In conjunction with the book’s publication, a new Web resource for readers of A TWISTED FAITH by Gregg Olsen was launched today. The book chronicles the five year span between Dawn Hacheney’s death in a house fire in Bremerton, WA, and the arrest and conviction of her youth pastor husband, Nick Hacheney, for her murder in 2002.

The new site includes a list of some of the church prophecies that prosecutors say contributed to Dawn’s death. It also features testimony from church prophet Sandy Glass, a timeline, photographs, a reader discussion guide, and the trailer Olsen created to promote the book.

Beyond the obvious bizarre nature of the case – the abuse of power and theology – Olsen says he hopes the book sparks constructive and healing debate.

“No matter what anyone thinks of the principal women in A TWISTED FAITH, it is my hope that their courage for speaking out is honored and incites others who have been victimized to come forward and share their stories,” Olsen said. “Evil always thrives in a dark place.”

Olsen and others associated with the case will post commentary and updates on the case.

Go to the site and come back here to share your thoughts.

The Devil’s Rooming House is the gripping tale of a legendary, century-old murder spree—a book M. William Phelps has been working on for nearly six years.

A silent, simmering killer terrorized New England in 1911. As a terrible heat wave killed more than 2,000 people, another silent killer began her own murderous spree. That year a reporter for the Hartford Courant noticed a sharp rise in the number of obituaries for residents of a rooming house in Windsor, Connecticut, and began to suspect who was responsible: Amy Archer-Gilligan, who’d opened the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids four years earlier. “Sister Amy” would be accused of murdering both of her husbands and up to sixty-six of her patients with cocktails of lemonade and arsenic; her story inspired the Broadway hit and Hollywood film Arsenic and Old Lace.

The Devil’s Rooming House is the first book about the life, times, and crimes of America’s most prolific female serial killer.

In telling this fascinating story, Crime Rant partner M. William Phelps also paints a vivid portrait of early-twentieth-century New England.

Thursday, April 29: 7:00 PM
Guilford Free Library
Guilford, CT
Lecture/Signing

Thursday, May 5, 7:00 PM
Borders Books
Fairfield, CT
Lecture/Signing

Connecticut Magazine
May issue
Brief Q&A

Nick Hacheney, a youth pastor from a Bainbridge Island, Wash., church who was convicted of murdering his wife is Gregg Olsen’s newest nonfiction book project. A TWISTED FAITH will be published in hardcover by St. Martins Press on March 30. Dateline NBC has taped a show on the case interviewing Olsen and others featured in the book. It will air on April 9.

Here are the tour dates:

April 9 – 8 p.m., Talk and Watch Dateline NBC, Family Inn, Manchester, WA.

April 10- 2 -4 p.m., Canon Beach Library, OR

April 12 – 7 p.m., Powell’s (Beaverton, OR)

April 13 – 7 p.m. Timberland Library (Hoodsport, WA)

April 14 – 7 p.m. Third Place Books (Lake Forest Park, WA)

April 24 – 1 p.m. Lakewood Library, WA

May 4 – 7 p.m. Peninsula Library (Gig Harbor, WA)

M. William Phelps (Matt to CR readers!) has a new book out this month…and it’s another winner. Here’s a snip from the jacket:

A loving father and his new wife set out to pick up his kids for a scheduled weekend visit – but never suspected they were walking into a death trap. A handwritten note instructed Alan and Terra Bates to enter the back door of his exwife’s Alabama home. A day later their charred bodies were found hundreds of miles away, wrapped in blankets, in a burned-out car’s trunk on a desolate Georgia road.

At Jessica McCord’s house, law enforcement found windows covered in blankets, a cache of weapons and ammunition, carpets torn up, new tile on the floors – a couch gone. Then they learned about the nasty divorce and bitter custody battle that had landed Jessica in jail. Upon release, Jessica swore, ‘Somebody is going to pay’. With her new police-officer husband, Jessica became the prime suspect in this brutal double murder.

Check it out! Available now!