Bluegrass

A True Story of Murder in Kentucky

By: William Van Meter

Narrated by: Ed Sala

Widely published journalist William Van Meter returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, to research this harrowing account of a horrifying crime that occurred at Western Kentucky University.

In 2003, attractive college student Katie Autry was found dead in her dorm room after being raped, stabbed, and set on fire. As Van Meter delves into the facts of the case, further disturbing information surfaces.

In telling the true story of this shocking crime, Bluegrass describes the devastation of not one but three families. Two young men, whose lives seem preordained to intertwine, are jailed for the crime: DNA evidence places Stephen Soules, an unemployed, mixed-race high-school dropout, at the scene, and Lucas Goodrum, a 21-year-old pot dealer with an ex-wife, a girlfriend still in high school, and an inauspicious history of domestic abuse, is held by an ever-changing confession. The friends of the suspects and the foster and birth families of the victim form complex and warring social nets that are cast across town. And a small southern community, populated by eccentrics of every socioeconomic class, from dirt-poor to millionaire, responds to the horror.

Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this tale is redolent with atmosphere, dark tension, and lush landscapes.

©2009 William Van Meter (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC