REVIEW
Death Cruise by Don Davis
Macmillan St Martin's True Crime Library pbk
ISBN 0-330-34865-5 £4.99
Latest in a series of accounts of sensational crimes by Davis, this is the story of a mother and her two daughters, farm people from Ohio, who head off for a vacation in Florida, leaving her husband behind running the farm. In the wrong place at the wrong time, a terrible fate is waiting for all three. A brutal and sadistic murderer lures them on to his boat for a sunset cruise of Tampa Bay and, when far enough away from shore, rapes and murders them, throwing their bodies, weighted down with concrete blocks, overboard.
It was to take five years before the perpetrator was eventually found, sentenced and executed after a far reaching enquiry crossing several state boundaries and involving a massive effort on the part of the police, helped by the media. False leads abound and the case, in the end, rests on the connection with another, earlier rape of a Canadian woman which had never been solved. The picture of the character of the murderer which emerges is sometimes surprising in its banality, at others indications of his potential and actual capacity to destroy, surface clearly. Oba Chandler finds it easy to charm women and get them in his power. The detail which reveals his personality and actions shows a man who can con his way through while, at the same time, carelessly conveying to others information about the crimes he has committed. Through a lucky, for him, combination of circumstances, he manages to escape the long arm of the law for a long time. Davis gives a full and interesting account of the difficulties of the police investigation and the implications of crossing state boundaries on legal matters. One fascinating detail is of the part played in the eventual catching of the murderer by a computer with the name of H.O.L.M.E.S. The author's final account of the trial and the whole range of personalities involved in it make compelling reading. (P.E.D)