Contested Accounts in Killing Cousins

From a stalled inquiry to a suspect

OJ Modjeska’s Killing Cousins is the second Murder By Increments book. Los Angeles investigators are struggling to resolve a serial-murder case when an arrest in another state changes the direction of the inquiry. The account then turns toward the suspect and the information emerging about his life.

That shift gives readers a specific reason to consider this volume: attention moves from the difficulty of finding a suspect to examining a person’s background and account. It is an investigation-focused entry into the series, with questions about how the emerging information should be understood.

Biography and allegation require different questions

Childhood history and possible connections to killings in Rochester, New York, widen the account beyond the initial investigation. The possible links create questions about the suspect's past and the reach of the inquiry. Examining them requires attention to how each connection is proposed and what information bears on it.

The biographical material gives readers another perspective on the suspect without settling every question around him. Childhood experiences, later accounts, and possible links to other crimes perform different roles in the inquiry. The interest lies in examining how the author brings those kinds of information together.

Reading disputed explanations carefully

Conflicting explanations of the suspect's behavior add another layer to the account. The investigation has moved from searching for someone to considering a person whose past and statements need scrutiny. Killing Cousins follows that narrower problem, asking readers to attend to competing accounts as well as the events investigators are trying to explain.