Author’s Debut Book Rocks!
Review by Kim Cantrell
Melissa “Katie” Autry was a 19-year-old Freshman at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when she was pulled from her burning dorm room. Firemen, police, and medics would soon discovered that she had intentionally been set on fire in an obvious effort to destroy evidence.
Who would do such a thing to this young girl?
The investigation that followed would be tangled with information and a slew of seedy characters.
Katie had grown up in a foster home after she and her sister were removed from their mother. During her young adulthood, Katie was known for being extremely promiscious as well as a dancer at a local gentlemen’s club.
Just hours before Katie was discovered, she had attended a frat party. Witnesses said that she was extremely intoxicated and had been given a ride back to her dorm. One of the indivuals in the vehicle was Stephen Soules.
Although he had a reputation for being a mooch and a thief, Soules wasn’t know for violence. Yet he was the one who got out of the car with Katie, claiming that he just wanted to check on her, and therefore became police suspect numero uno.
With a little urging from police, Soules eventually told a horrifying story about Katie being raped and murdered at the hands of his good friend, Lucas “Luke” Goodrum, a lazy, good-for-nothing, tough-guy wanna be with a penchant for being physically abusive toward women.
And in steps the race and class cards.
Soules was mixed-race and from an impoverished background. Luke, on the other hand, was white with a mother who had married into the Turner family – founds of the Fortune 500 company Dollar General Store.
Soules had a public defender for his attorney. Goodrum had a defense team that only plenty of money can buy.
One would be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The other would be acquitted of the charges. Can you guess which one is which?
Author William Van Meter provides an in-depth recounting of the well-publicized and much-talked-about murder of Katie Autry in his 2010 true crime book Cruel Heart. (This book was previously published under the less attention-grabbing name of Bluegrass in 2009.)
Although Van Meter states that it is his intention to provide all the information for readers so that they can come to their own conclusions, it’s not too difficult to ascertain his stance. But in all fairness, Goodrum was found not guilty and so therefore has to be presumed innocent; although I admit I’m not sold on it.
From Katie’s childhood to her biological mother’s efforts to collect money from the University for her daughter’s death (and my guess is she’d never hand it over to the state to repay the cost of foster care for her daughters), from lazy bums’ carousing ways to a suspicious death of a stepfather a couple of years after his stepson’s murder trial, Van Meter leaves nothing out of this hillbilly tale of abuse, drugs, drink, sex, and murder.
Even though I don’t necessarily agree with his opinion, I will sing Van Meter’s praises for a well-written, nicely organized, and spell-binding first book. Kudos and applause to William Van Meter for a debut book that leaves me anxiously awaiting his future books!
Want to read Cruel Heart? Here’s where to get it:
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