His process is both immersive and bizarre.
Several decades later, Gage is in town to investigate the lesser-known crime, to see whether he can sift out the truth and bring the real story to light. A local teenage murder had been turned into the critically acclaimed movie River’s Edge, raising the ire of residents who felt they’d been incorrectly and unjustly portrayed by the film. The investigation into their murders ended quietly and with no convictions, possibly due to the town’s reluctance to return to the national spotlight after another recent brush with infamy. On Halloween night 1986, a slumlord named Evelyn Gates and her prospective real estate buyer Marc Buckler were shockingly slaughtered in one of her properties, an abandoned porn store that had been eerily redecorated by squatters. Eventually, that lands him in Milpitas, California, following a lead from his editor. Since then Gage has gone where the stories have taken him. Gage’s book was a solid seller, spawning a movie that increased his fortunes and allowed him to devote his time to writing more books in the genre. Four days from now you’ll do what you have to do, and, when your story is assembled by the powers that have agreed to do the telling, meaningless details will be woven into a story that would seem absurd to anybody if they weren’t all proceeding backward from its bloody end. But when you finally go to trial, almost a whole year from now, you’ll learn better, and feel trapped. There are just the stories people tell each other, who knows why. How, in this age, are grown-ups still afraid of a witch? Spells, curses, bloody sacrifices: none of them really believe in any of that, do they? It’s just for fun, that stuff. She was convicted and sent to the gas chamber by a jury composed of people in the grip of the Satanic Panic that was sweeping over 1980s America.Īs a college undergraduate, Gage was understandably infuriated on Diana’s behalf, writing:
The prosecution instead wove a legend from the presence of various occult items in her home, painting her as a supernatural temptress whose murderous ways were finally ended when she was found with the dismembered remains of Gene Cupp and Jesse Jenkins. Her inexplicable decision to get rid of the bodies instead of calling the cops led to the state refusing to countenance her claim of self-defense. Gage had been three years old when high school teacher Diana Crane killed two students who had broken into her house and assaulted her. Gage Chandler is a true crime writer whose first big success came fairly early on in life, covering the details of the case that came to be known as the White Witch of Morro Bay.
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