Handle with Care

He reminds me a bit of Caine, from that 70s TV series, Kung Fu. Shaven head, with just a bit of hair on top, a “last hurrah” of hair for a fifty-something writer and private investigator with jade beads around his neck. He’s the kind of person who’s learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Me, I’m just uncomfortable. I was under the gun, needing to complete a story on Writers in the Attic that was due two weeks ago, extended to no later than the middle of next week. The edits were all wrong, none of it sounded like me, and nobody wants that. At any rate, I was under the gun, like I said, but what a great opportunity. I’d been meaning to connect with J. Reuben Appelman, a previous year’s judge for the Writers in the Attic contest. I’d reached out to him in July, aiming to do a shoot sometime in the fall, not for any particular purpose, but just because his intro to the FUEL anthology was so evocative of the things we fall into in life. Now, being under the gun, it was crucial to make this happen real quick. Lucky for me, J was available the next day, after a busy week of interviews and events around his latest true crime story, While Idaho Slept.

After the murders, J went up to Moscow, originally “not even intending to write a book, I just went up to Moscow, got a hotel room and wasn't sure what I was doing there.” Everybody wanted to do the book about the gruesome murders of those four college students, but Harper Collins chose J, knowing he was a local who’d handle the case with the proper care, not go in there like “some schmuck with an aggressive agenda.” Heck, his own daughter used to go to that school, making it personal. J worked as a bouncer at Pengilly’s for some extra scratch to help pay her rent. The book project took a mere six months, but it’s all still fresh and sensitive. J’s objective is to provide needed context, even though we’re still smack dab in the middle of the story. He doesn’t even like to do this kind of work. But he’s good at it, and he feels obligated. It’s a way of “telling the stories of how communities repair after the visitation of this kind of violence, how the family members find hope, how they move forward into their lives. Who these victims were, what the landscape was, like, emotionally at the time.”

“Sometimes I wish I didn't do this stuff. Because there are a lot of better ways to be happy. There are a lot easier ways to make a living. There are a lot more spiritually cleansing ways to to exist with your peers and loved ones.”

Why do it at all?

“When I was a kid in the 1970s in Detroit, somebody tried to abduct me. At the same time, there was a series of unsolved child abduction killings around the Detroit area where I grew up, and they allegedly never found the perpetrator. They tried to get me into their car. I ran away, it was a stranger abduction attempt. Yeah, I got away, I ran away. I was like seven years old. Okay. And then I didn't tell my parents. I didn't tell anybody, because I was culpable in crime. This person had seen me shoplifting at a local drugstore, stuffing candy into my pants. This person saw me, I saw them see me do it. Right. And I assumed that they were security when they pulled up to me four blocks later and tried to get me in their car. Now we know now that's not how security works at drugstores. The security guard doesn't get in his car or follow a child four blocks away and try to get him into his car. That's not how security gets you. Right. They stop you before you leave the store if they're going to stop you. Right, and I just thought that was a security guard.”

Years later, as an adult, with the child abduction killings still unsolved, J spent a decade studying police files, evidence reports from the scenes, all the newspaper clippings, talking to family members. His personal connection led to an obsession with the details of the case, ultimately resulting in his first true crime story, The Kill Jar. The book was followed by a series, Children of the Snow. And a stint as a professor teaching human trafficking courses at Boise State.

So how’d you end up becoming a private investigator?

“I was working on my first book, reading murder files at Big City coffee downtown here on Grove Street. I spent about two years in that coffee shop, three or four days a week reading these murder files for The Kill Jar related to my research on the killer. And I kept running into the same woman who, unbeknownst to me, was a private investigator. And she kept asking me what I was doing, and I explained it, but she didn't tell me the work she does. And eventually she approached me and said why don't you come work for our company? And they taught me how to be a private investigator and that's, that was ten years ago. Okay? So just a woman saw me with murder files and poached me into her world.”

According to J, “there's just a sort of sense of comfort, sitting in my car, looking out from a quiet place. It feels almost like relaxing to be doing the surveillance work.” Working in a bar taught him how to defuse situations. He’s got that “dual skill set you need to avoid conflict: one is security in your own strength. And two is an unwillingness to start something with other people. So like I just feel like comfortable, confident, comfortable.”

Working on these books, J is aware that “it could all go away at any minute.” And yet, he perseveres. He’s a first responder, with his antennae always up, bringing insight and comfort to the families he writes about. His work is ongoing, not centered on resolution, rather, he’s focused on capturing the story as it unfolds, not necessarily knowing where it’s going or why he’s even here.

I started to read While Idaho Slept, but I’ll be the first to admit I’m a horrible reader. I start many books but don’t finish, so instead I show up for a conversation. Not an interview. We talk, and hang out. Shoot some photos out back in the alley. The sun hurts his eyes, but he’s a good sport. I would very much love to read the whole book, no matter how little I end up remembering. I’m just not going to make any promises. The story of the murdered college students is in good hands with Appelman. He cares deeply about his subjects, and brings them to life in exquisite detail. J’s story, as it unfolds, is also incredibly fascinating. He’s adamant he’s not on some sort of mission or heeding a call from God Almighty. He just happens to be adept at what he does, and so he continues to do his job, whether he likes it or not. It’s what people call “showing up.”

The conversation is over too quickly, but I’ve got twenty-three pages of transcribed notes, and dozens of photos to sift through. Now it’s my turn to do my job, to capture a bit of the essence of J. Reuben Appelman. Like J, I feel a need to tell stories, to shine a light on people you might not typically run into.

I find myself bringing up the topic of the murders with people I meet along the way. Like Izzy, our waitress last night at Eureka. She’s studying to become a flight nurse, and to work with the FBI or DEA, like her dad. She says she’s obsessed with the case, and that the suspect gave up his right to a speedy trial, so we may not know for years why he did it, or if there are others involved. Experts from all over the internet are chiming in. Rather than listen to the internet people, I suggest you get comfortable being uncomfortable, and read Appelman’s book. Not because I’ve read it, because I haven’t (yet), but because he’s the right man in the right place at the right time to handle this topic with care.