Author R&R with Michael Jacobs

Originally from Long Island, New York, Michael A. Jacobs moved to California to attend Occidental College. Upon graduating from Loyola University School of Law, he was employed as an associate attorney with a Los Angeles civil litigation firm. In 1975, he began his career with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. During his time in the DA’s Office, he spent a total of 25 years working in nearly every vertical trial unit including 13 years in the Homicide Division, which he supervised for three years. After leaving the Office in 2006, he commenced a private civil law practice in Orange County and began work on Trackrs (Task Force Review Aimed at Catching Killers, Rapists, and Serial Offenders). He is presently working on a second nonfiction book about his experience working in our criminal justice system.

His first book, TRACKRS: On the Cold Trail of a Serial Killer is the true account of the modern-day pursuit of a serial killer who terrorized Orange County, California in the late 1970s. The victims were young females living alone in apartments, who were sexually assaulted and brutally murdered. Beginning in October of 1995, Orange County deputy district attorneys Michael Jacobs and Mel Jensen focused on a review of other homicide cases that took place in three cities in Orange County and were strikingly similar. 

There had already been a conviction in one of the cases, with the defendant in state prison but always maintaining his innocence. Jacobs and Jensen doubted he was a serial killer and finally obtained a DNA profile after months of delay caused by the Orange County Sheriff's DNA Laboratory's refusal to process evidence from four of the crime scenes. Based on that updated evidence, a potential new suspect was named—a former United States Marine sergeant convicted in 1980 of the kidnapping and rape of a thirteen-year-old girl. On June 14, 1996, three detectives from the Costa Mesa and Tustin police departments traveled to Avenal State Prison to interview the suspect.

Michael stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about writing the book:

The primary challenge in writing TRACKRS was to take a case, or, as in this situation, a series of cases, that were very fact intensive and then to write a book having it read like a fiction action thriller, as in creative nonfiction. Easier said than done.

TRACKRS is about six sexual assault murders that occurred in Orange County, California in the late 1970s. The cases were finally resolved and the actual perpetrator caught in 1996. An innocent man had been wrongly convicted of one of the murders in 1981. As a result of the renewed investigation, he was finally freed after serving nearly sixteen years in prison.

As one would expect in most cases about six serial killings, I had a wealth of information to utilize, all of which I deemed necessary. I not only had the contents of my original trial “murder book” but also had the complete jury trial transcript, law enforcement reports from six different agencies, the defendant’s complete Marine Corps records, transcripts of the defendant’s recorded statements, numerous interoffice memorandums and communications with government agencies and laboratories, as well as the new investigation reports done by the Orange County TRACKRS (Task Force Review Aimed at Catching Killers and Serial Offenders) project.

In addition to the documentation of the six cases, I also had a complete record of the defendant’s extensive legal history, the defendant’s complete “C” file from state prison as well as the reports and records from a prior rape and kidnapping (for which he had already been convicted) another rape that could not be charged because of the statute of limitations, and an assault with a deadly weapon on another inmate committed during a previous state prison commitment.

Because of this wealth of documentation and data, there were difficult decisions that needed to be made—especially with verbatim passages from the trial transcript. I found each chapter needed to be edited (I had a terrific editor) and this often involved shortening and sometimes deleting and rewriting entire passages. I still ended up with an over 500-page first draft but found it difficult to cut out anymore. What makes TRACKRS different from other of the true crime genre is its high degree of authenticity and “in the trenches” details which I believed a true crime reader would appreciate.

While searching out and compiling the necessary ingredients for TRACKRS, inevitably I was finding that much of my initial draft was reading too much like the police reports or coroner’s files I was relying upon. This seemed especially true when reading certain passages out loud. I knew that writing a story that read like creative nonfiction would be a challenge. I ended up relying to some extent upon the writings and style of four of my favorite authors.

John Grisham, Joseph Wambaugh, Vincent Bugliosi, and Martin Cruz Smith are writers I admire but never try to emulate. A common denominator of all four? They write “page turners.” That's what I wanted TRACKRS to be, but I knew I couldn’t copy their style of writing. I needed to develop my own. So, instead I observed how they would set a scene, how they would relate important circumstances, and how they would describe key characters in the story.

The only workable remedy for the issue of learning how to write creative nonfiction was rewriting, and a lot of it. I ended up writing 19 drafts of a 520-page manuscript before my editor and I were satisfied that TRACKRS was ready for publication.

Since the case of People vs. Parker was a death penalty case, under California law, relatives of the next of kin to the six victims were allowed to testify during the second stage of the trial: the Penalty Phase. Emotionally, this was the most difficult part of the trial to write about. The victims were all young and attractive females. They had been brutally murdered. Their relatives had a difficult time testifying, sometimes reading from notes, sometimes crying. At times I was certain there weren’t any dry eyes in the courtroom. I remember telling the trial judge before their testimony, “We’re in for two difficult days.” He replied, “I know. I know." Since I was there, from start to finish, writing and reading TRACKRS certainly brought those moments back to me. 

You can learn more about Michael Jacobs via his website and follow him on Facebook and Goodreads. TRACKRS is available via all major booksellers.