Unheard Witness: Domestic Abuse and Mass Murder

Hello Friends,This week’s primary topic is Unheard Witness by Jo Scott-Coe. Scott-Coe started a (recommended!) new Substack last month. She writes about domestic abuse and abuse survivors. Here’s a representative sample:Please note: There is so much library, book challenge, and book ban news every week that I’ve decided to move it to its own post, hopefully each Friday. (Last Friday’s is here.) Sunday posts will continue to be about books (including book reviews) and the writing life.Happy 100th birthday to The Great GatsbyYou probably read the buzz around Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. (Mark Zuckerburg and Meta worked hard to shut it down.) Here’s an excerpt from the publisher’s blurb:Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them. From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.By titling the book Careless People, Wynn-Williams is drawing the connection between the wealthy Daisys and Toms of Fitzgerald’s novel:“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyThis Thursday (April 10), the Library of Congress is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gatsby with a live public reading of the entire novel. Watch on the Library’s YouTube channel.For an interesting look at a century of influence of The Great Gatsby (film, music, books), check out It’s Gatsby’s World, We Just Live in It from the New York Times. (Gift link)Speaking of MetaLast week I shared that one of my short stories is part of the pirated collection on LibGen that Meta is using to train its AI. Here are one author’s thoughts on the pirating.How is Meta Getting Its Hands on Advance Digital Galleys to Train Its AI? From LitHubMaris Kreizman: One of the Richest Companies in the World is Stealing From the Rest of UsOn Thursday, March 20, all of the writers I know were in a bit of a frenzy. That morning Alex Reisner at the Atlantic had published a piece about Llama 3, Meta’s AI model, and the astonishing number of pirated books on which it had been trained. Meta’s leadership, against the advice of their lawyers, had used LibGen, a pirate file-sharing site supposedly intended to make academic papers more accessible worldwide. Along with Reisner’s article came a handy search bar where you could type your name to see if Meta had used any of your writing to train its generative language models.The idea that LibGen has digitized academic papers for the use of individuals who couldn’t otherwise get to them sounds noble as hell. So why does LibGen also have such an enormous book catalog, including access to swaths of not yet published works? …File-sharing as a tool to enrich the already obscenely rich and powerful (Meta’s valuation is currently $1.56 trillion, which seems like it would be more than enough to pay licensing fees) feels like the ultimate violation of copyright and artists’ voices and the power of the written word in general. The Authors Guild has some guidance for what to do if your work was in LibGen’s data set, but it’s difficult not to feel existential despair and a great deal of rage while we wait to see how this all plays out. I fear that once again the work of individual artists is being used and denigrated in order to benefit a class of people who don’t care about the art and fear no consequences.Goodbye Institute of Museum and Library ServicesWhile I moved the book ban news over to Friday, this one news item deserves space here. Ironically, today is the first day of National Library Week. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) staff was fired on Monday following the Trump Administration’s Executive Order.From Every Library:While on leave, the staff are prohibited from continuing their duties. All employees were required to turn in government phones and other property before leaving the building, and their email accounts are now disabled. This means that libraries and museums will no longer be able to contact IMLS for updates about the funding they rely on. Work on processing 2025 grants and 2026 applications has ceased entirely, and the status of previously awarded grants is now unclear.Without staff to administer these programs, it is likely that most grants will be terminated.We need you to send an email to your governors and federal legislators to stop this attack!Then, click to share it on Bluesky, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin!Note/update: by Thursday, yes, all grants were terminated.A lawsuit was filed by 21 State Attorneys General to stop Trump's Executive Order #14238 from dismantling the IMLS and two other agencies. Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman by Jo Scott-CoeFive years after she graduated from high school, Kathy Leissner Whitman was stabbed to death by her husband Charles Whitman after he killed his mother and before he committed a mass shooting from the tower at the University of Texas, Austin. Unheard Witness, which is framed by Hurricane Carla (1961) and the Texas tower shootings (1966) that left 15 dead and 31 injured, is the story of how Kathy became a victim of domestic violence and then murder.From Ideal Childhood to NightmareReading about Kathy’s childhood and teen years, one might envy her. Her mother, a teacher, records her babyhood milestones in minute details, including the outfit she wore for her first outing to a doctor’s appointment. As a teen, Kathy is involved in so many high school clubs and service organizations that it would be easier to list those in which she is not a member. She is voted most “Ideal Girl" by her classmates. She has boyfriends and an active social life. Younger girls look at her example as something to aspire to.Kathy leaves for college and new adventures a single day after Hurricane Carla. Less than a year later, she marries Whitman, also a UT Austin student. While he publicly appears to be a catch (good looking, one-time Eagle Scout and Catholic Church altar boy), privately he has a history of violence and misdeeds for which he is not held accountable. His father is also a domestic abuser. After the wedding, Kathy’s brother, Nelson, stays with Kathy’s in-laws and witnesses constant fighting, dishes hurled across the room at dinner time, and more. He understands that Kathy has made a mistake in marrying Charles.A Life of Abuse and UncertaintyThe marriage quickly turns ugly with Charles constantly trying to exert control over Kathy (he goes so far as to dictate what her fingernails/manicures should look like). He wants to have a baby although Kathy knows their relationship is too unstable for that. He is on a military scholarship at UT Austin, which he loses due to poor grades. This upends Kathy’s life as she leaves school with him. Nevertheless, she is determined to finish college in four years and does so despite being abused and in a constant state of uncertainty.Author Jo Scott Coe has carefully researched Kathy’s story. Kathy’s brother Nelson preserved over 600 letters concerning Kathy (her own letters to her parents, siblings, and Charles; their letters to her; Charles’ letters to Kathy’s parents) and he gave Scott Coe access to them. In her letters, Kathy’s dreams and daily life, her issues with Charles and her efforts to correct them are voiced. In some letters, it appears Charles, who writes addendums, is monitoring what Kathy writes.Particularly poignant is a letter from Kathy’s mother, Frances, to Charlies, where she argues that Kathy doesn’t need psychiatric treatment as he has suggested. That, in fact, Charles should understand that she was a happy, vibrant girl before marrying him. Reading this letter, we can see how careful Frances is in her writing—trying to get Kathy help while not provoking the explosive Charles into more violence. Frances suggests marriage counseling, probably feeling that a third party could show Charles that the cause of his problems was himself.Scott-Coe previously wrote about Charles Whitman in MASS: A Sniper, a father, and a Priest (2018). In her introduction to Unheard Witness, she states: “That sobering work well-prepared me to comprehend the milieu wherein Kathy, like so many women, faced unspeakable cruelty and dysfunction in places where they were supposedly most safe—in their churches, in their families, and in their closest relationships. Kathy's humanity was threatened immediately by a relationship with a man whose notions of ‘love’ had been warped by childhood trauma and profoundly twisted by ideologies of ownership, objectification, and abuse. Unlike most victims, he perpetuated the damage.”High school housekeepingWhile this well-researched nonfiction book is directed at adults, high school students will benefit from reading it. It’s a good book to recommend to students tasked with finding the deeper story behind a historical event. More importantly, it shows how young people are often unprepared to recognize dangerous relationships and how social bias and norms can blind girls to dangerous men. I’ve noted many times that allowing teens to read widely and about difficult subjects is a safe way to introduce them to the unfamiliar. It also helps them to understand the dangers that threaten them without actually exposing them to that danger. Unheard Witness details how ordinary bullies are and how easy it is to be caught in their web. In addition, it brings the story of one individual to life with empathy, correcting the false narrative of the last half century. Its importance to teens lies in helping them to understand the world.My novel launches in JuneMy actual book cover, which I love!Pre-sale is available from the usual suspects. If you buy directly from Inlandia books, you will receive a handmade (by me!) pieced fabric bookmark as a thank you. Thanks for joining me! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit victoriawaddle.substack.com