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    The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror
    The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror
    The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Poison Tree: A True Story of Family Terror

    Written by Alan Prendergast

    Narrated by Mel Foster

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    About this audiobook

    Edgar Award Finalist: The shocking account of a Wyoming father who terrorized his family for years—until his children plotted a deadly solution.

    One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle—just in case her brother missed.

    Hours later the Jahnke kids were behind bars. Days later they made headlines. So did the truth about the house of horrors on Cowpoke Road.

    Was it cold-blooded murder? Or self-defense?

    Richard Jahnke Sr., special agent for the IRS, gun collector, and avid reader of Soldier of Fortune, had been subjecting his wife, Maria, and both children to harrowing abuse—physical, psychological, and sexual—for years. Deborah and her brother conspired to finally put a stop to it themselves. But their fate was in the hands of a prejudiced and inept judicial system, and only public outcry could save them.

    Written with the full and revealing cooperation of the Jahnkes, this finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime is "the ultimate family nightmare, played out in the heartland of America. . . . From the night of the murder through both trials, convictions and both youngsters' eventual release . . . it's gripping reading" (Chicago Tribune).

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 20, 2019
    ISBN9781978658523
    Author

    Alan Prendergast

    Alan Prendergast is an award-winning journalist and author. His stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, including the true crime collection Seven Sins (2012), The Best American Crime Reporting 2008, and The Best American Sports Writing 2009. He has also written for Rolling Stone, Outside, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, and other national publications, and is the author of The Poison Tree (1986), a book about child abuse and parricide that was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

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    Reviews for The Poison Tree

    4/5

    61 ratings4 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This has to be the most definitive book on this case. I can't imagine anyone having better access to the people involved. Lots of new insight and details. Outstanding writing. Love, love, loved the way the author summarized the court cases and only used highlights rather than tediously describing a videotape of the proceedings as way too many true crime authors do these days. Will be looking for other books by this author.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The story line was interesting but I thought there was too much detail on small matters.

      The narrators voice was terrible when he tried to mimic the voices especially the females.
    • 4/5
      Really liked the way the story was told - a bit repetitive in certain areas, but otherwise pretty good.
    • 5/5
      Worrying story still on going , well told and narrated