He has facial hair, strategically carved into a small goth-styled goatee, and a pair of soulless eyes scarier than those of Charlie Manson. But, to the astonishment of police and expert profilers, the methodical killer who kidnapped, assaulted, murdered, and dismembered schoolgirl Jessica Ridgeway in early October 2012 defies all educated guesses and statistics: He is only 17-years-old.
Turned in by his own mother, teenager Austin Sigg confessed to police On October 23, 2012 that he was in fact the person they’d been searching for, and was then promptly taken into custody. Thus ended a massive nationwide manhunt for an elusive, and sometimes taunting, predator who’d been mistakenly described by criminologists and law enforcement agencies as most likely an adult Caucasian male, between 18 to 30 years of age, sexually deviant with a criminal record.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
