Join us Saturday 9/13 for our Author Event with Hillel Levin - journalist, true crime writer, and author of several books including his latest Submerged: How a Cold Case Condemned an Innocent Man to Hide a Family's Darkest Secret. Hillel will be read from his latest work, share insights into his process and be available for book signings right here at Glendora Bookshop.
about the book…
In March 1993, sixteen-year-old Rayna Rison was abducted outside the La Porte, Indiana, veterinary hospital where she worked. A month later, her body was found submerged under tree limbs in a rural pond. Police targeted her brother-in-law, Ray McCarty, as the prime suspect. Although a grand jury indicted him for the murder in 1998, prosecutors later dropped the charges. Then in 2013, county officers arrested Jason Tibbs, Rayna's middle-school boyfriend, convicted him, and sentenced him to forty years in prison.
After a two-year investigation, drawing on dozens of interviews and more than a thousand pages of police files, author Hillel Levin completes the case against McCarty, following clues and leads that detectives overlooked. In the process, he reveals startling new information about the killer's murder weapon and accomplices, and uncovers the politics and misconduct that enabled the prosecutor to convict Jason Tibbs. Although cold cases are celebrated in popular culture, Jason's trial shows the perils they can pose for innocent defendants.
At the heart of Submerged is the tragic story of Rayna Rison, an exceptional young woman with a promising future whose family and justice system failed to keep her from harm.https://www.hillellevin.com/
about the author…
Hillel Levin’s reporting has appeared in The Nation, New York magazine, Monthly Detroit magazine, Metropolitan Detroit magazine, and Chicago magazine. He was executive editor of Metropolitan Detroit and editor of Chicago magazine. In 1984, he wrote Grand Delusions: The Cosmic Career of John De Lorean (Viking). In 2004, he wrote When Corruption Was King (Carroll & Graf) with Robert Cooley about Cooley’s central role in the FBI investigation of mob influence on Chicago’s courts and political system. “Area Two,” his Playboy article on Chicago police misconduct, co-written with John Conroy, won a 2011 Headline Club Peter Lisagor Award. His docudrama play, Assassination Theater, was produced in Chicago in 2015 and based on his Playboy article, “How the Outfit Killed JFK.” His 2010 book In With the Devil (St. Martin’s Press), which he wrote with James Keene, was about Keene's undercover mission to crack a serial killer in a federal prison and was the basis for the Apple TV+ series Black Bird. https://www.hillellevin.com/about