Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom
    A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom
    A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom
    Ebook208 pages4 hours

    A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom

    By Marek Fuchs

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In 1959, Olathe, Kansas, was made famous by the murder of the Clutter family and Truman Capote’s groundbreaking book on the crime, In Cold Blood. But fewer know that Olathe achieved notoriety again in 1982, when a member of Olathe’s growing Evangelical Christian population, a gentle man named David Harmon, was bludgeoned to death while sleeping—the force of the blows crushing his face beyond recognition. Suspicion quickly fell on David’s wife, Melinda, and his best friend, Mark, student body president of the local Bible college. However, the long arms of the church defended the two, and no charges were pressed. 

     Two decades later, two Olathe policemen revived the cold case making startling revelations that reopened old wounds and chasms within the Olathe community—revelations that rocked not only Olathe, but also the two well-heeled towns in which Melinda and Mark resided. David’s former wife and friend were now living separate, successful, law-abiding lives. Melinda lived in suburban Ohio, a devoted wife and mother of two. Mark had become a Harvard MBA, a high-paid corporate mover, a family man, and a respected community member in a wealthy suburb of New York City. Some twenty years after the brutal murders, each received the dreaded knock of justice on the door. A Cold-Blooded Business provides fascinating character studies of Melinda and Mark, killers who seemingly returned to normalcy after one blood-splattered night of violence. Featuring a new afterword by the author covering the events of the past five years, this fast-moving true crime narrative is a chilling exploration into the darkest depths of the human psyche.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSkyhorse
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9781628738667
    A Cold-Blooded Business: Adultery, Murder, and a Killer's Path from the Bible Belt to the Boardroom
    Author

    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.

    Related to A Cold-Blooded Business

    Related ebooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Milwaukee’s Cannibal

      Apr 11, 2021

      Milwaukee’s Cannibal
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Living Victims

      May 8, 2020

      The Living Victims
      7 min read

    • Article

      Everest Death Toll Rises To 10 This Season After 4 More Climbers Found Dead

      May 24, 2017

      The bodies were discovered in tents by Nepalese Sherpas at Camp IV, the camp closest to the summit of the world's tallest mountain. The victims have not yet been identified.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Murder Of James Bulger 30 Years On

      Feb 7, 2023

      This week marks 30 years since two-year-old James Bulger was abducted and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. James would be in his 30s now. Would he be married? A father? With a career? All that was snatched away from

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Office of Historical Corrections

      Oct 7, 2020

      The vision for the Institute of Public History that summoned me from my former job as a history professor at GW had been grandiose. An ambitious freshman congresswoman demanded funding to put a public historian in every zip code in the country, a cor

      1 min read

    • Article

      Twisted Triangle

      Apr 16, 2020

      Twisted Triangle
      4 min read

    • Article

      How Scott Peterson's Murder Convictions Were Suddenly Thrown Into Doubt

      Oct 16, 2020

      SAN FRANCISCO - Laci Peterson's 2002 disappearance from her Modesto, Calif., home on Christmas Eve made instant headlines. Her family initially said that Scott, her husband, was beyond suspicion. Then a woman surfaced who said she was having an affai

      4 min read

    • Article

      Inside the Turpins' Home in Texas Before They Moved to Perris, Calif.

      Jan 21, 2018

      RIO VISTA, Texas _To neighbor Ricky Vinyard, the Turpin family seemed odd from the moment they arrived at the end of his remote dirt road in this small town 50 miles south of Fort Worth. "When they moved in, they were really mysterious people. They d

      3 min read

    • Article

      Police Say Wisconsin Man Confesses To Abducting Jayme Closs And Killing Her Parents

      Jan 14, 2019

      Jake Thomas Patterson allegedly told police he decided to abduct Jayme after spotting her board a school bus. Authorities say he controlled her with threats of "bad things."

      3 min read

    • Article

      Police Say One Man Is Tied To Multiple Killings In Missouri And Kansas

      Nov 9, 2021

      Perez Reed is facing charges of murder and assault in shootings that occurred in the St. Louis County area. The gun used in those attacks has been tied to other killings in St. Louis and Kansas.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Living Victims

      May 8, 2020

      The Living Victims
      7 min read

    • Article

      Why I Read True Crime

      Jan 24, 2018

      For years I have been unsuccessfully recommending true crime books to friends. The second you tell someone you’ve just read a mind-blowing book about Jeffrey Dahmer that they simply must read, they start to back away from you. The first rule of readi

      5 min read

    • Article

      Diana’s One True Love

      Jan 22, 2021

      Diana’s One True Love
      4 min read

    • Article

      Anita Cobby: The Horrific Murder Of A Beauty Queen

      Jan 27, 2020

      It was the crime that shocked the nation, when 26-year-old nurse and former beauty queen Anita Cobby was horrifically murdered while walking home on February 2, 1986. More than 30 years later, people still remember Anita’s tragic story, but Deb Walla

      2 min read

    • Article

      Name That KILLER

      May 7, 2020

      When sex workers in Dallas, Texas, started showing up dead with their eyeballs missing, terror spread through the city. Many people are fascinated by eyes, but none as much as the Eyeball Killer. Charles Frederick Albright was born in Texas in 1933.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Under The Knife

      Dec 3, 2020

      Under The Knife
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Fierce Fight

      Jan 7, 2021

      A Fierce Fight
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Cold-Blooded Business

    4/5

    6 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Melinda 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.
    • 3/5
      "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
    • 3/5
      Wish there were more pictures.
    • 5/5
      You 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.

    Book preview

    A Cold-Blooded Business - Marek Fuchs

    m{0abook_preview_excerpt.html[[ƕ >=m ۲̐CԋȤGC1 *X"Bf'^ɜsn&PMyf~l4ȼs}_ׯoϞobߜ]n. oM&Nr9|-7/04?9g߸&GSs+^\78)tx}\cLΏO\?>eM\uK\&Orh;8<ߝ6ϿVs)6RĭLkڰ4{7M8סRB]g7yx΍> ߞ9eY6ak.7?1%/~MƋp'&/s [/D~S\> bzK6NPL#ۯ36azy 'J[Glh\SwQ ]ӊ"-4͋V" x"x[wKg1Plr=#XS@yQGe! uC=b0GSb;a Rd!= 1"kefmIxd 7P-cVE-#BF@I{7T2z2i |\GXNw'MC= O82)mo).[vMuS>(2OF$ZJ0 ,=12Ɛnп9T%kJC½Qё̈́^Cf7t+&Ŭ߬0@}`ÔwO&pPK?^F>6P`: V #*J6b 7~.|Y=:vf =w%@NP|): lcEIs05TXy 0I{S=tڀL@๎Z~s@y&E΂!Hđr@B^g+]AMRϔ`{ 0BLW|w*7m$O5/ $!dP]79l EQ yUUf]HkYD6KiK T`2Iy=:ƕ<RT!S$\4ei*AnbV8Adc[Ka*l7}L?tB*9 o ȅ΍%y=۸Z` `{H{}r+!ۍHA7۸ C&FrП2 NlUi Q0l~Qϙޔ}׏}|i{v"Pӂ*o~ɔ2h\0+؈ 2vnk >f ]0!~-!`B ?I/R N!.by#xGtPe#B'3x-:! :WTk,(1PԸzq-L cnshtPB cXF4,ͫU}|^n4+:܆0L0йYޞ%΋()0NC%^_ǂSYX̻ןas;8҃fP*jѺ^BTRsUdAAm?5_W#5sJ[ 6|K43=J2YlP -5ʞ,C(5ab@bY(- 7j7f0B8E6\\ 2JX``'_ǙPÝNXY9`igS)qyt%ߝg\B*{ekbƞ C}mOo=3Oc*.)V$ͪ LouóJbU#JE{` i؀ɎbkG[pQ+DNI(1r\NhH?@ _kJrGUb$.#_zw)̻$JC:ʕM6Bw{abcͼb}偳.9:.3ٰΫq%V\E?\ŊEe?~ǿ6~ 3WtЁx//{~1N?b};W,0&W|YS 44b8 W#[M QfeOKڱ 9ƭ >ZYτ#Rȟ;Z,41+aZ}ݟKwZrֳ2hH~)o |6jI G2 : 9.$ f$8%&c|(ҳJ{yh޹1%5HpS"1ݐ[K06R|i\3ACk%\3L ' x,$GznICઁMP^ɿ)c(."=Jҍh? ݢj^kg*Z S x7?Nhi[-rl gLG]Y+mA4Hǵگ7,ikΈ@Z:w0 ]LgG˞'殜L Y0N 7LHXHTY1'bj.dJPIxkKGC{1 dzId,f[FnX7L/b1 tJDTòC+צ .V锞X TF֜hΊڴ6 0 ~[}{&c+6%U%Wk؄TB=FXڇ֩('ͥtMlտ(S+ ~@|sl Ooq1,koP],X嘝R-*o5.Ɣ8]¦Y!hFk-ģAc0g}haIѡJ޸m,!U^ Ys7sjߙ) W$_" +Īaak0 #8>yp%Kmj#7,PF%%(%bULbx2a ΜfM!&Knkv;U,J=SQbG=I| 9лJf]#n ͜eߑZ_p[" 8/:Y9fnx,8;8)exr`&@([)8 QnW1n u(J ՛pע]JJ0=+%ӆ-SV}Le-I`i3*ێ-5N =uq+Ӓ 5_T0ğ,s_b!ؐy>IXo8r 9d&vwEl7M<7L%&.j.er+t dJFӲ*#TIE\MՄE[ZQαm%K]!JV$"Mi^S1F:X @WgTν^`([\vl3sر_̹ N1.-ޤ`\MYl y̍qfxi *@IX_lMȳ۠#ߏbx8"?C)GX}@.ŝ:H٫lPqAyNmhUL[VF^Xnۘ'ÁowLÆz] kc ɮFÉ!W N(sPgTP qucΗ[qc|aӺ^ )(ωxcT/K,c^UCUS-MW++~v0˗P<:L| *(q ?ͷA1#G`9ѷ Aa9Qxy,j3=!te[+ `(% %oF]AA<bVa+?LyMVxԋX\NRZp$pX}پ;_~ 8P&IsXU k74.c`$s5(uê]_,Ŋ1#ҷgsP2N̺#'*jri_t81 r~%26Wo߇I9o^.ͱX\}Z}hK:AG^h()d5¹2]PS}C&}~&RajjL#)Flc9;?:F]*R oa%ӛ0Y `+Zfש.7ttI\r3ǽĵ'4 Q1Yqe2ߋq5gXJʭCURtpjW98v"+53QH(737} b5Fq[P13O|OD2oE>9 ,%Ty.vMVIUX"˾ 3{H9үŗVZAu ٻD B$Ӂ Jc8Ig-;xmZZO$@)vW~[Un[)$|WQa U`m1'~[cwhz>4c^[ULM]xF ,O0BHs)rсO__탡cI$WuۉCZ.t5VnjU*?r׷HAV ؆٦"鎍9!LeK]dE,eL8eTRT=FTnp7-m,6#+n R>6XW нҿ²}-h@)kr֭ợab12t!_0 ?@
    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1