Book World Live

Readers have a real treat waiting for them in Joe McGinniss's latest book. Besides providing all the requisite gore of a true-crime narrative, Never Enough suggests that no matter how tasteless, mindless and incompetent we may be, we're perfect Einsteins in comparison to the Kissel family, which is capable of committing any maleficence known to man, but utterly incapable of doing it properly. Review: No One Can Be This Stupid ( Post, Nov. 11)

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Joe McGinniss fields questions and comments about his new book, "Never Enough."

Joe McGinniss is the author of several other "true crime" classics, most notably "Fatal Vision," the story of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, who was convicted of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters.

Join Book World Live each Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET for a discussion based on a story or review in each Sunday's Book World section.

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Joe McGinniss: Hi, Joe McGinniss here, and glad to be here. I'll answer as many questions as time permits. Thanks for your interest.

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Vienna, VA: Not to give anything away, but after doing some internet research on this case, it sounds like those little kids would be better off being raised by bears.

Joe McGinniss: Well, the three Kissel children are now being raised by Robert's sister and her husband, who are probably the only truly admirable people in the story. There's a lot of damage to be repaired, but at least the children are--for the first time--in a loving, stable environment.

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Waldorf, MD: Hi, Joe. Long time no see. (I was a copyboy at the Philly Inquirer when you and the late Rose DeWolf were the star columnists there way back when, in the Annenberg days. And I was there the day the Harry Karafin scandal broke. I also "portrayed" you in the Philly Gridiron Show that year, the skit narrated by the late Tom Snyder. How ya been?)

Given your ground-breaking work in "The Selling of the President," is there any chance you'll wend your way back to another political book? You could combine your propensity for "true crime" books with your political work and do something on the Bush White House; you could borrow the title of the Post review to name that book "Nobody Could Be This Stupid II".

Joe McGinniss: Interesting way to start because I was just discussing with my agent today the possibility of my doing a book on next year's campaign--as seen on television. Forty years after The Selling of The President, how much have we wised up to the image-makers? Seems to me now that the images are filtered through the lenses of the networks, so the candidates don't have it quite as easy as Nixon did back in the day. I might pursue that. Like a lot of you, I am already counting the days until we no longer have the horror of Bush in the White House to wake up to every morning.

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Oviedo, Fla.: I have derived tremdous pleasure over the years from your

books. I will never forget Collette and her dreadful end in

life.

Do you expect a late-in-life confession from Dr. MacDonald?

Does he see his kids (with her?)

Joe McGinniss: Thanks. I remain haunted by the horror of Jeffrey MacDonald's crime: the dreadful end for Colette and for the two little girls. No, I expect no confession from MacDonald. He continues to display all the clinical signs of a true psychopath, which means he is incapable of feelings of guilt or remorse.

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Vienna, Va.: I enjoyed your book "The Miracle of Castel di Sangro." I know some of the parties involved were threatening to drag you into the Italian court system. What was the resolution of that case, and do you still follow Italian soccer? Or have you shifted allegiance to D.C. United, which plays far more attractive soccer than the typical catenaccio-influenced team in Italy?

Joe McGinniss: Oh, come on. D.C. United? I'm afraid MLS has a long way to go before it fields teams with the skill level of the good ones in Italy, Spain, England and Germany. Have you seen Roma this year? Hardly constipated by excessive reliance on defense. And how about Inter? Italy's problem is not the players, it's the fans. As to your question: it's my understanding that I technically remain a fugitive from justice in Italy. I was convicted on some bizarre criminal charges as a result of The Miracle of Castel di Sangro. No libel suit filed because it was all true, but they alleged a couple of weird violations of the criminal code. But I spent a week in Italy in spring of 2005 and nobody tried to arrest me. Incidentally, for sheer viewing pleasure, nobody can beat Barcelona at home this year. Available through Gol TV. And Ray Hudson is the best English-language commentator I've ever heard.

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Freising, Germany: Is it perhaps partially true, as written in the Washington Post review of your latest book, that it was advantageous to focus on characters who have no redeeming social value?

In other words, have you ever felt any aftereffects as a writer after the settlement with MacDonald?

Joe McGinniss: Carolyn See, whose review was terrific, I thought, takes a hard line when it comes to redeeming social value. But I see her point about the Kissels. The only aftereffect to the settlement with MacDonald--which, by the way, was arranged by my publisher's insurance company, which was unwilling to pay for the cost of a retrial of his suit after the original jury never came close to making sense of any of it: I'd like to make it clear that I have never paid Jeffrey MacDonald a penny, nor would I--was that his father in law, Freddy Kassab, sued him in California state court for the proceeds of the settlement and was awarded almost the whole amount. So I wound up feeling pretty good about all that. The way I've gone about my work from the start was to write about anyone or anything that made me curious.

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New York, N.Y.: What attracted you to write about crime stories, and what do you believe is the attraction for readers towards the intricacies of crime stories?

Joe McGinniss: Well, I've written eleven books and only four of them, over almost forty years, have been about crimes of violence. So it hasn't exactly been an obsession. The stories behind the four true crime books I have done, including Never Enough, have all involved seemingly "perfect" families suddenly destroyed by a horrific and totally unforeseen act of violence. (In Never Enough, I guess you could say Rob Kissel did have some warning, but he never took seriously the possibility that his wife might be planning to kill him.) What is it that goes wrong in these families? What pressures built in the background over years, leading to such sudden and utter destruction? A lot of us live in families, a lot of us live imperfect family lives, but only a very few ever have to confront raw violence from a spouse or a child. What makes these people different? Or are they really different from the rest of us, or maybe just unluckier? Overall, I think we're all interested in extreme forms of behavior, because most of us don't manifest it. I think it's at the extremes that human nature most clearly reveals itself.

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New York, N.Y.: How do you choose the cases that you write about? Are there particular aspects of the cases they seek before you will write about them?

Joe McGinniss: It's really more a question of the cases choosing me. I don't read many true crime books, I don't follow true crime stories on television. But every once in a while something just jumps out at me. With Never Enough it was having a Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch investment banker's body found rolled inside a carpet in a storeroom in the most luxurious expatriate enclave in Hong Kong. How did it get there? This guy was on the fastest of the fast tracks. What happened? Then I read that his wife had been arrested and charged with the crime, then tried and convicted by a Chinese jury and sentenced to life without parole in a Hong Kong prison. Why? Because she wanted to be free to continue an affair with a video and stereo installer who lived in a trailer in New Hampshire? For that, she would kill her husband, effectively orphan her three children, and risk her own freedom? What was going on here? Nothing I read made it make any sense, so I decided to find out for myself. Of the four cases I've written about, all involve violence within a family, but otherwise they could not be more different from one another in terms of social class, setting, and the unfolding of the story itself.

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Prescott Mass: Speaking of extremes, you also wrote a book about Alaska, Going to Extremes. Was it the same impulse that attracted you to visit Alaska?

Joe McGinniss: Yup. Curiosity. What was it like to live there, in all that space and darkness and emptiness? "Going to Extremes" was based on my time in Alaska between 1975 and 1977, when it really was America's last untamed frontier. It featured extremes of every kind. I wondered what kind of people would be attracted to it. I couldn't find anything to read that explained it to me, so I went out there to see for myself.

And what extremes! What a place! If it hadn't been for family considerations, I might have never come back. Thirty years later, I still miss it.

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New York, N.Y.: New information often arises after cases have been settled by juries or investigators. What has been the most startling thing you learned about a case on which you had written that you learned after you had published a book on the crime?

Joe McGinniss: Hmmmm. Good question. But I don't think I have a good answer. With Fatal Vision--nothing new was learned about the case itself, despite MacDonald's repeated claims of "new evidence" over the years. With Blind Faith: nothing. The jury got it right (a no-brainer, that one, just like Rob Marshall, the guy who had his wife killed). And nothing new on Cruel Doubt, either. With Never Enough, I think the big surprise would be to find out the identity of the recently-retired Goldman Sachs partner who is paying the costs of Nancy Kissel's ongoing criminal defense. And to find out why he's sent her more than a million dollars so far. I mean, I know investment bankers can get into

ego-driven squabbles with one another, but to pay more than a million to try to win freedom for the woman who murdered a colleague: wow, there's something going on there. I know who the guy is and tried to catch up with him until almost the day the book was published, but never did. I understand, however, that the Wall Street Journal is working on a story about this now, and I'm sure they'll nail it. After all, nobody can hide from Rupert Murdoch.

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Washington DC: Mr. McGinniss, I recall vividly your description of Gene McCarthy after his heyday when he spoke at the University of Pennsylvania -- a truly sensitive account of a great man whose time had passed -- I was one of the Penn students who brought McCarthy to Penn to speak back then int eh mid-1970's.

Joe McGinniss: Well, God bless you for that. I always thought the world of Gene. I enjoyed his company more than that of anyone else I ever met in politics. He had decency, brains, and the courage to continually doubt himself, which you don't often find in a politician. He also had the finest sense of humor I've ever encountered in politics. Years after his fame had faded, when he was working as an editor at Simon & Schuster, I had a terrific lunch with him at which we were joined by Howard Cosell. If only a video camera had captured McCarthy v Cosell! Gene also was always a gentleman, a quality of his I came to appreciate even more deeply when I realized how scarce it was among politicians. I remember that appearance at Penn. I'm glad you did it.

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Belchertown Mass: I just want to say I thought your Kennedy book was great. Talk about a dysfunctional family!

Joe McGinniss: Thank you! That's a minority view, to be sure. I will always wish that book could have been judged for what it was, not as what the Kennedys and their many mainstream media servants said it was, and was not. It was a sympathetic meditation on how Teddy Kennedy coped with the requirement to be not only a man, but a mythic figure, from November 22, 1963 until the end of the decade, when it all went belly up at Chappaquiddick.

Dysfunctional as a family, and in many ways many of them were dysfunctional as human beings, but we certainly cannot say that, like the Kissels, they were without redeeming social value. In the years since that book I've developed considerable respect for Ted Kennedy. He's not a quitter.

He's as consistent and committed a voice as those of us who still remember liberalism are ever likely to have.

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Greenwich, Conn: Any guesses about the identity of Robert Kissel's brother Andrew in Greenwich? I gather his wife hated him, too.

Joe McGinniss: Andrew Kissel's wife, Hayley, did grow to hate him. She made this very clear in the hysterical emails to his sister that I reprint in Never Enough. But she didn't kill him. About the only thing the Greenwich police have managed to establish is her innocence. She was also not without concern for him, even on the weekend after she left him, the weekend that ended with his murder. She called his father in Florida and said she was worried that Andrew was in such a bad mental state that he might try to hurt himself. Andrew's father did not respond to the call or ever establish contact with Andrew, who died alone in his basement behind the locked doors of his house. If I'd been writing a novel (not that I could ever have imagined a story such as this!) I probably would have had Andrew's wife murder him, just as Rob's did. Symmetry, you know. Parallels. A better tale for TV talk shows. I don't have a clue as to who murdered Andrew. He died with an enemies' list as long as Richard Nixon's, the difference being that his enemies hated him. As long as only the Greenwich police investigate that crime, I don't think it will ever be solved.

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Richmond, Va: I read about the Kissels and always thought the grandmother was lucky she died early and never saw her sons embezzle or get murdered. I wonder if she was a real subservient type and that's why the boys developed such a objectifying view of women?

Joe McGinniss: That's an interesting point. In attempting to reconstruct what life was like for the two Kissel brothers growing up, the one constant I found was how beloved and admired their mother was my all their friends and other family members. I also was told repeatedly about how her husband--their father--tyrannized her. I was told that on her deathbed she told her three children that her greatest regret in life was that she had not divorced their father years earlier. But she didn't. She, too, had a lifestyle that allowed for plenty of perks. People--some people--will put up with a lot as long as there's a mink coat in the mix every so often. Look at that other long-suffering New Jersey housewise, Carmela Soprano. I think the Kissel women have a lot in common with her: nothing is so awful that a new diamond ring or mink coat can't make it all better for a while.

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Endicott, Mass.: Did you go to Hong Kong and talk to Nancy Kissel? I'd love to hear more about your research for this amazing-sounding book.

Joe McGinniss: I went to Hong Kong. On the advice of her lawyers,Nancy Kissel chose not to talk to me. I wasn't surprised. She has an appeal that will be heard in Hong Kong in April, and given the way she shoots off her mouth, they were worried that she might say things that could further complicate her claims that the whole thing was merely self-defense. A CBS reporter, Erin O'Brien, with 48 Hours, did interview her inside prison while I was there. In fact, I had dinner with Nancy's mother in Hong Kong that night. I asked her how it went. She said,

"I'm afraid Nancy just vented. It must have sounded like one long rant." I don't know. I found it very curious that 48 Hours had a scene of Ms. O'Brien and Nancy's mother just outside the prison gate, and Ms. O'Brien told viewers that she'd been the only person to interview Nancy after her conviction....but then 48 Hours, without a word of explanation, simply did not use any of the interview. I've never found out why not. Maybe they will if they update the story, as I'm told they are going to do in connection with the publication of Never Enough.

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I think the Kissel women have a lot in common with her: nothing is so awful that a new diamond ring or mink coat can't make it all better for a while. : I carry that thinking further to say if you choose a wife who has those values, don't be surprised when she poisons you!

Joe McGinniss: Agreed. You get what you pay for, more or less. Tony was safe because David Chase would never have let Carmela poison him. Unfortunately for Rob Kissel, Nancy was writing her own script.

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Washington DC: Mr. McGiniss, one other thing about the Penn McCarthy appearance. You may not have realized it, but YOU were quite the attraction that night, too. You were well known for The Selling of the President, and many of us were quite excited to meet you, too. You went with some of us and Mr. McCarthy to a pubc near the 30th Street Station after the speech, and it is still memorable to me all these years later.

Joe McGinniss: Well, I sure hope I had the common sense to keep my mouth shut and let you benefit from Gene McCarthy's presence. Thank you!

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Richmond, Va: so both brothers were murdered by their respective wives? Did wife of 2nd brother get idea from wife of 1st brother? And wife of 2nd brother was watching the kids of dead brother while she killed her husband?

Joe McGinniss: No, no, no. Both brothers were NOT murdered by their respective wives. Andrew Kissel's wife did not murder him.

(She said from time to time that she wanted to, but she didn't.) I said if I were writing fiction, I might have made it that way, but this is a true story. Andrew and Hayley had custody of Robert's three children (and a trust fund that started out worth $20 million, but that was worth only $12 million by the time the courts got Andrew's greedy hands off it.) But once Andrew was arrested on federal charges and was facing eight to ten years in prison, and once Hayley filed for divorce, the judge with authority in the case awarded custody to Robert's sister. The three children left Greenwich toward the end of 2005. Andrew was murdered about three months later. His own two children moved out along with their mother three days before someone stabbed Andrew six times in the back.

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Peabody, Mass.: You're making life as an author sound pretty exciting--full of adventure and meetings with fascinating people. How hard IS it to be an author?

Joe McGinniss: It depends on whether or not you can write.

The writing is always hard. It's the price you pay, in a sense, for all the fun you have doing the research.

However, there was nothing fun about the research for any of my true crime books, including Never Enough. I guess that's the biggest reason I haven't written more of them: it's just too awful having to always share the pain of grieving, innocent victims and family members who've had their lives shattered by sudden violence. The books where I spend a year in Italy with a Serie B soccer team, or a year in Alaska, or following around Richard Nixon's image-makers: those were fun....until I sat down and had to write.

Besides, there's no pension and you have to buy your own health insurance. I tried hard to persuade my oldest son,

Joe McGinniss, Jr. from embarking on a writing career, but I'm glad to say I failed. He has a brilliant first novel coming out in January: THE DELIVERY MAN. Look for that one. I think it's a better read than my own.

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Joe McGinniss: Thank you very much, everyone. I guess this was what's called

"a wide ranging discussion." I enjoyed it and am grateful for the chance to be in touch with all of you.

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