To The Last Breath: Three Women Fight For The Truth Behind A Child's Tragic Murder - Softcover

Stowers, Carlton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312968191 ISBN 13: 9780312968199

Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime Classics, 1999

Synopsis

On January 22, 1994, two-year old Renee Goode played happily with her sisters and cousin, as the four of them enjoyed an impromptu "slumber party" at the home of her father, Shane Goode. The next day she was dead.

The local medical examiner could not determine the cause of little Renee's death. But her mother Annette and grandmother Sharon were convinced she'd been murdered--and that they knew the identity of Renee's killer: her handsome father, Shane Goode, a manipulative, emotionally abusive man who displayed virtually no interest in Renee--until he took out a $50,000 insurance policy on her life.

With the help of a courageous female police investigator and Assistant DA, Sharon launched a case against Shane and had Renee's tiny coffin, lovingly filled with her favorite stuffed animals, exhumed from its final resting place. And her small corpse revealed what her grandmother had suspected all along: cold, calculating Shane Goode had murdered his own daughter to cash in on her death.

To the Last Breath is the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

About this title

Review:

The story opens with somber drama: The body of a 2-year-old girl is removed from her grave and transported to a hospital for a second autopsy. In the small Gulf Coast town of Alvin, Texas, the bereaved mother, the child's grandmother, and the female detective who has risked so much to champion their cause, await the opinion of a visiting pathologist. Carlton Stowers, whose Careless Whispers won the 1987 Edgar Award for fact crime, brings all the right skills to this tale of a sullen, possessive man who liked to play cruel mind games on his loved ones and apparently killed his young daughter in a slow and deliberate fashion. Perhaps at the end, we don't really know why he did it, but we will have come to know and admire the three women who fought for justice.

From the Publisher:

This book, To the Last Breath by Carlton Stowers, won the 1999 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's True Crime Classics
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0312968191
• ISBN 13: 9780312968199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272