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By the lights of absolutely everyone who ever knew her, Katie Autry never harmed a hair on a dog's head.
She came from a tiny village in Kentucky. The State moved her as a child into a foster home in a town so small it had one stoplight. New to her own beauty and a little awkward, Katie had the biggest smile on her high school cheerleading squad. In September 2002, she matriculated as a freshman at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. She majored in the dental program, but as it was for many college students her age, partying was of equal priority. She worked days at the smoothie shop, nights at the local strip club, and fell in love with a football player who wouldn't date her.
Five feet two in heels and without a bad word to say about anyone, Katie Autry was sweet, kind, and utterly naïve. She was making the clumsy strides of a newborn colt, discovering what the world was like and learning to be her own person. And on the morning of May 4, 2003, Katie Autry was raped, stabbed, sprayed with hairspray, and set on fire in her own dormitory room.
In telling the true story of this shocking crime, Bluegrass describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men, whose lives seem preordained to intertwine, are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high school dropout, atthe scene, and Lucas Goodrum, a twenty-one-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and an inauspicious history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this tale is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes.
With the keen eye of a talented young journalist returning to his southern roots, Van Meter paints a vivid portrait of the town, the characters who fill it, and the simmering class conflicts that made an injustice like this not only possible, but inevitable.
- Sales Rank: #392491 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Free Press
- Published on: 2009-01-06
- Released on: 2009-01-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .90" w x 6.00" l, .88 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 240 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
In 2003, college student Katie Autry was brutally raped, stabbed and set on fire in her dorm room at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. Returning to his hometown, journalist Van Meter explores Autry's murder, and the subsequent investigation and trial. But his scattershot approach leaves the account as full of holes as the suspects' alibis. Authorities tracked down several people who'd been at a fraternity party Autry had attended before focusing on Stephen Soules, a high school dropout who at first said he'd had consensual sex with the drunken girl in her dorm. But Soules blamed the murder on Luke Goodrum, a 21-year-old with a history of domestic violence. Despite mounting evidence implicating Soules, Goodrum was tried for the crime, while Soules—who now claimed Goodrum forced him to rape Autry—agreed to testify in exchange for life in prison, thus avoiding a capital trial. Instead of exploring the glaring legal errors that ran rampant during the investigation and Goodrum's trial, Van Meter instead cobbles together a melodramatic narrative that doesn't do Autry's tragic death justice. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The murder of Katie Autry would seem to have it all, true-crime-wise. Attractive coed is raped and killed in her dorm room, and her corpse set afire. Authorities quickly determine she was at a frat party the night before, so the always-enjoyable drunken witnesses and suspects come into play. Then DNA evidence points to a high-school dropout who claims to have had consensual sex with her but later contends to have been forced to rape her by a pal he also fingers for the murder. Oddly, the coppers believe him. Unfortunately, Van Meter’s disorganized chronicle dissipates much of the excitement and prosecutorial glee one might expect. What could be a scathing look at a prosecution gone awfully wrong turns into a weepy narrative with more to say about the quaint college-town setting than the carnival of investigative and prosecutorial missteps that would seem to be the real story here. Imperfect though it is, Bluegrass should still satisfy dyed-in-the-wool true-crime fans, if not much of anyone new to the genre. --Mike Tribby
Review
"Characters and events alike in Van Meter's harrowing and mesmerizing account of a Kentucky co-ed's murder are etched with photographic clarity, as the narrative moves toward its end with a sort of doomed inevitability." -- William Gay, author of I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down
"William Van Meter's Bluegrass is not just a story of "murder" but of race, class, gender, region, etc...there are many layers of moral universality in this small-town murder case that far outreach the suburbs of Southern Kentucky in their magnitude. Van Meter resists all the easy traps of the exposé-chronicler with his elegantly interwoven investigation of Bowling Green's harrowing homicide triangle, involving an unforgettably winsome young college co-ed and the two young men--economically and culturally worlds apart and yet historically and socially bound--who are implicated in her baffling murder....This is narrative non-fiction packed with the overpowering magnetism of a sensationalist page-turner, yet Van Meter infuses it with a literary astuteness in the vein of the best of our New Journalism forefathers. Plus, he picks a story to tell that too many of us missed; the Katie Autry case is so mind-blowingly chilling it's evidence once again that real life hands-down surpasses fiction in enormity. It took me to a universe I had never been, and yet one I know I won't be able to shake off soon." -- Porochista Khakpour, author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects: A Novel
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Teenage Wasteland
By MJS
New titles are published in the True Crime every year but new voices are rare. Anyone who cares about the genre has to wonder when the next Ted Olsen or Darcy O'Brien or Shana Alexander is going to arrive. Or wonder is they'll ever arrive at all. A new voice has arrived with Bluegrass.
The lives of three young people, all barely out of their teens, intersect as a typical college frat party. The girl gets her heart broken, gets drunk, acts out and then gets tossed out. One of the boys has spent the party passed out in a pickup truck after an all too successful pre-party. The second boy is unimpressed by his first frat party. By morning the girl is in ICU suffering horrific injuries. The investigation and murder trial that follow leave many questions unanswered.
William Van Meter tells this story with nary a trace of hysteria and what's even more impressive is that he also does it without an ounce of condescension. Life in semi-rural Kentucky would be filled with only alcohol and Ten Commandments road signage in the hands of other writers but Van Meter avoids the clichés. He shows us the aimless lives of the two boys and the semi-aimless life of the girl, their stunningly bad choices and their almost innocent kindnesses. His occasional commentary on their lives is devastating in its brevity. Case in point is his assessment of Stephen Soules: "a sluggish existence wholly in the present - a life structured around `chillin'."
This is the rare true crime book that is successful despite a genuine ambiguity about what actually transpired. Van Meter never hands the reader an easy out of "this is what I think happened", leaving us to sort it all out for ourselves. It's not a perfect book, the writing could stand a bit more polish in places but this is Van Meter's first book I'm willing to overlook a few rough edges when the overall content is this good. At 240 pages this is a short book well worth the time of any True Crime fan. Highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Exceptional Book
By K. Andrews
This is hands down one of the best books I have ever read. The author, William Van Meter, returns to his hometown to investigate the brutal murder of Katie Autry and the people involved.
What benefits this book so much is the fact that Van Meter has no agenda; he's not here to preach against college drinking or rant about the breakdown of family values. No judgment is passed; he simply tells the story and allows you to draw your own conclusions- that makes for excellent investigative writing.
It is clear Van Meter is a journalist through his writing style, he is descriptive enough that the readers can place themselves there, but he avoids being long-winded and rambling. This skill is especially effective in his descriptions of Kentucky; I've never been there but I felt as if I were sitting next to Van Meter as he talked about the landscape, culture and people.
The outline of the book mirrors a Greek tragedy- the beginning of the story follows three people as they go about their lives, completely unaware of what is going to transpire a few days. As each detail brings Katie, Stephen and Lucas closer and closer to the party, the reader can't help but feel an overwhelming sense of doom.
Although this is a phenomenal book, be warned it is a very heavy book. I've read stories about crime for years and no other books have had that kind of emotional effect on me. It's been weeks since I read this book and I still think about Katie every day. At the same time I think it is important to know that these brutal, senseless things do happen in America. This is really well written book. I look forward to reading more William Van Meter in the future.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Murder at Western Kentucky University
By stoic
In 2003 someone raped and murdered a Western Kentucky University freshman named Katie Autry in her campus dorm room. Eventually, police charged two young men - Stephen Soules and Luke Goodrum - with the murder. The case became a local sensation. Bluegrass is Willam Van Meter's account of the case and his description of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the surrounding area.
Van Meter makes characters vivid to the reader. Also, his account of the murder is graphic and disturbing. Autry had been raised by foster parents and she hoped to find a better life at WKU. Instead, she fell into a "party" lifestyle and worked as a stripper.
Goodrum was a troubled man without ambition, in spite of his distant ties to the family that founded Dollar General stores. Also, he chronically abused the women in his life. Soules is more of a mystery, a weak-willed follower who blames his troubles on everyone else. Van Meter makes it clear that - in his opinion - Soules falsely accused Goodrum of the murder in order to avoid the death penalty.
Bluegrass also focuses on the local community around Bowling Green, Kentucky. This part of the book is unsatisfying. In describing the area, Van Meter falls back on the things that have been used to describe small-town America in the past: fundamentalist religion, lack of economic opportunity, and racism. Also, his portrait of WKU is very unflattering.
On the whole, Bluegrass is still an interesting book. True crime fans will enjoy it.
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