A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom
By Marek Fuchs
4/5
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About this ebook
A true story of two families in New York and Ohio linked by betrayal, sordid secrets, and the decades-old murder of an Olathe, Kansas banker.
It was 1982 when David Harmon, a gentle and well-liked member of the Evangelical Christian community in Olathe, Kansas, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping. The force of the blows crushed his face beyond recognition. Suspicion quickly fell on a pair of exemplary citizens: David's wife, Melinda, and David’s best friend, Mark Mangelsdorf, student body president of the local bible college. But when the long arms of the church came to their defense, no charges were pressed.
Some twenty years later, two Olathe police officers revived the cold case and made startling revelations that reopened old wounds within the Olathe community. They also rocked the two well-heeled towns where Melinda and Mark now lived separate, successful, law-abiding lives. Melinda was a devoted wife and mother of two in suburban Ohio. Mark had become a Harvard MBA, a high-paid corporate mover and respected family man, in Pelham, New York. Then, in 2001, Melinda and Mark both received a knock on the door.
With “a breakneck pace…maintained right up to the final pages” (Kirkus Reviews), A Cold-Blooded Business is “a killer of a story—tight, relentlessly compelling, and superbly reported”(#1 New York Times bestselling author James Kaplan).
Marek Fuchs
Marek Fuchs is a teacher, journalist, and volunteer firefighter. After six years as a stockbroker, he became a journalist, in which role he has written columns for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, and TheStreet. Fuchs speaks regularly on business and journalism issues, and currently serves as a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He lives in a loud house with three children in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
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Reviews for A Cold-Blooded Business
7 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wish there were more pictures.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"A Cold-Blooded Business" is Marek Fuchs' account of a 1982 Olathe, Kansas, murder and the two killers who were finally convicted of the crime almost 25 years later. The crime itself was a fascinating one. The victim, a much-admired, religious 25-year-old man, was brutally bludgeoned to death in his bed in the early hours of the morning. The two most likely suspects were the victim's wife and a family friend whom authorities believed might be his wife's lover. The victim's father-in-law was a powerful member of the Church of the Nazarene, a man with enough influence and prestige in Olathe to stop the murder investigation in its tracks if that is what it would take to save his daughter from spending the rest of her life in prison. So that is just what he did.Melinda Harmon and Mark Mangelsdorf, after relatively brief interviews were allowed to get on with their lives. Melinda left Olathe, not to return until she was finally charged with the crime more than two decades later. Mark, who resumed his classes at Olathe's MidAmerica Nazarene College, and who eventually earned a Harvard MBA, faced much greater pressure from Olathe authorities until he, too, left the state for good.By the time two Olathe detectives decided to resume the department's investigation into David Harmon's murder, Melinda and Mark were doing quite well for themselves. Melinda, by now the mother of two children, was living the good life with her wealthy dentist husband in Ohio. Mark had reached the top management echelon with some of the largest companies in the world, including a vice-presidency with PepsiCo, and was living with his wife and two children (he had three children by an earlier marriage) in one of the wealthiest suburbs of New York City.Life was sweet for Mark and Melinda, but all of that would come crashing down when the two Olathe detectives knocked on each of their doors to begin the hard work that the department never got around to doing in 1982. That the two were finally brought to justice is a credit to the men who reopened such an old case; what happened in the courtroom and in the district attorney's office when the two murderers were returned to Olathe was a disgrace.Marek Fuchs covered the David Harmon murder story for three years for the New York Times and, as a result, he is well acquainted with all of its players and with the politics of Olathe, Kansas, including the Church of the Nazarene's influence there and the political ambitions of some involved in prosecuting the case. Unfortunately, however, "A Cold-Blooded Business" reads more like an extended newspaper story than like what one generally expects to find in today's almost novelized true crime books. As despicable as Melinda and Mark obviously are, Fuchs does not dig deep enough into their personalities to explain, or even to theorize much about how two such supposedly deeply religious people can be capable of doing what these two did. "A Cold-Blooded Business" comes in at barely 200 pages and it left me wondering who Melinda and Mark really are and why they killed David Harmon. David's family is probably wondering the same thing.Rated at: 3.0
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You can tell Marek Fuchs is a reporter by trade. His facts are presented in a logical yet tension-building order, his characters are true and reveal themselves mostly through their own words and actions, and events and circumstances are weighted appropriately to their impact on the story rather than their potential to produce book-selling blurbs. It is this professionalism that separates A Cold-Blooded Business from many other examples of the true-crime genre.There is plenty of melodrama in the story itself, and Fuchs puts it all before the reader without making you wallow in it. The Church of the Nazarene could have been depicted as a near-cult for example, but it was portrayed instead as a fundamentalist sect for Christians who don't believe you have to wear wool underwear to feel closer to God yet want the protection of a semi-closed society that holds itself just sightly holier than everybody else.The characters reflect reality, too. All three of the main players, victim David Harmon, his wife Melinda, and their eerily successful and intimate friend Mark Mangelsdorf, are real people who lean on their religion when they need it, being very careful to not look at the underpinnings of their beliefs too closely lest they learn the foundation is a bit shaky. Fuchs did an especially fine job of demonstrating how Mark turned away from the religion of the prairies to worship at the altar of the corporate boardroom with much the same calculating proficiency he used to purchase, use, and hide the murder weapon that apparently has yet to be found.I appreciate the way this story was told without the sensationalism that pervades and overwhelms most such books. At the hands of a skilled reporter like Marek Fuchs, A Cold-Blooded Business carries you through a sordid affair without making you feel like a rubber-necker sniffing around the blood stains at a highway fatality.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Melinda Lambert Harmon was a devout member of the Nazarene church in Olathe, Kansas.Growing up the daughter of a highly respected Nazarene church official, Dr. Wilmer Lambert, and later marrying her teenager sweetheart David Harmon, Melinda's life appeared to be one of many blessings.Yet something was apparently lacking.Not long into the marriage and while working at the Nazarene College in Olathe, Melinda was introduced to and began working closely with Mark Mangelsdorf; an up and coming young man in charge of organizing concerts on the campus of the MidAmerica Nazarene College.It wasn't long until Mangelsdorf found himself in a tight-knit friendship with the newlywed Harmons.Although all three appeared to be zealous in the practice of their strict religion, friends and neighbors would come to question the possibility of an adulterous affair between Melinda and Mark.Then on a cold, dark night in February 1982, Melinda beat on the door of her next door neighbors claiming that David had been brutally attacked by two black men before the intruders fled the Harmon apartment in possession of the keys to the bank where David was employed.Yet the police wasn't buying what Melinda was selling. Unfortunately, between limited evidence and the interference of Melinda's powerful father, homicide detectives were at an impasse on solving David's murder.For 20 years, "the buckle of the bible belt" would be divided between those who supported Melinda and Mark and those who felt disgust at the two getting away with murder.Then in walked two cold case detectives, a district attorney looking to take the next step up the political ladder, and friends and family still seeking justice for David Harmon.What follows is the story of reopening a case considered colder than a Sunday in hell, hours of tireless detective work, and the amazing toe-the-line confession and accusation from Melinda.Author Marek Fuchs crosses over from writing about the corporate world into the business of cold-hearted murder.Well written and full of detail, plus a one-on-one interview with the accused, A Cold-Blooded Business is a tale of true crime that will make you question the validity of believing the old adage that you reap what you sow.