Silent Witness The Karla Brown Murder Case

I not only read the book but I actually know all the characters in the book. I remember when it happened we were all scared that we might be the next victim. It was so surreal. Karla dead? Murdered at home during the day? One minute she's on the phone with her future mother in law when she hears someone upstairs. Were they knocking on the door or did they just come on in? No one will ever know. She hangs up the phone and no one ever talks to her again. No one except her killer the loner, overweight, gross looking John Prante. He had been watching the cute, shapely, outgoing, energetic young woman for days. She had been coming in and out of a home that she was going to be living in with her fiance. She had been there almost daily cleaning and unpacking getting everything ready for her new life with the love of her life. Her little dark blue VW is parked out front when her fiance gets off work and brings a friend to the house to see it. They enter and call out to her. No answer...then they go in the basement and find her placed head first in a barrel of water. Nude from the waist down. How horrific it must of been. How sad. Meaningless. Tragic.

I had heard of the Karla Brown case on Unsolved Mysteries so when I came across this book, I had to have it. Don Weber does an excellent job in making the reader really care about the victim and victim's family in this case. Unlike a lot of true crime books which only focus on the murderer, Weber spent a lot of time focused on Karla Brown's surviving family members. You really feel as if you knew the people in this case, whether it be family members of the victim, the detectives involved in the case, and the suspects themselves. A lot of time is spent really giving you a look at all the different people involved in this murder case.

This is a great book if you like true crime stories. I especially liked reading about FBI profiler John Douglas.You can read about him in a book called mind hunter. He was even able tl tell the police what kind of car the murderer would be driving. this story was pieced together nicley. A good read.

Don Weber does an amazing job with this true-crime story. It shows how, with the help of forensic sciences (odontology, to be exact), a poorly investigated murder can be successfully brought together and tried four years after the crime was committed. What a fascinating study. I could hardly put the book down!!