Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, The True Story of Murder in a Small Town,begins on a steamy August night with two teenagers, brother and sister, on an evil mission deep in a rural Michigan forest. For one desperate moment headlights appear on the lonely access road. Will they be found out? Thus the story of one ofstate’s strangest criminal cases unfolds. Girl breaks up with boyfriend. He turns violent. She disappears without a trace. Then state police investigators set out on what at first looks like a fool’s journey. The story is colored by a bizarre Ouija board death prophesy and the roles of two psychics, a former practicing witch and a handsome young artist who is suspected of Satanism. The canny and elusive suspect taunts police and seems always to be one step ahead of them. When a key witness is daunted by uncharacteristic injuries, a mysterious medium tells him he is the victim of black magic practiced by the suspect’s grandmother. And when, after eight years,the suspect finally is brought to trial, he is represented by a Roman Catholic priest.

This true story of murder in a small town became one of the strangest criminal cases in Michigan history. The disappearance of a 17-year-old girl after she ended a stormy relationship with her boyfriend went unsolved for nearly eight years. The paranormal dimensions of the story -- tales of witchcraft, black magic and the remarkably accurate predictions of psychics -- read like something out of a Stephen King novel. The prime suspect, a handsome Mexican-American who was 19 at the time of his former girlfriend's disappearance, taunted police for years, seemingly confident that he would never be called to account. At trial, he was represented by a Roman Catholic priest. After the trial, several people with ties to the case were struck by tragedy that a mysterious medium blamed on black magic being practiced by the killer's grandmother.

Richard W. Carson grew up in Detroit, and graduated from Cooley High School. He attended Ferris State College at Big Rapids and appeared unspectacularly as Christian de Neuvillette in a campus production of Cyrano DeBergerac. Carson later transferred to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and, having wisely abandoned his interest in the stage, majored in English. In 1967, Carson joined the staff of the Huron Daily Tribune, a small daily in Michigan’s Upper Thumb area. There he worked as a general-assignment reporter, was promoted to editor, and received awards for excellence in editorial and feature writing as well as news, sports and feature photography. Small-town life, which always appealed to the city boy, gave way to career opportunities in 1981. After nearly 15 years at the Tribune, Carson accepted a position as a section editor at The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. Soon after, he was promoted to editorial writer and, in 1988, to editorial page editor. In the latter capacity, Carson supervised a nine-member staff of writers and editorial cartoonists. In 2003, after 22 years with The Dispatch, Carson retired and began to pursue his passion for writing a detailed account of the Robin Adams murder case. In this connection, he refers to himself as “the writer of last resort,” given the persistent rumors that several others planned to write such a book soon after the murder trial ended, though, ultimately, none did. Commenting on the timeliness of Fruit of the Poisonous Tree, Carson said, “I wish I could have finished the book sooner but I’ve learned painfully that writing non-fiction is like taking the wheel of a runaway train. You never know when the story will stop and I wonder if this one has even now.” Carson, a widower, lives in Gahanna, Ohio, in close proximity to his three grown children, Denise, Rich and Danielle, and six grandchildren.