Journal of the Dead: A Story of Friendship and Murder in the New Mexico Desert Book

I found this book on a thrift store shelf and got it with some others three for a dollar. I thought it sounded like a fascinating true crime story and after finishing reading it I know I was right.

Two friends on a cross country road trip stop along the way to camp overnight in the desert. On their way out the next morning they get lost, become dehydrated, and eventually one friend supposedly begs the other to murder him as a way of mercy killing. They were only missing for a few days so its hard to exactly call it euthanization but the courts found that he did believe he was ending his friend's suffering from imminent death. We read about their friendship, their families and even the park rangers and investigators involved in the case.

I was stationed overseas in South Korea when this was in the headlines so I never previously heard of this case. I don't know how big it was in the news or if this book offers much more than what was covered on television at the time. The author begins by telling us that he will not pick a side and let us decide weather we believe in the innocence found by the courts or not and I believe for the most part he stayed true to that.

I liked the parts where the author moved away from the main plot to tell about dehydration studies and the history of the area and felt that he did a great job of painting a vivid picture of the place and mindset as well as rounding out what could have been a very thin story based on court records and notes from the murder trial.

This was a quick read and an interesting way to pass the time. I don't feel the author was the most skilled and there were times where sentence structure was ineloquent or words were left in after editing changes but for the most part I could gloss over them and just enjoy this haunting tale.