0:08 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching. 0:30 [SPEAKER_01]: Hey everybody, this is Jama and Shane and I are back together again, and we have a really, very cool program for you. 0:39 [SPEAKER_01]: You're going to make somebody know and you may have heard about the book that she wrote, if you have gone to Amazon to look at my book, 1:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to tell you real quick how we met because we think there are no coincidences, but this is what happened. 1:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Stephanie is local as I am to the Eastern Shore and her book came out and the local newspaper did an article about her and those of you that have read my book, no who fill us is fill us is my driver slash buddy slash assistant. 1:24 [SPEAKER_01]: and Phil is who lives probably 45 minutes from me. 1:28 [SPEAKER_01]: She sent me the article and she said, look at this, this young woman wrote about her high school English teacher. 1:36 [SPEAKER_01]: So I read the story, shaking my head the whole time. 1:40 [SPEAKER_01]: And then I got in touch with Stephanie. 1:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We couldn't get her act together. 1:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So about, I guess about a month, we were actually able to meet. 1:49 [SPEAKER_01]: We exchanged books. 1:51 [SPEAKER_01]: we never stop talking. 1:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And with that, I want to introduce you to a wonderful, amazing, young writer, Stephanie Fowler. 2:01 [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, Gemma, thank you so much, and hey, same. 2:04 [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you very much for having me on the podcast. 2:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm delighted to be here. 2:07 [SPEAKER_02]: Stephanie, when exactly did your book get published? 2:11 [SPEAKER_01]: What was the date? 2:12 [SPEAKER_02]: So I released it locally to our area, the Delmarva Peninsula right after Labor Day of 2020. 2:19 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think the official date was like September 8. 2:22 [SPEAKER_02]: And then it released sort of nationally on November 1. 2:26 [SPEAKER_02]: So then that's when people could buy it on Amazon and all that. 2:29 [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted the local bookstores to have always been so supportive of me. 2:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to then kind of the first crack at it. 2:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So if somebody wanted it early, they had to go visit an actual local 2:39 [SPEAKER_02]: But then it ended up, of course, on Amazon and bookshop.org and through Barnes and Noble on November 1st. 2:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephanie, I'd like to know a little bit more about you and a little bit of your background. 2:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell me where you grew up? 2:52 [SPEAKER_02]: So I was born and raised to Eastern Shore Maryland girl right outside of the Salisbury Maryland and went to Parkside High School in Salisbury, which is where I met Alice Davis who ultimately becomes the subject of this book. 3:08 [SPEAKER_02]: And after graduating from Parkside, I went to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. 3:13 [SPEAKER_02]: One of the reasons I went there is because they have the Sophie Kerr Prize, which is the largest undergraduate literary ward in the country. 3:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'd always see myself as a writer. 3:23 [SPEAKER_02]: Ever since I was a little kid, I had been scribbling down sentences on paper and putting things together. 3:29 [SPEAKER_02]: I was a pretty voracious reader as a young kid. 3:32 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think sometimes being a voracious reader and then that inkling to become a writer, I think they're pretty linked. 3:40 [SPEAKER_02]: early on. 3:41 [SPEAKER_02]: So I decided that I would start writing little stories and things like that. 3:45 [SPEAKER_02]: I'll do my childhood going up and going into high school and then of course going into college. 3:50 [SPEAKER_02]: Writing was always a great passion of mine and it was always something I enjoyed and I loved. 3:55 [SPEAKER_02]: And that was when the reasons why I chose Washington College in Chestertown, because they had this Sophie Kerr Prize, and I saw that as a bit of a Mount Everest to cut actually win that. 4:04 [SPEAKER_02]: And so when I was at Washington College, I studied really hard, took every writing course that I could. 4:10 [SPEAKER_02]: And my whole life, I think writing was really terrible poetry. 4:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And then by the time I got to Washington College, I took some real writing courses. 4:17 [SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, became a short story writer. 4:24 [SPEAKER_02]: I was fortunate enough to actually win the Sophie Kerr prize and so that kind of made me feel like I could actually, I could actually do the writing thing so that's the my background to writing on that. 4:35 [SPEAKER_00]: and what inspired you to write the specific book? 4:38 [SPEAKER_02]: So what happened there unfortunately was someone I loved, much like Gemma, someone who I loved, someone who had inspired me met a terrible fate. 4:50 [SPEAKER_02]: So I mentioned a few moments ago that when I was at Parkside High School in Solvesbury, I had a teacher named Alice Davis, and she was my senior year English teacher. 5:01 [SPEAKER_02]: and that was a year that I was really struggling with a lot of things. 5:06 [SPEAKER_02]: My mom was very sick and there was a lot of things going on at home and the only person who really noticed I was struggling my senior year was Alice and she reached out to me, she became someone that I could talk to you, she became someone who 5:22 [SPEAKER_02]: I could confide in. 5:24 [SPEAKER_02]: She also understood that I love to write and took me under her wing and mentored me that way and she would always challenge my writing and if I turned in a bad essay, she'd always challenge me to do better. 5:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So she knew that I love to write and I love to read. 5:37 [SPEAKER_02]: And so she responded to that and challenged me and encouraged me. 5:41 [SPEAKER_02]: But then also on a personal level, she was the only person in my life that noticed that I was really struggling with some things. 5:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And 5:48 [SPEAKER_02]: She was the only person I could talk to. 5:50 [SPEAKER_02]: She became a safe harbor for me. 5:53 [SPEAKER_02]: And that year, I don't really know what I would have done. 5:57 [SPEAKER_02]: If she hadn't been in my life, and then after I graduated high school, and went off to college as she and I stayed in touch when I won this Oficar Prize. 6:05 [SPEAKER_02]: That night, I ran home, grabbed the phone book, and my mom's kitchen, and looked up her number, and called her, because I wanted her to hear it from me, and not see it on the news, or read it in the newspaper. 6:14 [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted her to know that. 6:15 [SPEAKER_02]: for me. 6:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And then after that, she asked me to come back and talk to her students. 6:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And so we kept in touch. 6:22 [SPEAKER_02]: And then over the Labor Day weekend of 2011. 6:27 [SPEAKER_02]: So we are all off of work on Monday. 6:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And then we all go back to work on Tuesday. 6:32 [SPEAKER_02]: And that is when the news broke that she was missing. 6:37 [SPEAKER_02]: And I'll never get my little sister called me. 6:40 [SPEAKER_02]: I was at work. 6:44 [SPEAKER_02]: And she asked me if I'd seen the news, and I said no, and she said that Alice Davis was missing, and that just made no sense to me because she was, you know, you're stereotypical English teacher who loves Shakespeare and she loved cats. 6:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And she was a very structured, very regimented person. 7:02 [SPEAKER_02]: So in the classroom, she said the pace and we all followed. 7:06 [SPEAKER_02]: She's a little bit like a general in that way. 7:08 [SPEAKER_02]: And so. 7:09 [SPEAKER_02]: It just made no sense that she would go missing because it sounded like maybe a kidnapping or it just didn't sound, we were only sure what was going on, but it didn't make sense that she would go missing. 7:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, we began to discover was that she had been murdered. 7:28 [SPEAKER_02]: Her husband had murdered her on the Sunday before. 7:31 [SPEAKER_02]: that Labor Day. 7:32 [SPEAKER_02]: So it was Sunday, September 4, 2011, and her husband, Jess Davis, brutally murdered her, and left her body in the woods near Princess Anne Maryland down on the eastern shore, not far from their home. 7:47 [SPEAKER_02]: And then he went home and called the police to report her missing. 7:52 [SPEAKER_02]: And so then that kind of kicked off a missing person investigation, 7:57 [SPEAKER_02]: on Monday and then into Tuesday, when everyone came back to work after being off for Monday at a holiday of Labor Day. 8:04 [SPEAKER_02]: On Tuesday, we all discover that's when the news really broke that she was missing. 8:09 [SPEAKER_02]: And so then it ultimately culminated with his suicide and then her body was found a few days later. 8:15 [SPEAKER_02]: It was a terrible, awful tragedy. 8:19 [SPEAKER_02]: The whole thing absolutely broke 8:24 [SPEAKER_02]: what a kind special, beautiful loving person she was with this horrific brutal. 8:34 [SPEAKER_02]: unthinkable end and it's something that I still struggle with. 8:37 [SPEAKER_02]: I still don't know how a person really makes comes to any sort of reconciliation with those two opposing notions. 8:46 [SPEAKER_02]: So that's really the way that I felt about her and the way that it haunted me and the way that I was left with all these questions ultimately and being a writer and always seeing myself in that light. 8:58 [SPEAKER_02]: I knew at some point I would want to write about her and write about what happens, and so I started working on this book. 9:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm being a mind-reader for everybody who's listening. 9:09 [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody out there was going, oh my god, it's just like Kathy says, Nick, and this is why Stephanie and I clicked, although we think we're like cool people anyway, she could be my daughter or my granddaughter. 9:20 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure which, but Shane, can you believe the number of similarities between the two cases? 9:26 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I have a lot of questions, too. 9:29 [SPEAKER_01]: I have picked Stephanie's brain for several. 9:32 [SPEAKER_01]: So you're allowed to do that. 9:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephanie did the police ever find a reason or a motive for her has been killing her. 9:40 [SPEAKER_02]: There was no real quote unquote reason or motive that they could discern. 9:45 [SPEAKER_02]: I think for the police, it was they had a missing person. 9:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And then they started the investigation. 9:50 [SPEAKER_02]: It was pretty clear from the beginning that whatever happens or her started with him. 9:55 [SPEAKER_02]: And then he committed suicide in the middle of the investigation and then four days later her body is found. 10:01 [SPEAKER_02]: So there wasn't a whole lot of focus for the police on the why because it bookended itself in a weird way the case kind of solved itself in a way. 10:13 [SPEAKER_02]: In my research, in my investigation and talking to all the people that I spoke with and going through all the documents and the Freedom of Information Act for all the police reports and all the sorts of things, what I do know was he was having an affair with a young woman and she was from the Dominican Republic. 10:34 [SPEAKER_02]: and he wanted to be with her and they had this relationship. 10:40 [SPEAKER_02]: I believe she got pregnant. 10:42 [SPEAKER_02]: That was what I understood from everyone I spoke to that she was pregnant. 10:45 [SPEAKER_02]: She ultimately miscarried, but the relationship was pretty serious between her husband and this other woman. 10:53 [SPEAKER_02]: And he had made statements about wanting to leave the country. 10:56 [SPEAKER_02]: He had made statements about opening up a business in the Dominican Republic. 11:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So there was this belief that there was this other woman. 11:06 [SPEAKER_02]: He wanted to go, would have this other life. 11:09 [SPEAKER_02]: He wanted to go do this other person. 11:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And Alice would never have left him. 11:14 [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think Alice would have left him. 11:17 [SPEAKER_02]: And she seemed pretty committed to the marriage 11:22 [SPEAKER_02]: So ultimately, I think the reason is he had other things that he wanted to do in all of that I could come up with. 11:31 [SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't see where this was premeditated exactly in terms of this was playing. 11:36 [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's something happened. 11:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I think there was a fight something flared him up. 11:41 [SPEAKER_02]: I think this sort of happened in the heat of a moment and then he had to deal with the fallout. 11:46 [SPEAKER_02]: It's not a great answer. 11:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We don't have a real hard and fast. 11:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Why? 11:49 [SPEAKER_02]: We just have a lot of things that we know about him and about his relationship with Alice, his relationship with this other woman, that kind of all point to him just being a loose cannon as it were. 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is a sign of strength. 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Start your journey today. 13:10 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes. 13:11 [SPEAKER_02]: In the autopsy report, the report says that it was blunt force trauma to the left side of the right behind her left ear. 13:18 [SPEAKER_02]: There was damage in that area that appeared to be consistent with a hammer strike, and it looked to be several hammer strikes. 13:28 [SPEAKER_02]: So the blunt force trauma would have that was that what they listed as the cause of death, but here is this. 13:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Jim, was it Kathy also murdered in that same fashion? 13:39 [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, she was, and Stephanie had shared with me last week that Alice was found in a landfill. 13:46 [SPEAKER_01]: Not a commercial one, but a place where people who lived in the neighborhood would leave their trash, which is exactly the kind of 13:55 [SPEAKER_01]: Stephanie and I really can't get over how many things we have in common. 14:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I have a compliment for her because she taught me a term I did not know before. 14:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Stephanie is a master of what she calls creative nonfiction. 14:11 [SPEAKER_01]: and the book itself, the reading of the book is so lush, it is so sensory, it is so three-dimensional that you can hear, smell, see, taste, feel everything that is being experienced by the people in the book. 14:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And on the other hand, her research is so comprehensive. 14:35 [SPEAKER_01]: How many pages of 14:39 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, gosh, there's probably 10, 15 money pages, something of, and that's just what I was able to list. 14:47 [SPEAKER_02]: We're called, gosh, I think there's probably end of 15 pages written sources. 14:52 [SPEAKER_02]: But, and that's not even everything. 14:54 [SPEAKER_02]: That was just like that what I thought were the most important. 14:57 [SPEAKER_02]: He says that I could find, but thank you very much for your compliments on my writing style. 15:02 [SPEAKER_01]: lots of me. 15:03 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just so enamored with your writing itself and I want to add that if you guys can imagine like a person at the Abby and Jama at the same time because a lot of the research Stephanie did firsthand. 15:16 [SPEAKER_01]: She did a lot of interviews and you know how I am about talking to people but she also did so much research on the history of the area and the small town of Allen where 15:28 [SPEAKER_01]: that it really blows my mind that she accomplished all this. 15:32 [SPEAKER_01]: But Shane, it's very similar to Kappie's situation. 15:37 [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of what Stephanie writes about is relationships between the people in the book and the people in the town and Alice in herself. 15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So it really delves into a place that 15:52 [SPEAKER_01]: story does not because ours is unsolved. 15:56 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's a little bit different in that sense, but that writing is truly incredible. 16:01 [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess this would be a good time for people or probably wondering stuff, can you explain what the Sophie career prize is and who she was? 16:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. 16:12 [SPEAKER_02]: So the Sophie Kerr Prize is the largest undergraduate literary award in the country, and it is an award that is specific to Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. 16:24 [SPEAKER_02]: There was a lady named Sophie Kerr, who was from Denton, Maryland, which is in Caroline County, on the Dumbar Peninsula. 16:31 [SPEAKER_02]: You start a short with us. 16:32 [SPEAKER_02]: She was a writer. 16:34 [SPEAKER_02]: She was a novelist back in the early 20th century and she wrote a lot for like ladies magazines and she wrote some sort of love stories and some women's what we call, I guess, like early women's lit. 16:48 [SPEAKER_02]: And in the 40s, Washington College gave her an honorary degree at one of the commencement's as colleges often do. 16:56 [SPEAKER_02]: They give an honorary degree to the commencement speaker. 16:59 [SPEAKER_02]: Well, 17:00 [SPEAKER_02]: That year it was Sophie Kerr and Eleanor Roosevelt who both got honorary degrees from Washington College at the commencement. 17:08 [SPEAKER_02]: And Sophie was so taken with Washington College in the school that she bequeathed a large portion of her estate to Washington College to really set up a 17:20 [SPEAKER_02]: community and an environment that was falster and encouraged young writers. 17:26 [SPEAKER_02]: And so part of the award was to set up a program where you could bring big-time writers to campus to talk with the students and give readings. 17:37 [SPEAKER_02]: I know when I was there I saw Joyce Carol Oads and there was just a 17:42 [SPEAKER_02]: another part of what she left went to setting up an award that would be given to a senior graduating from Washington College and there were certain requirements about what the portfolio had to be. 17:55 [SPEAKER_02]: Basically, it was up in denny senior, not just English majors, but we would basically put together a portfolio of our writing and then submit that to the committee and then the committee would look at the work and then they would select one. 18:07 [SPEAKER_02]: The reason why I say 18:12 [SPEAKER_02]: is because the year that I won, they handed me a check for $62,000. 18:17 [SPEAKER_02]: So it's a very large monetary literary award. 18:24 [SPEAKER_02]: So that was pretty wild to be 22 years old and in the present of the college, can't you check for $62,000? 18:31 [SPEAKER_02]: I think it was $62,99. 18:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm 34 so I think to be exact for what it was. 18:37 [SPEAKER_02]: So I was very honored to win that award. 18:39 [SPEAKER_02]: I honestly, I did not think it would win, but I put together a portfolio of short stories about the Eastern Shore. 18:46 [SPEAKER_02]: Real people, real places, real events, real stuff that happened. 18:49 [SPEAKER_02]: Research them, they told them in my own way. 18:51 [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a strict reporter in terms of one might pick up a newspaper and read a newspaper. 18:57 [SPEAKER_02]: I prefer to have a style that's more of a story teller, you know, I try to, when I'm writing, I envision me in the reader sort of sitting down next to a fireplace and I'm going to tell you this story or we're sitting around a campfire and I'm going to tell you the story about this old ghost town and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. 19:16 [SPEAKER_02]: I see myself more as a story teller and you made it up point earlier talking about relationships and I think that's one of the things that really that 19:27 [SPEAKER_02]: After the murder of Alice, the big question for me was, what now, what do we do now, what do we make of now? 19:35 [SPEAKER_02]: And I just kept coming back to what was left behind. 19:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And that really ended up being one of the things that I dug my teeth into. 19:44 [SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of times we true crime, we talk about the gory details. 19:48 [SPEAKER_02]: We talk about the terrible things that happened. 19:52 [SPEAKER_02]: But I didn't want that to be the story that got connected to Alice. 19:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Some people would talk to me and I would mention her name. 20:01 [SPEAKER_02]: They would say, oh, wasn't that the teacher that got murdered? 20:03 [SPEAKER_02]: Or I heard her husband did this or they would say these things. 20:06 [SPEAKER_02]: It always bothered me that she was so closely connected to her worst day. 20:10 [SPEAKER_02]: And so... 20:12 [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to write a story about her. 20:14 [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to write a book about her that was just gory details. 20:17 [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted people to know what I knew of her. 20:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's pretty similar to what you felt with Sister Kathy says, Nick, is that who these people were to us? 20:29 [SPEAKER_02]: is not what they became in terms of headlines and Google searches. 20:34 [SPEAKER_02]: And so the thing that really mattered to me was I wanted to tell people who Alice was. 20:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And obviously I had to tell the story for murder to do that, but it was really important to me to try to focus on the relationships and especially the relationship that I had with her because I felt 20:53 [SPEAKER_02]: As a storyteller, the best way for me to tell you why she was important and why she should matter to you is to tell you why she mattered to me. 21:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephanie, how old was Alex when she died? 21:07 [SPEAKER_02]: She was just a few months shy of turning 56. 21:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I think Shane and I can both relate to what you're saying about how someone has remembered. 21:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you were aware of the button. 21:18 [SPEAKER_01]: Shane has a background in forensic psychology and he's also right now an assistant coroner, but he has covered some cases and was instrumental in solving a case last year called the Redhead Motors. 21:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And Shane's focus has always been on the people and what was left behind because in the redhead murderers was it eight women trained they were killed on the highway six that we can fully identify but possibly more and they were all prostitutes. 21:50 [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what people remember of the prostitute that was thrown on the side of the highway. 21:55 [SPEAKER_01]: But in delving into this, Shane has met their families has uncovered some of the reasons why they may have turned to do that. 22:03 [SPEAKER_01]: Some were trying to support their families. 22:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the same thing with Kathy is that people focus on the glory details of the case. 22:13 [SPEAKER_01]: and it's so important to think about her legacy because I've seen Kathy has made a difference, not only for those that she was trying to protect, but she's made a difference for people all over the world. 22:26 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think you're talking about Alice's legacy is doing the same thing. 22:31 [SPEAKER_01]: So 22:32 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad that we all can get in the same head place about that because even though we're all obsessed with true crime, there's people involved and there's feelings and there's families and it's sad and it's all just not documented. 22:46 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the filmmakers and the keepers did the same thing that series was more like a sculpture. 22:53 [SPEAKER_01]: It was very cinematic. 22:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't just straight documentary. 22:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it says a lot for people's hearts and souls are don't you? 23:02 [SPEAKER_02]: I think so. 23:03 [SPEAKER_02]: I think that for the people and I did this passage somewhere in the book and I won't be as eloquent talking about it. 23:09 [SPEAKER_02]: I was when I had a chance to write it, that once someone you love, someone you know, someone you love has been murdered, you never hear these other stories, 23:23 [SPEAKER_02]: and not think of the person you lost. 23:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And I do listen to true crime podcasts. 23:28 [SPEAKER_02]: I read true crime books. 23:30 [SPEAKER_02]: I do quote unquote consume that as I hate to say like entertainment, but I think that's what some of this sort of true crime stuff it becomes entertainment. 23:41 [SPEAKER_02]: It's a podcast and books at the heart of it. 23:44 [SPEAKER_02]: I never hear these stories and I never listen to them or see them on TV that I don't think about Alice and what happened to her and just the loss that we all have. 23:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Because I think how many more students could Kathy, Cesnick, have impacted? 24:04 [SPEAKER_02]: How many more students could Alice have impacted by talking the book that I wrote about Alice about what some of her students went on to do. 24:13 [SPEAKER_02]: And as they look back and credit her with being a part of their springboard into adulthood. 24:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And 24:21 [SPEAKER_02]: I do feel that very deeply and I think that once families of people who've been murdered the friends, the people that are connected, you never look at things, you never hear things without being reminded. 24:37 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that was one of the things that really spurred me on with this book was that notion of 24:44 [SPEAKER_02]: what remains? 24:45 [SPEAKER_02]: What gets left behind? 24:46 [SPEAKER_02]: What do we do now? 24:48 [SPEAKER_02]: How do we take this stuff and move forward in a meaningful way? 24:51 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephanie, I won't ask you what did Alice look like? 24:58 [SPEAKER_02]: She was lovely. 24:59 [SPEAKER_02]: She really was lovely. 25:01 [SPEAKER_02]: She was a tall woman, which probably is the same much because I'm short as I'll get out. 25:06 [SPEAKER_02]: I always say I'm five foot two and a pair of cute heels. 25:09 [SPEAKER_02]: But she was tall. 25:11 [SPEAKER_02]: I would say like, and she had chestnut brown hair that kind of was usually about shoulder length. 25:19 [SPEAKER_02]: It was always feathered back away from her face. 25:22 [SPEAKER_02]: She never wore it up. 25:23 [SPEAKER_02]: It was 25:25 [SPEAKER_02]: And she had these beautiful blue eyes, our eyes were just such a beautiful, I think in the book, I like quite them to like, you know, when you go out and like in an autumn like in a September October and the sky, there's not a cloud in the sky, but it's just a beautiful blue color. 25:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the color of her eyes she was just had these beautiful blue eyes and she had just a really warm smile and said one fun tooth was just like slightly crooked so it just made her smile really you need when I say she was tall she just had this like perfect posture almost like that serious of the goal like in this teacher posture and she just stood very tall she was always very neat and well put together she's always. 26:08 [SPEAKER_02]: just looked like the quintessential English teacher at library and rolling in, but very kind face and these like chubby, I don't say chubby cheeks, but like she did have these, I think I had to call them like terrific kind of cheeks. 26:23 [SPEAKER_02]: She was a lovely person. 26:24 [SPEAKER_02]: She was she was just pretty great, of course, in my huge fan. 26:27 [SPEAKER_02]: But I always thought she was an attractive woman and which 26:32 [SPEAKER_02]: was all the more made you scratch your head when you realize she could have married a better guy, but she ended up with Jess. 26:38 [SPEAKER_02]: But she, I don't know, in terms of what she looked like. 26:40 [SPEAKER_02]: She was in nice lady. 26:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to ask you if there was one takeaway from your experience writing that book. 26:50 [SPEAKER_01]: that some insight happened to you, as you finished it, or is there something that transfixed you or what was your biggest takeaway from writing chasing Alice? 27:03 [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, so I had a lot of takeaways, but one of the first things that it comes to mind as I was listening to you asked the question was, when I was in high school, I put her on a pedestal. 27:13 [SPEAKER_02]: A high school Stephanie looked at Mrs. Davis as I called her them, and to me she was perfect. 27:19 [SPEAKER_02]: She knew literature inside out. 27:23 [SPEAKER_02]: She knew composition backwards and forwards. 27:26 [SPEAKER_02]: She ran her classroom. 27:29 [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody pulled any hijinks on her. 27:31 [SPEAKER_02]: She was just to me. 27:33 [SPEAKER_02]: She had it all together. 27:35 [SPEAKER_02]: So teenage Stephanie looked at her and said, oh my gosh, this is perfect. 27:40 [SPEAKER_02]: She has everything together. 27:41 [SPEAKER_02]: She's all sealed up. 27:42 [SPEAKER_02]: And then through the process of writing this book about her, 27:47 [SPEAKER_02]: I had these moments where I recognized that she wasn't perfect and I had to take her off the pedestal. 27:54 [SPEAKER_02]: And initially there were times when that just felt really uncomfortable because when you have heroes, you want them to be these static heroes that are all good and never changing and all of that. 28:05 [SPEAKER_02]: But then to realize that your hero was valuable and had flaws and made mistakes. 28:17 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, to think of my Mrs. Davis drinking a martini just felt scandalous in a way, but then I learned that I think she relied too much on those martinis and probably a lot more than she should have, but I also think that was a sign of. 28:36 [SPEAKER_02]: how one of the ways she coped with her marriage was drinking. 28:40 [SPEAKER_02]: And so there were these moments as I was writing the book where I would learn things about her and it felt a little jarring to recognize that she was human. 28:50 [SPEAKER_02]: Just like me, she had made mistakes and she fell in love with the wrong person. 28:56 [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and so I think that there were a few moments where I had to 29:01 [SPEAKER_02]: taking her off the pedestal and that she wasn't this flat heroic sort of person. 29:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And then letting her be the full woman that she was. 29:11 [SPEAKER_02]: And I think one of the sort of things I talk about in the epilogue is that process, I love to when I started writing the book. 29:19 [SPEAKER_02]: And then coming to 29:23 [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think I write in the book about seeing her in the full light of day rather than just a spotlight that I had placed on her and how I think through that process. 29:33 [SPEAKER_02]: I really came to respect her more. 29:36 [SPEAKER_02]: I came to love her more. 29:38 [SPEAKER_02]: I came to see her more completely and less as this sort of static heroic figure. 29:46 [SPEAKER_02]: I had put on a pedestal and to be fully. 29:49 [SPEAKER_02]: herself. 29:51 [SPEAKER_02]: And there have been moments where, I don't know, I don't mean this in the weird way that it's gonna sound. 29:56 [SPEAKER_02]: There were times when I was writing the book and I was struggling and I would talk out loud to an empty room and just say, could you give me a sign when we're the other going the wrong way? 30:05 [SPEAKER_02]: Do you hate this? 30:06 [SPEAKER_02]: And I never got a sign, but every once 30:10 [SPEAKER_02]: see the space of an empty room. 30:12 [SPEAKER_02]: And I would just, I don't know, I don't want to see a lot of presence because that's really not what it was. 30:16 [SPEAKER_02]: But I would just picture her in my mind and see her there for a moment. 30:21 [SPEAKER_02]: And it was almost like she is like I got to reconnect maybe in a new way with her memory. 30:28 [SPEAKER_02]: I think is probably the best way to say it. 30:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like that was a real gift for me as well. 30:39 [SPEAKER_02]: So they first met each other in the summer of 1980. 30:45 [SPEAKER_02]: They were set up on a blind date and he bailed on the first meeting and then around Memorial Day and then they reconnected over Labor Day 1980 and went on a date and she just old madly and local them and they married five years later in July of 1985 after he got cold feet and the first wedding was put off and then it was put back on but they ultimately did marry in July of 1985. 31:14 [SPEAKER_02]: So then the murders happened in 2011, so if I'm doing the math in my head, they were married about 25 years, 20 years, something. 31:26 [SPEAKER_02]: I think they had just been married 26 years. 31:29 [SPEAKER_02]: They just had their 26-letting anniversary. 31:31 [SPEAKER_02]: I think in July of 2011, and then the murder happened in early September 2011. 31:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Do you know how he committed suicide? 31:40 [SPEAKER_02]: He cut his arm. 31:43 [SPEAKER_02]: He did not split his rest in the traditional fashion that we think of when people cut the rest. 31:48 [SPEAKER_02]: He actually made two small incisions near his left elbow and let out. 31:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's unbelievable. 31:58 [SPEAKER_01]: getting you tell me stuff that was because he knew taxidermy, yeah, it was weird. 32:03 [SPEAKER_02]: It struck me traditionally, I guess when we hear people committing suicide by cutting their wrists or something like that, you think of a traditional cutting in some way on the wrist area, but he actually made these two fairly small but deep incisions right of his left elbow. 32:20 [SPEAKER_02]: And it always struck me as odd. 32:23 [SPEAKER_02]: He did tax the Dermy as a hobby slash job. 32:27 [SPEAKER_02]: It was a hobby that he eventually tried to turn into a business, but that business was a failure. 32:32 [SPEAKER_02]: So I was wondered if maybe that was not an anatomical cut that he did, because it certainly wasn't a dramatic. 32:40 [SPEAKER_02]: If you look at the crime scene photos, these cuts are fairly small. 32:43 [SPEAKER_02]: They're not 32:44 [SPEAKER_02]: not really big in decisions that he made. 32:46 [SPEAKER_02]: It was almost very purposeful like he knew almost where to do that. 32:49 [SPEAKER_02]: And I was wondering my head, he knew taxidermy that he would have been familiar perhaps with obviously animals or different than humans I get that. 32:56 [SPEAKER_02]: But that he was more familiar with bodies, I guess maybe. 33:00 [SPEAKER_02]: Then that was always just a thought that I had in my acting improvement, but it was just a thought that I had in my head. 33:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Stephanie, we always give our guests the opportunity to say anything they want that we didn't ask them. 33:12 [SPEAKER_01]: So if there's a question that we didn't ask you that you would like to answer or if there's anything at all that you would like to say and then we're going to have you read a selection from your book. 33:23 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not surprising Stephanie everybody. 33:26 [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to ask her to do this. 33:27 [SPEAKER_01]: So, but is there anything that you would like to share that we haven't talked about? 33:32 [SPEAKER_02]: The one thing that I would really hope when I set out to write the book, I really wanted to honor her legacy in terms of letting people know what she meant to me and others as a teacher. 33:43 [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted people to know who she was. 33:45 [SPEAKER_02]: I even went back and found her childhood best friend and talked to her. 33:49 [SPEAKER_02]: I just wanted people to know who she was, to know more than the newspaper headlines, to know more than what a Google search might say. 33:56 [SPEAKER_02]: But the other part, too, that has always been important to me was that I've always nursed this hope deep in my heart that someone might hear her story. 34:07 [SPEAKER_02]: And 34:08 [SPEAKER_02]: read the warning signs in his behaviors and make a change in their lives. 34:16 [SPEAKER_02]: And I've actually had two incidents where two different women who have read chasing Alice and who have reached out and said that they read the book and specifically passed it on to 34:33 [SPEAKER_02]: another woman who was in a relationship with a man like Alice's husband, Jess, and basically these women were sending it to these other ladies and saying, hey, you need to read this book. 34:46 [SPEAKER_02]: The one woman she had said that she and her friend always joke that this other woman was going to end up on an episode of 48 hours or date line. 34:55 [SPEAKER_02]: And she said, but as I read your book, 34:59 [SPEAKER_02]: And that this is serious and this can happen as she said and as I read it she said my stomach just sank because my friend is married to a man who's very much and she said I just want her to see it and know it and any other woman and sent it to a relative in another state who is also in a relationship with a difficult man in a toxic relationship and. 35:20 [SPEAKER_02]: So the fact that there are people have read this book and are specifically passing it on to other people in these sort of difficult relationships. 35:33 [SPEAKER_02]: in the hopes that they might say, hey, listen, this is how a relationship went badly and I think that you need to pay attention and I think that there's this cautionary tale portion to Alice's story that I truly, I hope and it is my greatest hope of hopes that someone might 35:54 [SPEAKER_02]: read the story and make a change for their own life and in so doing that Alice's death has a chance to change someone else's life. 36:05 [SPEAKER_02]: And I will likely never know if that happens, but if it even remotely happens, if there's even a chance that it could happen, then I think that would add a greater legacy to Alice's story. 36:18 [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that would be the... 36:20 [SPEAKER_02]: If I had one final thing to say, it would just be that I would hope that Alice's story gets to live on and mean more to other people. 36:30 [SPEAKER_01]: How wonderful for you that you're and for those women, they feel empowered now because I really feel like it's the part of your book that we haven't said much about the hidden Alice that is the real gut. 36:44 [SPEAKER_01]: of the story and you've written it beautifully by the part of her that didn't show at school and the side of her that was in pain. 36:54 [SPEAKER_01]: She put her students ahead of that and you can't do better than that is to put your people first. 37:03 [SPEAKER_01]: So with that, would you please share with us something from your book? 37:08 [SPEAKER_02]: This two paragraphs from part two that I thought that I would read, and this is about where I talk about my relationship with Alice. 37:18 [SPEAKER_02]: This is from part two. 37:19 [SPEAKER_02]: I started going to her classroom every chance I could not just English class. 37:25 [SPEAKER_02]: I came during study hall after school before practice. 37:30 [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I just walk by her room between classes as the halls flooded with acne-faced kids hustling to their lockers, passing love notes and sneaking off for smoke breaks outside the cafeteria. 37:41 [SPEAKER_02]: I yearned for the comfort I felt when I was close to her. 37:43 [SPEAKER_02]: With each visit, she listened to me and she let me cry. 37:47 [SPEAKER_02]: Her kindness was a bomb to my wounds. 37:50 [SPEAKER_02]: Once I had confessed everything to Mrs. Davis, I didn't need to hurt myself as much. 37:56 [SPEAKER_02]: I bandaged the blisters on my feet, and despite still being terrified of my mother's illness, I felt better. 38:03 [SPEAKER_02]: There was someone listening to me. 38:05 [SPEAKER_02]: I had a safe place to go where I could release all the fear and doubt and anger. 38:09 [SPEAKER_02]: Mrs. Davis helped me make peace with it. 38:13 [SPEAKER_02]: But in her classroom, I had to work. 38:16 [SPEAKER_02]: Just because she understood what I was going through, did not mean I got a pass. 38:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, work was necessary, and there was no such thing as a valid excuse or a reason to quit. 38:27 [SPEAKER_02]: There was no use in feeling sorry for myself. 38:30 [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, there were difficulties in my life, but she was not willing to allow me to skate. 38:36 [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, she leaned on me a little harder and in doing so, she taught me a great lesson. 38:42 [SPEAKER_02]: work through the heartache. 38:45 [SPEAKER_02]: Work because of the heartache. 38:47 [SPEAKER_02]: Alice Davis saved me. 38:50 [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize this is going to get so emotional reading that passage. 38:53 [SPEAKER_02]: Shoot. 38:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Stephanie, can you tell us where people can find your book? 38:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Sure. 38:58 [SPEAKER_02]: Your listeners are probably all over the country, so the easiest place for them would probably be Amazon or bookshop.org. 39:07 [SPEAKER_02]: I love bookshop.org because they get back to local indie bookstores, but I know people do love their Amazon and Prime. 39:14 [SPEAKER_02]: And also if they go to their Barnes and Noble has it as well, their website inside their stores. 39:20 [SPEAKER_02]: I really would love for you to go into their local brick and mortar bookstore if there's a local book shop in your town or a indie bookstore nearby if you go in you can just ask for chasing Alice by Stephanie Fowler they'll be able to look it up and order it in for you. 39:35 [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to know that people were supporting their local book stores in doing so. 39:39 [SPEAKER_02]: I know we all love Amazon but still the local book stores they're doing all they can for especially now in the times of corona they can really use it. 39:47 [SPEAKER_02]: There's also my company's website saltwatermedia.com. 39:51 [SPEAKER_02]: It's available there, and if there's any of you listeners on the Dumbarva Peninsula, there's several local bookstores near where Gemma and I live. 40:00 [SPEAKER_02]: So there's bookstores on the Dumbarva Peninsula like the Greyhound and Berlin and some bookstores in the Bethany Beach, or Hobath Beach area, browse about in Rhobus and Bethany Beach books and Bethany. 40:11 [SPEAKER_02]: Chester Town, Maryland, where Washington colleges, they have a bookstore called the book plate, and it's there chasing houses there, and there's also sun dial books on Chikati, Island, down in Virginia that has it. 40:22 [SPEAKER_02]: So if there's any body in the on the Delmarva Peninsula, there's a couple of spots where they can go. 40:28 [SPEAKER_01]: Steph, you are truly a guest. 40:30 [SPEAKER_01]: You and your wife, you feel a guest to us and everybody that's listening. 40:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I know Stephanie is very humble. 40:36 [SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't brag enough about herself. 40:39 [SPEAKER_01]: He is quite successful as a publisher. 40:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving us all this time. 40:47 [SPEAKER_01]: And if we have any listeners who have questions, once we post the podcast, she'll free to ask and we'll have Stephanie come back and answer some questions 41:05 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching. 41:32 [UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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