The Thirteenth Crime

he May night in 1996 I visited the site of Lillie Field's murder, it was pleasant. A teaching colleague, his son and my daughter, both teens, came along. The waning moon provided some half-light, and our feet rustled along the top of the embankment where a fence line reminded us that these woods belonged to someone. Otherwise, it was as if it had been left to Lillie herself-untouched, it appeared, since the farm was abandoned decades ago.

We sat and waited for Lillie's ghost, a specter in white, to appear. She didn't, and eventually we retraced our way back to my Chevy Blazer, but I was still thinking about Lillie. I had nothing to do with this young girl from more than a century back. She wasn't my family, but that didn't seem to matter to her; she had my attention, and she wasn't letting go.

"This must be the way ghosts operate," I thought, "Invading our consciousness and just staying there."

Ghosts. Plural. There were more spirits circling the dark corners of Otter Tail County's past, and the list grew. Persistent though she was, Lillie would have to wait. Surely all ghosts want their stories told, especially those who left this earth without the satisfaction of a just conclusion.

Lillie and I would like you to know that all the substantive historical information in this book is factual. There are embellishments, but I have taken great care to be faithful to the facts as I know them. Feel free to decide for yourself the role that Lillie, or any other ghosts, may have played in telling these stories