read here -- reports that many people whose worst nightmares show up on L&O feel “blindsided and used” and find the experience, on top of the tragedy they’ve suffered, deeply disturbing. “We’re trying to heal,” said a man whose young son and housekeeper were murdered in a still-unsolved case, “and to have it constantly dredged up is painful.” No one from the program or network contacted the family or alerted them that the show would be aired. The older brother of the murdered boy called the program “sick.”


Law & Order and its spinoffs have used hundreds of real cases over the years, loudly advertising them as “Ripped from the headlines!” while simultaneously claiming that they’re pure fiction, depicting no actual person or event. Such a claim is usually enough to protect creative work from libel and slander charges, but that might be changing. Since 2004, L&O has been fighting a lawsuit over a program that aired in late 2003, and despite efforts to have the suit dismissed, it was recently cleared for trial. The eventual outcome could make a difference in the way television crime shows are written.


Will it make a difference to novelists? Combined with the over-exposure many crime stories receive now, would a judgment against Law & Order be enough to make writers stop combing the news columns and cable networks in search of inspiration? I almost hope so. Unless we have Laura Lippman’s ability to take the germ of a situation and turn it into something brilliantly original, maybe we’ll write better books if we stop trying so hard to be topical and rely on our imaginations to provide us with material.


I’ll go on using real people as the starting points for characters. I’ll probably put the awful woman I mentioned earlier in a book someday, but I know she'll be someone else, a fictional person, by the time I'm done. I hope no one ever reads something I’ve written and exclaims, “Oh my god, that’s me. She stole my life!” I don’t want that kind of guilt – and I don’t want the lawsuit.

Why?

Fifteen years ago this month, on a deserted back road near St. Antoine, New Brunswick, seventeen year-old Marcel Cormier and his fourteen year-old girlfriend, Marcia LeBlanc, were parked in Cormier’s car. It was late. It was cold. I always imagine the two of them wrapped around each other on that November night, young and in love in the way you can only be the first time.

Those were the last moments the two teens would spend together. The next day Marcel Cormier’s body was found in the car. He’d been shot. Marcia LeBlanc was missing.

RCMP interviewed a lot of people in the days after the crime, including Roger LeBlanc (no relation to Marcia), who they knew had spent time at an after hours bar not far from the crime scene. A day after being questioned by the authorities, Roger LeBlanc disappeared At first police thought he’d gotten lost while out hunting. Very quickly they discovered Roger LeBlanc had vanished into the woods by choice. RCMP and Search & Rescue volunteers went over the area for any sign of Roger LeBlanc or Marcia LeBlanc. Some of Roger LeBlanc’s belongings were found in a nearby river, but there was no sign of him.

The rumours began almost as soon as LeBlanc went missing. He was long gone—in Ontario or farther west one story went. Others insisted Roger LeBlanc knew the area around St. Antoine like the back of his hand, that he was hiding, living in a part of the woods so dense no one would ever find him. And of course there were whispers that he was dead.

Despite the rumours, no one knew if Roger LeBlanc knew anything about the murders. Could he be a killer? Was he a witness? Had he just been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Maybe he knew nothing.

And where was Marcia LeBlanc? Her father refused to believe she was dead, refused to stop looking for his child, refused to give up hope as the days turned into weeks and then months. He searched the woods and back roads and it was impossible not to hurt for him, or hope—even just a tiny bit—with him. And impossible not to grieve for him when Marcia LeBlanc’s remains were finally found.

Why? That was what everyone wanted to know. Why would someone—Roger LeBlanc or anyone else—murder a couple of teenagers? Did they see something? Did they stumble on another crime? A drug deal? An assault? Why?

There were no answers in the Marcel Cormier-Marcia LeBlanc murders. The case is still listed on the Unsolved Crimes section of the RCMP’s website.

Why? Why do people do what they do? What drives someone to kill another person? What drives someone else to try to catch the killer?

A number of years ago science fiction author Nancy Kress was a columnist for Writer’s Digest magazine. She talked about the need for writers to answer the question “Why?” in one of her columns. In the real world, she explained (I’m paraphrasing) people do things for silly reasons, stupid reasons or for no reasons at all. But in a fictional world your characters better have reasons for the things they do and those reasons better be good ones.

In the fictional world the whys have to be answered. When I think about Marcel Cormier and Marcia LeBlanc I wish the whys had to be answered in the real world as well.

Real Mysteries, Fictional Mysteries

by Julia Buckley
I suppose one of the reasons that I like reading mysteries is that I like suspense, but I also like to see resolution. Mysteries that follow the rules always show a solution to the puzzle in the end, ultimately ending the reader's suspense.

I suppose that's why real life mysteries can be so compelling, can stay with us for years and years, why we even form conspiracy theories--Marilyn, JFK, UFOs and Roswell, et cetera.

A mystery like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart therefore takes on legendary signficance, as does the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby (although that one, tragically, was solved).

On this day in 1999 the plane of JFK Junior plunged into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, killing him, his wife, and her sister. Although their plane was found and their bodies were recovered, this remains something of a mystery to me: Why did this happen? Why did he take the plane if the weather was so threatening? Did they know what dire straits they were in, or were they blissfully unaware until the moment of impact? And why do the Kennedys seem so plagued by tragedy?

Because of the real mysteries all around us, I don't think that writers of mystery could ever be at a loss for questions to drive their own narratives. In the case of my own writing, I begin with a great many "what if" scenarios. What if a woman who died was able to come back to life? What if her "death" gave her insight into the identity of her murderer? What if she tried to implicate him, and no one believed her? Those were the questions that elicited my first book.

But the great thing about being a writer is that you can read any random item in a newspaper or hear a snippet of something on the news, and it can trigger those questions, the questions that demand a solution. WHY would a man expect to be believed when he says his wife shot him in the leg, then shot herself and their children to death? WHERE is the Illinois woman who has been missing for weeks while her estranged husband claims to know nothing about it?

I want resolution to these mysteries--I'm sure everyone does. But even after one is resolved, another one will emerge. These are the mysteries, after all, of human behavior, which can rarely be predicted.

In fiction, though, we can take that human world, shape it, and make sense of it, one mystery at a time.