Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into another true crime novel by one of my favourite authors John Douglas When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town. In this book John dives into one of his toughest cases and talks about how his and his team’s role in the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit helped crack the case. Still, in a stage where they have gained notoriety but are still doubted by the public, it was up to John and his team to crack the case of a killer who was torturing the family of his victim on the phone after kidnapping their loved one.
My Review
Before diving into When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker I had never heard about the Shari Smith and Debra May Helmick case but after getting into this book I am sure I won’t soon forget them. In any case, where a loved one dies, there is always more than one victim. Everyone who cared for this person lives as a victim of the grief and pain that another has brought into their lives. In this book, John dives into one of his cases in which he was after a killer who enjoyed not only hurting his victims but also the people who loved them to extremes that no one could imagine. I don’t want to get too much into retelling the case in this review because it’s an incredibly interesting read and one that I think is worth checking out. Furthermore, I think these people deserve to have their story told, and the dangers that are in the world. I think mental health defiantly played a role in this case, but I struggled to really grasp how much, and to what degree. It was an interesting piece in the book that kind of left the opinion up to the reader to make as to what they feel was the real driver here in this case.
I gave When a Killer Calls by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker a 7.5/10 rating. It’s a really interesting read but also a really difficult one. It’s heartbreaking to read about the ways that this awful human being tortured Shari Smith’s family after murdering her, and it’s quite difficult to read. The facts about this case are blood boiling and it genuinely wants to make you scream and throw things to know about what these people have had to go through and continue to go through. On May 31st, 1985 Shari Smith had stopped at the end of her family’s long gravel driveway to collect the mail. Looking forward to her future given that high school graduation was a few days away she was expecting a few things in the mail. Getting out of her car barefoot, this would be the last time Shari was ever seen again. Given the distance from the end of the driveway to the home Shari’s parents became concerned when she didn’t come up the driveway 15 minutes later. In 15 minutes she pulled up, and then was gone forever. After Shari was taken her family started to receive phone calls from the man who took her to present his delusions to them that he and Shari were in a relationship, and he was taking care of her. All of these proved to be untrue but at the time it gave her family some hope that he may actually be keeping her alive and taking care of her. As the calls continue and there is no sign of their daughter the calls become more delusional and horrifying. To find their loved one’s killer her family must continue to entertain the calls in the hopes he may give something important up. A few weeks after Shari is taken Debra May Helmick is snatched from her front yard while playing with her siblings. When Shari’s parents get the calls again from their daughter’s killer, it becomes clear to law enforcement that the same man who took Shari took Debra. The question of how the cases connected, and why they connected was swimming large in all law enforcement heads, and further, the question of if he would do this again haunted all. After some time, despite his many denials, Larry Gene Bell is arrested for the kidnapping and murders, but it becomes clear that he isn’t going to give up the answers very easily. It’s up to John, his team, and the local police to create a case that will send him away forever.
A hard aspect that I really appreciated about this book was how much of it was dedicated to focusing on who Shari was before this happened to her, but furthermore how the aftermath of her passing had a profound effect on the people in her life. It becomes clear that as the kidnapper calls the home he is infatuated with the Smith women and the things that Shari’s mother, sister, and grandmother had to suffer through to find answers for Shari were immense. I appreciated that John often acknowledged that if they could have found another way rather than having the killer be able to contact them they would have, but it was 1985, and the resources were not as grand as they are today. They needed the women in her life to stay strong so that they could keep him talking and on a leash. So not only did they have to listen to Larry Gene Bell’s disgusting perversions of Shari over the phone, but when Debra was taken they became his main point of contact surrounding her as well. I am not really certain why he updated the Smith family about Debra and not the Helmick family but it seemed like he had this very long-standing obsession with the Smith women for quite some time. I genuinely can’t imagine the pain they would have had to deal with having this man telling them how he wants their daughter buried, then torturing them with the facts that he took and killed a 9-year-old girl. Just sick stuff.
The parts once Bell is arrested are just as hard as when he was free. To get into this man’s brain is a horrifying one, and one that is just scary to think about in terms of others out there being like him. I would argue that mental health did play a role in Bell’s murdering of these two people, but I don’t think it’s the blaming factor. To be totally honest there were parts that I was even just skeptical he was faking this all. I am not sure, Larry Gene Bell is an extremely odd man and his actions after what he did definitely don’t speak to him being stable mentally, but I don’t think it’s fair to excuse his actions because of it. I mean in my opinion, it’s a bit like the Greyhound bus killing that happened here in Canada. I fully understand that the man who did it was extremely mentally unwell but at the same time, he did decapitate a person destroying their and their families’ lives and traumatising everyone else on that bus for the rest of their lives. I am glad the man who did that is much better now, but I don’t think we can just excuse such violent acts just because mental health is at play. It’s a fine line and definitely a debatable one so I can’t say I am 100% one way or the other but all I know is that something was up with Larry Gene Bell but it sure as hell does not excuse what he did to the Smith and Helmick families. He knew what he was doing and this is clear by the constant and continuous phone calls he made.
Overall When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker is a really interesting true crime read to dive into. I have always really enjoyed John’s books and find him to be a fantastic storyteller, who also gives immense respect to the victims and families of the cases he has worked on, simultaneously giving local law enforcement their flowers for the hard work they put into the cases he works on. Given that the case was so long ago I think reading a true crime case like Shari Smith and Debra May Helmick’s reminds one of the fragility of life and that you never know who is around the corner trying to take your shine away. Furthermore, it’s also a reminder of the risks out there for women and how we don’t even need to say a word to a person for them to create a false relationship in their head and this idea that we are theirs.
Has anyone else read When a Killer Calls: A Haunting Story of Murder, Criminal Profiling, and Justice in a Small Town by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker or any of their other true crime books? What did you think?
Thank you for checking out this review! I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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