Convenient Suspect: A Double Murder, a Flawed Investigation, and the Railroading of an Innocent Woman
Written by Tammy Mal
Narrated by Suehyla El-Attar
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
On Thursday, December 15, 1994, Joann Katrinak and her three-month-old son, Alex, went missing from their home in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania.
Four months later - when their bodies were found in a lonely patch of woods - the police would launch a three-year investigation leading to the arrest of Patricia Lynne Rorrer - a young mother who had never met either victim - as the monster responsible.
In what would become Pennsylvania's first use of mitochondrial DNA in a criminal case, Patricia Rorrer was quickly tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. But did the jury make the right decision? Is Patricia Rorrer truly guilty? As new evidence continues to surface, including allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tampering, that question requires an answer even more.
With a subject matter and storytelling style reminiscent of the hit podcast Serial, Convenient Suspect will appeal to a wide audience. The audio-book reveals information never before made public - information gathered directly from more than 10,000 official documents, including Pennsylvania State Police reports, FBI files, forensic lab results, and the 6,500-page trial transcript.
Through four years of intensive research, countless interviews with those involved, and hundreds of letters, phone calls, and personal visits with Patricia Rorrer, the truth about the evidence used to convict her can finally be revealed.
A ListenUp audio production.
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Reviews for Convenient Suspect
11 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a pretty confusing book - which is not entirely the fault of the author, as it's a confusing case. In the mid-90s, Patricia Rorrer was convicted of the murder of her ex-boyfriend's wife and small son. Intending to write a book about how a woman could commit such a horrific crime, Mal instead found a bungled investigation, mishandled evidence, and indications that the Pennsylvania State Police had long been covering up any evidence of alternate suspects in order to cover for their own cavalier attitude toward the case. It's been far too long now to figure out what really happened, and the details of the evidence are messy (it's hard to tell, actually, what evidence really exists and what has just been talked about for so long that people make their own assumptions about it). Mal doesn't do an outstanding job presenting the case, but she does lay out a pretty good argument that Rorrer was railroaded and deserves a new trial.