Murder at 75 Birch - Softcover

Glen telephoned his brother Neil: "Help! Come over to my house!" Neil rushed over, saw Glen lying semi-conscious on his living room floor, and called the police. The cops found Glen's wife Betty upstairs, strangled in her bed. Circumstantial evidence pointed to adulterous Glen as the killer, but some were suspicious of Neil because he didn't check on Betty himself. (One moral of this well-told story is how maddening it can be when your behavior isn't exactly what the police consider to be normal.)

Richard Pienciak has a pleasing, meticulous style that reassures readers they're being told everything he knows, without speculation or dramatization. As Andrew Vachss writes in the New York Times, "This is a reporter's book, and for those who consider journalism a true art form it is a real find. As multilayered as any novel, but handicapped by the lack of a manipulable ending, Murder at 75 Birch tells this fundamental truth: So-called facts are always secondary to interpretation."

Wilkes-Barre, Pa., dentist Glen Wolsieffer, married and the father of a daughter, carried on two adulterous relationships, one of long duration. On August 30, 1986, police called to the family's home found his wife beaten and choked to death and Wolsieffer laying injured on the kitchen floor--in the opinion of some, pretending to be more seriously hurt than subsequent hospital tests indicated. Several police and legal officials believed Wolsieffer was the murderer, but interrogation proved fruitless. They then turned to his more vulnerable brother Neil, the first person to enter the house after the slaying and the one who summoned the police, pressing him with questions almost to the point of harassment; in October Neil died in an auto accident later ruled de termined to have been a suicide. Pienciak ( Deadly Masquerade ) masterfully reviews the case, arriving at the same conclusion reached by most of those involved (including a jury that found Wolsieffer guilty of third-degree murder): the dentist probably killed his wife, but proof was by no means conclusive. Wolsieffer is currently free on bail while appealing his conviction. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.