Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Monster City
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://michaelarntfield.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Canadian
Splits time between Canada and Florida. Former police officer/detective.
RESEARCHER NOTES:
From LOC Authorities:
| 670 | __ |a Murder in plain English, 2017: |b eCIP t.p. (Michael Arntfield) data view screen (b. 06/03/1975) |
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PERSONAL
Born June 3, 1975.
EDUCATION:Earned B.A. and M.A.; University of Western Ontario, Ph.D., 2011.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Educator, former police officer, writer. London Police Service, London, Ontario, Canada, began as police officer, became detective, 1999-2014; University of Western Ontario, London, creator and director of Cold Case Society, 2011—, associate professor of criminology, 2013—. Wilfrid Laurier University, adjunct professor, 2011-14; Vanderbilt University, visiting Fulbright lecturer, 2015-16. Arntfield Media, proprietor and investigative consultant, 2012—; Murder Accountability Project, Washington, DC, board member; Ellipsis Digital, affiliate; Center for Homicide Research, Minneapolis, MN, associate; University of Toronto, affiliate of Centre for Research in Forensic Semiotics at Victoria College; commentator on Canadian media programs, including Fifth Estate; host of the television series To Catch a Killer; consultant to private and public sector organizations, including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Province of Ontario.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America, 5th edition, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2012; Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age, Praeger (Santa Barbara, CA), 2014; Screening Justice: Canadian Crime Films and Society, Fernwood Press (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada), 2015; Necrophilia: A Global Anthology, Cognella Press (San Diego, CA), 2015; and Homicide: A Forensic Psychology Casebook, CRC Press (Boca Raton, FL), 2016. Contributor to periodicals, including Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, Canadian Journal of Communication, Canadian Journal of Media Studies, Canadian Review of American Studies, Communication Review, International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, and Change Management, RMCP National Gazette, and Semiotica.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael Arntfield has two specialties: law enforcement and the literature of crime. For fifteen years he served the city of London, Ontario, Canada, first as a police officer, then as a detective. London is a small city west of Toronto, near the remote southwestern arm of the province. On the surface, its residents represent the epitome of average—income, ethnicity, education, social class, population demographics, and more. A closer look, however, shows that for twenty-five years, “it was home to the largest known concentration of serial killers in the world,” according to Jared Lindzon in an article for the Guardian Online.
Arntfield was fascinated by this dubious distinction, especially since half of the killings were never solved. Toward the end of his service with the London police force, he turned to the University of Western Ontario to explore some of these open cases. In 2011 he created the Cold Case Society, a hub for student and faculty volunteers from a wide range of disciplines who shared a curiosity about unsolved mysteries.
Murder City
An unexpected windfall enabled Arntfield and the cold case team to apply the latest forensic techniques to the old London killings. He was granted access to the long-dormant evidence collection of Denis Alsop, a tenacious detective who actually worked the streets of London during the heyday of the serial killings. The cache of his transcripts, photocopies, and other documents inspired Arntfield to publish Murder City: The Untold History of Canada’s Capital of Serial Homicide, 1959-84. His mission was twofold: to tell the story of London’s forgotten past and to explore the factors that might have made it an appealing haven for so many serial killers.
Alsop was certain that he knew the identity of at least one multiple child killer, but forensic science was still a work in progress, and his conservative department was unwilling to take a chance on circumstantial evidence. That predator was one of several (as many as six) operating simultaneously during the height of the killing frenzy. Nearly thirty murders were attributed to serial killers over twenty-five years, and only sixteen cases were ever solved. The per capita murder rate for this city of less than 180,000 surpassed the ratio for every major metropolis in the United States and Canada. Arntfield wondered why.
Arntfield suggests that the semi-rural, remote setting appealed to miscreants seeking anonymity, while the city happened to sit next to Ontario Highway 401, an expressway that offered high-speed access to the entire southern breadth of the province from Quebec past Toronto to the Michigan border. Despite easy mobile access to the country’s urban core, however, London was not connected to federal or provincial law enforcement networks, and the fledgling Internet had not yet merged into the information highway. Michael Dunford recommended Murder City in MBR Bookwatch as “impressively well written and exceptionally well organized and presented.”
Mad City
Arntfield turned his attention to the United States for his next investigations. In Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot, he introduces an intrepid and loyal classmate who refused to let her best friend’s killer rest in peace. Linda Tomaszewski knew in her heart that Niels Jorgensen was responsible for the brutal killing of Christine Rothschild at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1967. She could never prove it, but she devoted her life to the mission. Arntfield attributes her defeat in part to the lackluster performance of campus police, especially since Christine’s murder was only one of several others that followed and remain unsolved to this day.
The author uses the “mad city” case as a bookend for a historical overview of serial killers from Jack the Ripper to Ed Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield. “All of the stories are fascinating,” observed Kathy Sexton in Booklist, “especially the aspects of criminal profiling.” A reviewer at Errant Dreams found the account to be rambling and “wordy,” but she appreciated Arntfield’s perspective on “victim-blaming” and the lack of scientific resources available to the police of their respective time periods.
Monster City
Monster City: Murder, Music, and Mayhem in Nashville’s Dark Age exposes the dark side of America’s renowned “Music City” through the eyes of local police officer Patrick Postiglione. This transplant from New York City patrolled Nashville, Tennessee’s most dangerous streets and alleys from 1980 to 2002, when he took charge of the new Metro Cold Case Unit. The Vietnam veteran was an aggressive homicide detective with a special interest in “thrill killings in dive bars and serial rape-murders in cheap motels,” according to a commentator in Kirkus Reviews. Postiglione boasted an astonishing closure rate, using the latest scientific resources available to him, and Arntfield tells his story in the same intense style that marked the detective’s colorful career.
A Publishers Weekly contributor found the account “overwrought” and ultimately “monotonous,” but complimented Arntfield’s portrayal of “Postiglione’s formidable career.” In similar fashion, the Kirkus Reviews contributor called Monster City “a fevered yet mostly engrossing narrative of urban predators and the hardworking detectives who try to stop them.”
Murder in Plain English
Arntfield’s secondary specialty is the literature of crime: the language of the crime writers and the words of the murderers themselves. His customized area studies program at the University of Western Ontario combines crime studies with English literature and English composition for professional writers. His own writings range from a study of “gothic forensics,” in which he explores the investigative procedures reflected in Victorian horror and mystery fiction, to a more contemporary introduction to the signature subspecialty that he dubbed “criminal humanities.” Arntfield’s other interests address cyberbullying, harassment via social media or the Internet, and other elements of electronically delivered deviant activities.
One volume that attracted the notice of critics is Murder in Plain English: From Manifestos to Memes—Looking at Murder through the Words of Killers. Arntfield joined forces with linguistic anthropologist Marcel Danesi to look at the power of the written word to inspire some people to turn their homicidal fantasies into gruesome reality. They examine “the philosophy of murder,” as Sarah Hutchins described the phenomenon in the Portland Book Review. They analyze classic works of literature by the likes of Fyodor Dostoevsky and J.D. Salinger, in search of the triggers that could drive disturbed individuals to create their own adventures. They plumb the depths of newspaper articles and media reports, past and present. Mainly, though, Arntfield and Danesi look at the words of the killers themselves, according to Hutchins: “letters, testimonies, diaries, short stories, plays, social media, and manifestos,” as well as the riddles and puzzles with which some killers taunted their pursuers. Hutchins revealed that, for literary effect, the authors intentionally structured their analysis in the format of procedural pulp fiction. A contributor to California Bookwatch called Murder in Plain English a combination of “linguistic analysis, psychological examination, and social investigation” that is nothing less than “unique.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2017, Kathy Sexton, review of Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot, p. 12.
California Bookwatch, May, 2017, review of Murder in Plain English: From Manifestos to Memes—Looking at Murder through the Words of Killers.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2018, review of Monster City: Murder, Music and Mayhem in Nashville’s Dark Age.
MBR Bookwatch, March, 2016, Michael Dunford, review of Murder City: The Untold History of Canada’s Capital of Serial Homicide, 1959-84.
Publishers Weekly, May 14, 2018, review of Monster City, p. 44.
ONLINE
Errant Dreams, https://www.errantdreams.com/ (September 12, 2017), review of Mad City.
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (August 19, 2015), Jared Lindzon, review of Murder City.
Michael Arntfield website, http://michaelarntfield.com (October 6, 2018).
Portland Book Review, http://portlandbookreview.com/ (June 27, 2017), Sarah Hutchins, review of Murder in Plain English.
University of Western Ontario website, https://www.uwo.ca/ (October 6, 2018), author profile.
Michael Andrew Arntfield
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Michael Andrew Arntfield is a Canadian academic, author, true crime broadcaster, university professor, criminologist, Fulbright scholar, and former police officer.[1][2]
Contents
1 Academic and police careers
2 Cold case research
3 Television
4 Murder City
5 Cyberbullying research
6 Publications
6.1 Books
6.2 Articles in edited books and anthologies
6.3 Journal articles
6.4 Essays and editorials
7 References
8 External links
Academic and police careers
Arntfield was a police officer and detective in London, Ontario from 1999 to 2014 when he left policing to accept a customized academic appointment at University of Western Ontario where he teaches what he calls "literary criminology" in a combined English literature, professional writing, and crime studies program. The program developed in part from a scholarly book series he was invited to co-direct by Peter Lang Publishing in New York, and through which he coined the term "the criminal humanities". Arntfield completed his PhD at Western in 2011 while working in a plainclothes police unit and with his dissertation focusing on police murders in the United States and Canada.[3][4]
Cold case research
In 2011, Arntfield created a student-run unsolved crimes think tank and case evaluation study group known as the Western Cold Case Society. The volunteer initiative was modeled on an earlier undergraduate course on serial homicide and crime history that Arntfield designed and taught while completing his doctorate and still a police officer. The Society receives roughly 30-50 requests for review and audit per year, mostly from private citizens and the families of murder victims who have grown frustrated with police inaction or ineffectiveness.[5][6]
Arntfield is a board member of the Murder Accountability Project.[7]
Television
Arntfield’s work has also served as the inspiration for several television productions currently on air or in development. Aside from appearing as a regular commentator on crime in the Canadian media, including as an expert panelist on the CBC’s long running investigative documentary series The Fifth Estate, he also hosts and helped create the true crime reality series To Catch a Killer, which airs internationally on the Oprah Winfrey Network and on subsidiaries of the A&E Network and CBS across Europe, Asia, and Oceania.[1] In May 2015, Arntfield was retained by HBO’s British distributor to be the spokesperson for the DVD and digital release of the true crime documentary The Jinx, and was used to explain to European media the investigative value of documentary journalism with respect to cold cases.[8]
Murder City
Arntfield has also authored or co-authored over a dozen books, including the best-selling and controversial Murder City for which he is arguably best known.[9] In the book he advances a hypothesis, often employing an epistolary format through the use of a now deceased detective’s original diary notes, that over a specific interval in the 1960s and 1970s, the city of London, Ontario spawned or otherwise housed more serial killers per capita than any city in Canada, and likely beyond.[10] In 2015, it was announced that Emmy Award-winning Sullivan Entertainment had acquired the television rights to the book, and that a dramatic network series was in development even ahead of the book's release date. Arntfield is signed-on to serve as both co-executive producer and technical consultant for the series.[9]
Cyberbullying research
Arntfield currently holds a Canadian federal research grant to study the sociolinguistic underpinnings of cyberbullying, trolling, and other forms of cyberdeviance and electronic harassment. Having collected over 40,000 samples of cyberbullying text from news message board and social media sites and analyzing their contents, Arntfield has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles and research papers appearing in textbooks in which he argues that cyberdeviance in many cases has a distinct sexual and fantasy-based component. He argues that cyberbullying and acts of trolling should therefore be understood as being more akin to a paraphilia than traditional physical bullying.[11] In 2016, Arntfield will serve as the visiting Fulbright Research Chair in crime and literature at the English department at Vanderbilt University after being selected as part of a rigorously competitive process overseen by the U.S. Department of State. He will be furthering his research on literary criminology and cyberbullying while there, as well as developing a Vanderbilt iteration of his Cold Case Society. He will return to Western in the fall of 2016.[12][10]
Publications
Books
Introduction to Forensic Writing. Co-author: Justice K.A. Gorman. Toronto: Carswell (2014)
Murder City: The Untold History of Canada’s Capital of Serial Homicide, 1959–84. Victoria: FriesenPress (2015)
Healthcare Writing: A Practical Guide to Professional Success. Co-author: Dr. J. Johnston. Calgary: Broadview Press (2015)
Gothic Forensics: Criminal Investigative Procedure & Evidence in Victorian Horror & Mystery. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan (2016)
The Criminal Humanities: An Introduction. New York: Peter Lang Publishing (2016)
Practical Criminology. Toronto: Nelson Education (2018)
Articles in edited books and anthologies
Crime in America: 1921-1940. In: The Social History of Crime & Punishment in America, 5th Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2012)
Corporate Criminal Liability. In: The Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2013)
Workplace Deaths. In: The Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime, 2nd Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2013)
Watergate. In: The Encyclopedia of Lying & Deception. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2014)
Fantasy & Imagination. In: The Encyclopedia of Lying & Deception. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications (2014)
eMemoriam: Digital Necrologies, Virtual Remembrance, & the Problem of Permanence. In: Digital Death: Mortality & Beyond in the Online Age. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger (2014)
Cybercrime & Cyberdeviance. In: Criminology: A Canadian Perspective, 8th Edition. Toronto: Nelson (2014)
Grab Some Wall: A Man in Uniform, Metropolitan Toronto, & the Fog of the Street. In: Screening Justice: Canadian Crime Films & Society. Winnipeg: Fernwood Press (2015)
Necrophilia & Digital Media. In: Necrophilia: A Global Anthology. San Diego: Cognella Press (2015)
Necrophilia in English Literature, Poetry, & Prose. In: Necrophilia: A Global Anthology. San Diego: Cognella Press (2015)
Cold Case Homicides: Challenges & Opportunities. In: Homicide: A Forensic Psychology Casebook. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (2016)
Journal articles
"Toward a Cybervictimology: Cyberbullying, Routine Activities Theory, & the Anti-Sociality of Social Media." (2015) The Canadian Journal of Communication,
"The Monster of Seymour Avenue: Internet Crime News & Gothic Reportage in the Case of Ariel Castro." (2015) Semiotica.
"Money. Armed. Quietly: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Institutional Holdup Notes." (2016) Semiotica – forthcoming/in press
"Syntax & Cyberbullying: A Linguistic & Lexical Etiology of Offending." In development.
"Mortuary Archaeology & Dumpsite Characteristics: A Case Study of Homicide Water Burials in Rural Canada." Co-author: R. Willmon. In development.
"Out of Exile: The Recusal of the Chicago Police Department from American Crime Fiction, 1960-2010." The Canadian Review of American Studies. Vol. 43(1). 388-410 (2013)
"Media Forensics & Fragmentary Evidence: Locard’s Exchange Principle in the Era of New Media." The Canadian Journal of Media Studies. Vol. 11(1). 2-27 (2013)
"TVPD: The Generational Diegetics of the Police Procedural and the Automation of American Law Enforcement." The Canadian Review of American Studies. Vol. 41(1). 55-75 (2011)
"Vulnerable Position Screening: HR Due Diligence or Police-Corporate Collusion?" The International Journal of Knowledge, Culture, & Change Management. Vol. 20 (9). (2011)
"Hegemonic Shorthand: Technology & Metonymy in Modern Policing." The Communication Review. Vol. 11 (1). 76-97 (2008)
"Wikisurveillance: A Genealogy of Cooperative Watching in the West." The Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. Vol. 28 (1). 37-47 (2008)
"The Aesthetic Calculus: Sex Appeal, Circuitry, and Invisibility." The Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. Vol. 27(1). 37-47 (2007)
Essays and editorials
"Mean Girls to Mass Sociogenic Illnesses: A Criminal Ecology of Female Adolescents." In: Beyond Five Paragraphs: Advanced Essay Writing Skills. Toronto: McGraw-Hill-Pearson (2015)
"Policing 2.0: The Necessity of Police-Academic Partnerships in a Knowledge-Based Economy." RCMP National Gazette. Vol. 74(4). (2012)
Michael Arntfield
Associate Professor
University College Room 2428
519 661-2111 ext. 88432
marntfie@uwo.ca
Fall/Winter 2017-18 Office Hours: Wednesday 2:30-3:30pm | Monday 5:30-6:30 pm by appointment
PDF download Click to view CV.
Research
My research and writing interests centre on what I call literary criminology, including the didactic elements of the Victorian Gothic and other nineteenth century fictive treatments of the criminal mind and the epistemology of criminal insanity. I also focus in my books and courses on the evolution of detective fiction in literature, film, and television, as well as the interplay between forensic writing as carried out in the field by justice system professionals and the role of narrative psychology in profiling offenders during the course of criminal investigations.
Western University Cold Case Society
Matching emerging experts to unsolved crimes, and vice versa...
Founded in 2011, the Cold Case Society (CCS) at Western uses students and faculty from across multiple disciplines to analyze unsolved crimes and other failed investigations with fresh eyes, doing so through the lens of new technology and emerging investigative methodologies. The CCS has always epitomized applied forensic research in the public interest, and we are now officially partnered with the Murder Accountability Project in Metropolitan Washington DC, a consortium of subject matter experts from across North America and a leading nonprofit think tank where I serve as co-director. Boasting the most sophisticated homicide database in the world, we are now using the Murder Accountability Project's serial offender algorithm to identify and crowdsource new cases while matching students to investigative leads in over 200,000 unsolved murders still on the books.
Corporate Cold Case Training Program
In addition to my think tank at Western, I've now also partnered with industry leading and community focused Ellipsis Digital to offer a corporate workshop version of my groundbreaking Cold Case Society - one geared to both private and public sector innovators. The training, interactive team building and problem solving, as well as the development of transferrable hard and soft skills for new and experienced employees alike are all second to none. The cases and the results of the participants' efforts are also very real.
I am currently looking to mine the best and brightest minds from the technology, corporate, hospitality, and civil service sectors for both customized retreats, as well ongoing weekly sessions offered in ten week intervals.
If you want to learn more, or to enrol as an individual or corporation, please review the full description and list of conditions HERE.
Books & TV
Books & Publications
I've published over a dozen books and counting on true crime, criminology, and criminal investigation that range from textbooks and rigorous academic monographs to popular trade press titles for the typical non-fiction reader and true crime fan. I've also written and published over 30 articles in peer reviewed journals, anthologies, encyclopedias, and edited volumes. If you're looking to submit a book idea or formal proposal for my criminal humanities collection with Peter Lang Publishing, please click here.
Social Media & Mental Health - Available Summer 2018
Television Work
I am currently developing several new television crime series with respect to both scripted and unscripted projects. My true crime/unsolved series, To Catch a Killer, is currently in international syndication. Contact my office regarding development, writing, or production inquires.
Media Interviews & Press Requests
Please use the contact link at the bottom of this page for all correspondence related to media, public speaking, or interview requests. Alternatively, reach out to the
communications team at Western University for more time-sensitive news stories. Below is a sampling of outlets where I've recently been featured as a guest expert, interviewee, or panelist.
cnn
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Consulting Work
Third Party Subject Matter Expertise for Private & Public Sector Organizations
I've been retained to consult on-site for a wide range of clients across multiple sectors, including media outlets such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), government and NGO entities from the Province of Ontario to healh care organizations, as well as industry leaders in risk detection like CarProof Vehicle History Reports. I also provide investigative training, interviewing strategies, and statement analysis for some of the leading corporate investigation firms in North America. Please use the Contact section for a full list of services and/or a case assessment.
Current & Recent Course Offerings
The following courses reflect current or historical offerings through my innovative criminal humanities curriculum at Western University, now also the basis for an international academic book series.
Contact us to request a course syllabus for any of the following courses.
Literary Criminology & The Fiction Of Detection
Currently offered
Crime Writing
Currently offered
Forensic Writing
Currently offered
Directed Study In The Criminal Humanities
Currently offered
The Serial Killer In The Media
Previously offered
The Police In The Media
Previously offered
Forensic Investigation
Previously offered
Multiple Murder
Previously offered
Murder In The Long 19th Century
Forthcoming
About Michael Arntfield
Bestselling author Michael Arntfield is a veteran police officer, professor, and television host. Known by his students as "Profficer," an endearing blend of his academic and law enforcement professions, he teaches criminology at Western University and is a previous visiting Fulbright Chair at Vanderbilt University. With fifteen years of experience as a police officer, Arntfield offers a unique perspective into unsolved murder cases that combines suspenseful storytelling, academic knowledge, and investigative technology. He is the lead investigator on the true-crime series To Catch a Killer on the Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada and is the author of Murder City: The Untold Story of Canada's Serial Killer Capital. He is also Director of the Murder Accountability Project in the United States and both the founder and Director of the Western University Cold Case Society in Canada.
When he isn't teaching, investigating cold cases, or writing about them, he is researching long-term crime trends and developing new television projects. His latest research is on cyberbullying, social media, and psychopathy.
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Print Marked Items
Arntfield, Michael: MONSTER CITY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Arntfield, Michael MONSTER CITY Little A (Adult Nonfiction) $15.95 9, 4 ISBN: 978-1-5039-5435-9
Sprawling, pulpy account of the violent underbelly of Nashville, filtered through the career experiences of a
veteran homicide detective.
A former police officer, Arntfield (Criminology/Western Univ., Canada; Gothic Forensics: Criminal
Investigative Procedure in Victorian Horror & Mystery, 2016, etc.) argues that, following two foundational
unsolved murders in the 1970s, the beloved "Music City" became a dark, violent locale haunted by
merciless repeat offenders: "A sinkhole was about to open up beneath Music City to reveal a darkened
recess--an abyss from which other odious and unfathomable things would soon come crawling." The author
focuses on the murders investigated by colorful central character Patrick Postiglione, a self-described
"hoodlum" from New York whose service during Vietnam inspired him to pursue a law enforcement career:
"He had to be a cop--a good cop." Once in Nashville, Postiglione discovered that the city's surface charm
concealed surging street crime; "even iconic streets uptown were in complete disarray," writes Arntfield.
After several years of aggressive policing, Postiglione became a homicide detective, working complex,
brutal cases of<< thrill killings in dive bars and serial rape-murders in cheap motels>>. The author argues that
many of these typified "the hedonistic-thrill killer...a special breed of psychopath with an insatiable desire
for stimulation." Although Postiglione maintained an admirable clearance rate, by 2002, he'd organized a
new unit to address the most violent and mysterious of these killings. "A full-time cold-case squad, even if
unofficial, was a radical concept at the time," writes the author. Postiglione relied on developments in
profiling and DNA comparison, and he cleared the early unsolved rape-murder and child-abduction cases
that haunted his colleagues since 1975. Arntfield writes capably about investigatory forensics and
behavioral science theory in clarifying the motivations of these sadistic murderers, as well as the tactics
developed over time by smart cops like Postiglione. Yet his prose tends to be melodramatic, with some
repetition and lots of gratuitous description and asides.
<>
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Arntfield, Michael: MONSTER CITY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A548137725/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ee18c9fe.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
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Monster City: Murder, Music and
Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age
Publishers Weekly.
265.20 (May 14, 2018): p44.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Monster City: Murder, Music and Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age
Michael Arntfield. Little A, $24.95 (344p) ISBN 978-1-5039-5288-1
In this<< overwrought>> true-crime narrative, criminologist Arntfield (MadCity) investigates various highprofile
murders in Nashville over the past 50 years. Anchoring the account is Pat Postiglione, a Queens,
N.Y., native who joined the Nashville police department in 1980 and became one of the most successful and
innovative police detectives in the nation. Though Postiglione entered law enforcement at a time of
skyrocketing crime rates, his intense commitment and willingness to embrace then-novel technologies
involving DNA allowed him to solve baffling cases. He tracked down and arrested Michael Scott Magliolo,
known as the Motel Killer, as well as Tom Steeples, who murdered a young California couple and whose
DNA was taken after a DUI arrest. Appointed to lead Nashville's nascent Metro Cold Case Unit in 2002,
Postiglione continued to develop his use of DNA testing and other innovative techniques. Unfortunately,
Arntfield relies too heavily on law-enforcement terminology and cliched hard-boiled diction (Postiglioni
"knew he needed to tighten the noose on Steeples and officially upgrade him to prime suspect"). While it's
hard to fault the author's enthusiasm and expertise, the over-amped tone and cartoonish characters can grow
<
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Monster City: Murder, Music and Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age." Publishers Weekly, 14 May 2018, p.
44. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539387438/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d0fd23bf. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539387438
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Mad City: The True Story of the Campus
Murders That America Forgot
Kathy Sexton
Booklist.
114.1 (Sept. 1, 2017): p12+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot. By Michael Arntfield. Oct. 2017.
330p. Little A, $24.99 (9781503942653); paper, $14.95 (9781503942646). 364.
In 1968, University of Wisconsin freshman Christine Rothschild was brutally murdered days after
confessing her fear of an older student, Niels Jorgensen, who she believed was stalking her. She told her
best friend, Linda, as well as campus police, who assured her it was likely all in her head. After the murder,
Jorgensen was lightly questioned before he skipped town and was largely forgotten. In the following years,
Linda devoted her time to finding Jorgensen while Madison saw a succession of similar, unsolved murders.
Criminologist Arntfield explores in depth the police ineptitude that allowed Jorgensen to go free, Lindas
cross-country search to find him, the subsequent killings at Madison, and the history of serial killers from
Jack the Ripper to H. H. Holmes to Ed Gein. <
crimes solved should steer clear, while fans of TV shows like Criminal Minds and CSI, especially, will be
intrigued.--Kathy Sexton
ONLINE ALERT! Looking for Al Gore's An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power? You'll find Donna
Seaman's review on Booklist Online, where it was our Review of the Day on August 3.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sexton, Kathy. "Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot." Booklist, 1 Sept.
2017, p. 12+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509161439/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=94802f1d. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509161439
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Murder in Plain English
Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi
California Bookwatch.
(May 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Murder in Plain English: From Manifestos to Memes - Looking at Murder Through the Words of Killers is
the first book to examine the phenomenon of murder through the writings of killers as well as how murder
is portrayed in literary fiction and crime dramas, and join the forces of a criminologist specializing in cold
cases and forensics with the talents of an anthropologist who specializes in organized crime and street
gangs. The diverse backgrounds of these two writers succeeds in creating exceptional approaches to the
written word documenting murder perspectives and psychology, making this a powerful lend of<< linguistic
analysis, psychological examination, and social investigation>> that it detailed and <
recommended for literary, legal, and social issues holdings alike.
Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi
Prometheus Books
59 John Glenn Drive, Amherst, NY 14228-2197
9781633882539, $24.00, www.prometheusbooks.com
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Arntfield, Michael, and Marcel Danesi. "Murder in Plain English." California Bookwatch, May 2017.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496014797/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bb849207. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
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Murder City
Michael Dunford
MBR Bookwatch.
(Mar. 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
Murder City
Michael Arntfield
FriesenPress
Suite 300, 990 Fort St., Victoria, BC, Canada, V8V 3K2
www.friesenpress.com
9781460261811, $34.99, HC, 360pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: London, Ontario was for many years an unrivalled breeding ground of depravity, villainy, and a
very high body count. In its coming to inherit the unwanted distinction of being the serial killer capital of
not just Canada, but apparently also the rest of the world during this dark age in the city's sordid history, the
crimes seen in London over this quarter-century period remain unparalleled and for the most part unsolved.
From the earliest documented case of homicidal copycatting in Canada, to the fact that at any given time up
to six serial killers were operating at once in the deceivingly serene "Forest City," London was once a place
that on the surface presented a veneer of normality when beneath that surface dark things would whisper
and stir. Through it all, a lone detective would go on to spend the rest of his life fighting against impossible
odds to protect the city against a tidal wave of violence that few ever saw coming, and which to this day
even fewer choose to remember. With his death in 2011, he took these demons to his grave with him but
with a twist-a time capsule hidden in his basement, and which he intended to one day be opened. Contained
inside: a secret cache of his diaries, reports, photographs, and hunches that might allow a new generation of
sleuths to pick up where he left off, carry on his fight, and ultimately bring the killers to justice-killers that
in many cases are still out there.
"Murder City" is an explosive study over fifty years in the making, and is the underbelly history of London,
Ontario as never told before. Stranger than fiction, tragic, ironic, horrifying, yet also inspiring, "Murder
City" is the true story of one city under siege, and a singular expose that marks a game changer for the true
crime genre.
Critique: <
"Murder City" is a compellingly informed and informative work that is an inherently fascinating read
throughout. Truly unique and highly recommended for community and academic library Criminology and
Canadian History collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Murder City" is also
available in a paperback edition (9781460261828, $24.99) and in a Kindle format ($7.99).
Michael Dunford
Reviewer
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Dunford, Michael
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Dunford, Michael. "Murder City." MBR Bookwatch, Mar. 2016. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A449662518/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2f7d88ad.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A449662518
Review: “Mad City,” Michael Arntfield
Posted on September 12, 2017 by Heather — No Comments ↓
Pros: Fascinating and detailed
Cons: Rambling in places
Rating: 4 out of 5
Michael Arntfield’s Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders That America Forgot is the story of Linda, who spent most of her life trying to get justice for her murdered college friend. It’s also the story of the evolution of police procedures and understanding of serial killers, and an indictment of many of the actions taken (and not taken) by police past and present.
The beginning in particular rambles round and round quite a lot, and could have used a lot of trimming. Sections rocket back and forth in time and in focus. In general the book is <
It’s depressing that Linda almost certainly knew who killed her friend, and kept the police informed of each bit of progress she made, yet the man died of old age without ever having been looked at seriously by police.
[I]f the general public knew just how many murders are solved due to luck or silly mistakes and oversights made by offenders with respect to leaving physical evidence or not keeping their mouths shut–versus cracker jack sleuthing the way it’s done on TV–people generally would be horrified and never leave their homes.
Murder in Plain English: From Manifestos to Memes—Looking at Murder through the Words of Killers by Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi
by Sarah Hutchins on June 27, 2017
1
??
??
Murder captivates the imagination. What makes someone kill? Is it genetic? Are homicidal tendencies a result of a dysfunctional childhood or a manifestation of our narcissistic culture? Questions outnumber the answers, and there are many different methods of gaining insight into the driving factors behind murder.
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Kindle
Purchase: Powell’s | Amazon | IndieBound | iBooks
In Murder in Plain English: From Manifestos to Memes – Looking at Murder through the Words of Killers, professors Michael Arntfield and Marcel Danesi take a more literary approach.
“Through fictional and semifictional tales alongside the actual words of murderers themselves, we will take a look at murder through two sets of eyes – those of the literary writer and those of the murder-as-writer.” (24)
The authors are a uniquely specialized duo for literary criminology. Arntfield is a professor at Western University where he specializes in digital and emerging media, investigative journalism, true crime writing, forensic linguistics, lexicology, and stylometry. He previously served as a professor of criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University, and is now affiliate faculty with the Centre for Research in Forensic Semiotics at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Furthermore, he has over 15 years’ experience as a police officer. Co-author Marcel Danesi is a linguistic anthropology, semiotics, and youth culture professor at the St. George Campus, University of Toronto.
Murder in Plain English touches on<< the philosophy of murder>> in some literature, primarily Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and how novels such as J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye have allegedly inspired murders, but Arntfield and Danesi mainly focus on the killers’ own writings. They begin with the newspaper coverage of Jack the Ripper and recount the stories of dozens of different murderers as recent as Dylan Roof and Omar Mateen.
Arntfield and Danesi analyze the language from passages of quotes from the murders’<< letters, testimonies, diaries, short stories, plays, social media, and manifestos>>. They examine the misspellings, the grammatical errors, and the Zodiac Killer’s cryptograms. With disdain and accuracy, they point out that the work is amateurish.
The hypothesis of the book comes toward the end because, as the authors explain, they wanted to construct Murder in Plain English like a murder mystery. For that reason, it does not seem fitting to divulge their central argument in a review, but it’s their answer to the following:
“The broader question is, why does the reading or writing of graphic texts lead some people to take the next step to act on their homicidal fantasies while in others it does not?” (210-211)
Murder in Plain English is ideal for any true crime aficionados who want to take a closer look at how language both influences and is used by murderers.
http://michaelarntfield.com/
http://anthropology.utoronto.ca/people/faculty/marcel-danesi/
What turned one city in Canada into the 'serial killer capital' of the world?
London, Ontario once suffered the highest concentration of serial killers on Earth, and 16 of 29 murder cases were never concluded – but a new book looks to a former detective’s diary entries to offer new theories
Jared Lindzon in Toronto
Wed 19 Aug 2015 11.42 EDT Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 07.42 EST
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Two of the convicted serial killers who operated in the region of London, Ontario: Christian Magee and Russell Johnson.
Two hours west of Toronto, along Highway 401, lies the small city of London, Ontario.
Known as the Forest City, the town is the birthplace of Justin Bieber, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. And between 1959 and 1984, <
Over the course of 25 years, the town was shaken by 29 gruesome murders. Thirteen of those murders were attributed to three killers who were eventually caught and convicted: Gerald Thomas Archer, known as the London Chamber Maid Slayer, Christian McGee, known as the Mad Slasher, and Russell Johnson, known as the Balcony Killer.
Sixteen of the murders have remained unsolved, but a new book based on recovered police files offers a new theory on this bloody chapter in the town’s history, unmasking two alleged serial killers in the process.
Dennis Alsop, a detective sergeant with the Ontario provincial police, was based in the London area between 1950 and 1979. He kept all of his notes and research on the murders hidden until he died in 2012.
“It’s unclear when it all came together, but [Alsop] established this compendium of his original diary entries from the 60s and 70s: old documents from a bygone era, Photostats, teletype transcripts and documents created from now extinct technologies that were thought lost to history,” said Mike Arntfield, a local detective with the London police service and professor at the London-based University of Western Ontario. Alsop left the cache to his son, who ultimately turned them over to Arntfield.
Murder City Left: Susan Cadieux’s surviving brothers and a neighbouring girl assist renowned London Free Press courtroom sketch artist Charlie Bradford create a composite drawing of Susan’s killer. Right: The finished product: a rarely seen head-to-toe sketch of the suspect, known in the press as only “The Degenerate.” The sketch was circulated in newspapers and across police stations throughout North America over the following years without success and the case remains unsolved—the oldest known case with a workable suspect DNA profile in Canada.
Family and neighbors of a victim help an artist create a composite drawing of one of the killers. Photograph: Western University Archives
Upon receiving the documents and case files, Arntfield set out to identify the perpetrators of the unsolved murders and sexual homicides of the period, using this rare trove of information while drawing on resources from his work in academia and law enforcement.
The peer-reviewed conclusions that are presented in his recently published book, Murder City: The Untold Story of Canada’s Serial Killer Capital, identifies two of the killers for the first time, one of whom is believed to have murdered four children in Toronto after eluding police in London.
“Through [Alsop’s] diary entries, he knew who did it and he was basically stonewalled from making arrests, because they felt he didn’t have enough, they wanted a slam dunk,” said Arntfield. “So he kept tabs on these people on his own time until they moved from London, and it seems that at least in one case there are other victims in Toronto connected to the same killer.”
Based on similarities between crime scenes, and with the help of resources and technologies that were not available to the original investigators, Arntfield concludes that there was at least one and as many as four serial killers operating in London at the time with similar modi operandi who were responsible for the unsolved murders.
But even if all of the remaining cases were found to be the work of a single killer, London would retain the record for having the largest verified concentration of serial killers operating in one place at one time.
“New York and Los Angeles at any given time have had four or five, but London at the time had a mean population of 170,000,” said Arntfield, adding that in megacities like New York and Los Angeles the per-capita equivalent would be about 80 or 90 per city.
Arntfield is no stranger to investigating long-forgotten murder cases. At the university he is the head of the western cold case society, in which civilians volunteer their time to help unearth new information related to unsolved cases using technology that wasn’t available to the original investigators. The club eventually became the subject of a TV series on the Oprah Winfrey Network called To Catch a Killer, hosted by Arntfield.
Why London?
Downton London, Ontario.
Downton London, Ontario. Photograph: Matthew Campbell/Wikipedia
What made London such a hotbed for homicidal activity at the time remains unknown, though Arntfield presents a number of theories in his book.
London is commonly used as a test market for major brands that want to introduce new products to Canada. Factors including population size, average income and demographic makeup make it among the most “average” cities in Canada, and one marketers have historically depended on to determine whether a product will succeed countrywide.
American test markets – like Richmond, Virginia, Muncie, Indiana, and Rochester, New York – have all had alarmingly similar histories, with violent crime rates higher than the national average.
“It’s not that having the McRib first or being a test market city makes you a haven for serial killers. It’s that the underlying sociological factors that make those places preferred locales for marketers also seem to see disproportionate numbers of [sexually deviant and violent] offenders,” said Arntfield.
Another factor that stands out is Highway 401, which runs along the southern border of the province of Ontario, and predates the construction of the American interstate highway system by four years.
“Studies have since shown that from ’56 onward, the US interstate changed the criminal landscape significantly,” said Arntfield, adding that the FBI has since developed a highway serial killings initiative to investigate the connection between major highways and serial murders.
Furthermore, the Forest City presents more remote settings than most urban landscapes, while providing access to a large enough population base for perpetrators to pursue potential victims. Such isolated cities also tend to have a lack of informal social control, Arntfield said, and lack the major media and communication networks of major cities.
During this period there was also no formal system for record sharing between police departments, and local, provincial and federal police were slow to identify consistencies between murder scenes.
While the book is intended to shed some light on this dark part of London’s history, Arntfield said it is also intended to provide inspiration to police officers today.
“I’m hoping the book will help empower the cops out there like Dennis and like I was, who stick with a case in spite of department politics, who stick with a case because it’s their calling, who will see things to fruition, whether it’s while they’re still police officers or decades later when they turn over that information,” he said.