Charles Cohen, parricide. Murdered his psychologist father and adoring mother. Really excellent, very grisly.
Very good true crime that I never would have found if not for the recommendation of a fellow reader. I liked the fact that the author let the reader come to their own conclusions about the main character. It was well written and not filled with trial transcripts, which was great. You follow the evolution of Charlie Cohen before the murders and for years after, and it's just different is all I can say. The only negative to me was you didn't find out from the book what the final outcome of his trial was, but it was easy enough to locate on the internet. This is one I can certainly recommend to other readers of true crime!
This is an interesting story of a privileged (and perhaps mentally ill?) young man who simply doesn't want to work. He finds a way to blame all the things which don't satisfy him or please him in life upon his parents. If they give him something he doesn't appreciate it, if they withhold something trying to get his behavior to a more civilized level he doesn't understand, whatever happens it is their fault. It is actually, in his mind, their fault that he brutally murders both of them by beating, stabbing, and slashing them. The author does a good job of segmenting the story and keeping the reader's interest by switching back and forth to different periods of this indolent young man's life prior to murdering, right after, on the run from police cross-country, and eventually right into male prostitution (which he was also too lazy to be very successful) and another murder. By the end of the book I was so very grateful to the justice system that he is actually slated to spend the rest of his life in prison. Unless, of course, some liberal finds a loophole and looses him on innocent people again.
