Heart Full of Lies : A True Story of Desire and Death

Rating:
Summary: Book Full Of Whys
Review: I picked up HEART FULL OF LIES to read while on an airplane trip as I am true crime afficianado, former police science student and survivor of child and partner abuse. As an abuse survivor, I find Liysa Northon's continued assertions that it was necessary for her to murder her third husband, Chris, in order to protect herself and her children, particularly offensive. Please! She had too many other perfectly acceptable and legal options available to her. And for an allegedly, highly intelligent woman, Liysa committed what is arguably one of the most inept and poorly thought-out murders I've ever read about.

What kind of IQ does one need to realize, for instance, that anyone who starts off, fleeing a murder scene, sopping wet, while driving in a heated car for several hours, is not going to still be soaked to the skin by the time she reaches her final destination, unless she's stopped to re-wet herself? Liysa should have stuck to scriptwriting. While her dramatic writing and staging sensibilities were apparently skillful and sharp enough to impress a Hollywood writer, her knowledge of forensics was appallingly deficient.

As a murder scheme that is alleged to have been planned over a period of two years the end result was so rife with dumb inconsistencies between Liysa's story and the actual crime scene evidence, I can only assume she was either too caught up in starring in this real-life drama of her own making to maintain an objective perspective or she wanted to be caught and thought she could bluff her way out. Were I her attorneys I might have gone for an insanity defense, except I also happen to think she should have gotten longer than 12 years. Her lack of remorse for Chris's death as well as her lack of consideration for the devestating potential impacts to her boys leave me with the impression of this woman being one very sociopathically selfish individual. And I also recently read that Liysa, her father and brother have sued Ann Rule for $3.5 million. Hmm? It seems Liysa might still trying to secure that $2 million with which to start Chrysallis, that she couldn't get from her late husband's insurance? But, of course, I could be wrong.

Author, Ann Rule, may not be (in my opinion) the world's best true crime writer, but she is a former policewoman who researches her stories with meticulous care and does not jump to haphazard conclusions; she arrives at her opinions with painstaking, sometimes tedious prudence. Rule tells a compelling, truthful story that does not diverge off into personal speculation over obvious innuendo. Her restraint is admirable as it affords the reader the ability to draw their own conclusions. I derived the feeling that Rule, in the course of researching this case ended up with mixed feelings toward this woman who who was a fine writer and incompetent criminal whereas Rule is a fine criminologist and maybe not quite as good a writer as the subject she was writing about. My guess is Rule may have thought at some point that had Liysa not committed murder and had instead pursued screenplay writing, she might have one day written a screenplay adaptation of one of Rule's books...

As to review posted to Amazon.com by a member of the DeWitt family, what does anyone expect? Yes, I think their daughter / sister is guilty of first-degree murder, but how many of us would be any less supportive of a relative who'd done the same thing? I feel pity for both the DeWitt and Northon families who have suffered tremendously because of Lisya's horrific actions. But most of all I feel sorry for Papako and Bjorn, the two most innocent victims in all this. It is a best-of-a-bad-situation blessing that they have Papako's father and his wife willing rear the brothers together, and a friend of Chris's to remind Bjorn that his "Mydad" had many qualities worth remembering and emulating.

Rating:
Summary: Nice piece of biased trash
Review: I have a lot of problems with this book. Firstly, let me state that I have always found Ann Rule to be highly over-hyped. She is nowhere near the brilliant true crime writer so many reviewers and readers consider her to be. You want good true crime, pick up anything by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.
What bothered me the most about this book was the fact that Liysa's claims of abuse are, in essence, laughed off and ignored by Ann. I have no clue whether or not this woman was abused. My gut tells me 'no'. But do I have the right to decide this? Nope. Because I have not been given ANY of the information necessary to formulate such an opinion. The systematic destruction of character was nauseating, as was the fact that there was no involvement with Liysa's family in the writing of the book. It lacks credibility. I do believe Liysa is exactly where she belongs. I also believe that she is mentally ill. What I dislike so intensely about this book is the attempted bestowing of sainthood on the victim, Chris. The man has got to be one of the coldest, most pathetic excuses for a man I have ever read of. While I do not believe he beat her, I most certainly can recognise the emotional and psychological abuse he heaped on her. He did not deserve to die. He also does not deserve to be placed on that pedestal Ann Rule has hoisted him to.
I am grateful that Liysa's two children are being raised by her ex; perhaps they will have a chance to know what decent parents are like now. They clearly never had that while their father was alive and their mother was free.


Rating:
Summary: Good Airplane Read
Review: I bought this book at the airport in Sacramento and it was the perfect read for a long flight---quick and easy, suspenseful, etc. However, compared to some of Rule's other books, there are some serious flaws with this one. Namely, the lack of a legitimate psychiatric evaluation to support her claims that Liysa is histrionic, a sociopath, etc. I found that up until she murders her husband, Liysa appears simply self-centered and overly dramatic---not necessarily a sociopathic manipulator. In fact, I found that the only really unusual behavior she exhibited was her bout of "amnesia" and frankly I had to wonder about this guy and his mother that they would go along with that as long as they did!

It also bothers me that Rule dismisses Liysa's claims of abuse (both domestic and childhood)so easily. Although I am sure there are general characteristics that many abuse victims might share, there are exceptions to all of these.

Finally, some of Rule's comments are quite sexist. She describes Liysa's desire to have sex every day as a sexual compulsion. I don't know that daily sex qualifies as a "compulsion" and I wonder if a man expressed this same desire if it would be viewed in the same manner.





Rating:
Summary: Heart Full of Lies
Review: I found the book both intriguing and disturbing in that a woman could manipulate so many people in her life and think she could get away with it. I feel the author layed out the case superbly and that when she was finished with her details of the case there was only one conclusion one could establish. I thought it was well written and a good read. It kept me turning the pages way into the night.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Another winner from Ann Rule. The ultimate manipulative wife that kills her husband. Using (imagined, made-up) abuse as her excuse! Makes you wonder how many more women are out there like Liysa Northon...scary.

Rating:
Summary: A fair portrait of a killer
Review: Throughout the years since Ann Rule's first blockbuster, THE STRANGER BESIDE ME, I have been pleased to note that she has not stooped to cheap sensationalism to sell books. On the contrary, driven by the desire to tell the stories of some of humankind's most heartless criminals, she doggedly researches her subject and, in the end, presents a fair portrait of a killer.

In this particular case, Ms. Rule dances around the subject of domestic abuse without judging whether it existed here. Liysa DeWitt Northon claimed she was a victim of constant abuse from her husband, Chris. His friends and neighbors vehemently declaimed the idea as absurd. Since he is dead --- at Liysa's hand --- and she refused interviews with the author, the truth remains Liysa's secret.

HEART FULL OF LIES chronicles Liysa Northon's marriages, divorces, and ultimate slaying of her third husband. She always came out of a marriage financially better than she went into it. Her first and second husbands quietly acceded to her bullying demands, a tactic that she found worked well to her advantage. But she ran into a wall when it came time to get rid of her third husband. Chris could not face losing contact with Bjorn, the child Liysa cajoled him into creating with her. His deep love for his son surprised even him in its ferocity, and his apparent intractability may have been what cost him his life. Had he given Liysa an easy out, would she have let him live? We will never know now.

Instead, it seems that this highly intelligent and very capable woman embarked on a campaign to impugn her husband's reputation almost from the very start. Claiming that he choked her in a drunken rage, hit her in a drug-induced haze, and terrorized her at every turn, she convinced many of her friends that Chris was a monster and that her once ideal marriage was now a nightmare. In addition, her insatiable appetite for real estate --- and Chris's refusal to feed it --- drove her to look for someone else who would. While she squeezed everything out of Chris that she could, she was methodically engaged in a plan to get him out of her life. But she hit a snag. As his ex-wife, she would lose the perks that came with being a pilot's wife. And she knew, as his widow, that she would lose nothing. She wanted it all. What she got, in the end, was prison.

Having been on the fringes firsthand of a murder case that Ann Rule wrote about, I can attest to her accurate reporting, coupled with a kindhearted compassion for the victims and the families whose lives are forever disrupted. HEART FULL OF LIES proves that Ms. Rule is still capable of writing blockbusters.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Rating:
Summary: Writing is not up to Ann's usual standards
Review: I must admit that while reading this book, I couldn't help observing that the writing is not up to par. It's repetitive, disjointed, and the sentence structure sometimes had me reading back over to catch her meaning.
That being said, I still enjoyed this book. The story of Liysa DeWitt as told by Ann Rule is horribly fascinating. My heart goes out to the parents, sisters, and other relatives of Chris Northon, and especially to little Bjorn Northon whose "mydad" was taken so cruelly - evilly - from him by his own mother.
Liysa undoubtedly should have received a life sentence, seeing as the death penalty wasn't an option. The plea bargain, reducing her sentence to 150 months, made my hair stand on end. The evidence indicates that in the process of murdering her husband, Liysa drugged him, used a taser gun on him, tried to drown him, and then shot him through the temple. Good Lord! Chris likely would have died from the drug overdose alone! Can you say "Overkill"?? Twelve and a half years is a devastatingly low sentence for such a dangerous woman. She'll be out of prison at the age of 55 and will no doubt inflict much influence over her sons at that time. I can only imagine the havoc she'll wreak in their young lives, even if she thinks she's acting out of "love." (I personally believe she doesn't know what healthy motherly love is. The mention of her breast feeding until her first son was five years old, and still in the process of doing so with the younger son, not quite four, at the time of the murder seems to me a little over the top. Apologies to the La Leche gals.) She'll also likely go on to insinuate herself into the lives of unsuspecting people at that time, and if she killed once with no apparent conscience, who's to say she won't do it again? All I can say is, if you're a guy who will be middleaged in approximately ten years from now, don't get involved with any women named "Liysa"!
It's Ms Rule's opinion that Liysa suffers from personality disorders - antisocial, histrionic, and bipolar. I don't know whether personality disorders are hereditary, but I'd bet that her father and brother may also have them considering their illogical defence of her, the fact that they were either aware of what she was planning to do - or had done - and denial of what the evidence has shown. Can't they be charged with something? Removing evidence...aiding and abetting. Anything at all?? I'm surprised if what they did was legal.
Ann, keep up the good work. But maybe do a little more polishing of the final product before publication. You have a way of burrowing to the inner core of an evil person and revealing the horror inside.