Helltown by Casey Sherman

 

In the late 1960's and early 1970's, Cape Cod like the rest of the country was caught up in the hippie era, the time of peace and love.  Cape Cod had it's own hippie crew along with an artsy group of more adult residents.  Both author Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut lived there, Mailer already successful and Vonnegut waiting for the fame that his novel Slaughterhouse Five would bring.  

One of the most prominent members of the hippie group was Tony Costa.  He was the local drug dealer and gave his followers hallucinogenic drugs.  He had a select group of young teenage girls that called him Sire, just as Charles Manson had his own group of smitten girls on the West Coast.  Both groups would erupt in murder that year.

Tony's first two murders went unnoticed.  Both were girls who had already run away from home and when they disappeared from Cape Cod, it was just assumed that they had moved on.  But they had been caught up in Tony's drug and sex aura and he had killed each and buried them in a clearing in the nearby forest.  His next two murders were done together and he made a mistake in his choice of victims.  He picked two friends who were only in town for the weekend.  One was a school teacher and the other in college.  They were all in the same boarding house for the weekend and the girls were friendly enough but hardly entranced by Tony.  He asked them to give him a ride and then took them to the forest, killed both, and stole the car.  That brought the police down on him and he was arrested in a matter of weeks.

Casey Sherman is the author of multiple books, several of which have been turned into movies.  He grew up in Cape Cod so this case was close to him and had been largely untold.  I found it interesting that the same hippie culture had evolved both in Cape Cod and Los Angeles, both had formed cults around one man and both had evolved into murder although Manson got others to do his killing while Tony was a murderer himself.  The murders came to light in both places the same summer.  Sherman did a great job capturing the fear that was present in both locations.  I remember that summer myself, living in a small rural town in Southwest Virginia.  People were even scared there where no groups like those existed.  I listened to this book and the narrator did an excellent job.  This book is recommended for those interested in true crime and the counterculture of the hippie era.