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Paula B: Welcome to The Writing Show, I’m your host Paula B. Today my guest is Mark Horner, formerly an investigative reporter for KOB TV in Albuquerque, the author of September Sacrifice, a true-crime story chronicled on Dateline and Court TV, among other places. He has written for television news since 1987, winning numerous awards for a variety of stories. He has also written freelance articles for the Green Valley News and Sun in Arizona and the National Trade Publication Construction Equipment Guide. Welcome Mark, it is a pleasure to have you with us today.

Mark Horner: Thank you Paula, it’s great to be here.

Paula B: I’d like to start talking about the case and then go into the writing of the book and finish up with some of the observations readers have come to you with. Tell us about the case, it’s a really horrific story and very complicated.

Mark Horner: Sure, I’ll try and sum it up in a kind of a short fashion because as you just mentioned it is a complicated case and that was one of the greatest challenges was bringing these many twists and turns together and deciding what to leave in and what could perhaps be afforded to be left out because there is just so much that can consume your time and I spent years on it. First and foremost I think at its core and what really struck me about this case was the domestic violence component. Now ultimately the case raises a lot of eyebrows and captures a lot of national media attention after a few years finally for reasons other than the domestic violence component but I believe that’s what this case is in fact at its core.

Mark Horner: The fact that this woman came to realize after a period of years that her husband had been living a lie presenting her with a lie in terms of his entire life and that she grew to fear him and ultimately got the strength and courage up to divorce him and while the divorce was pending while they were estranged and she had moved out she came to really live in constant fear of him going to the police going to the FBI on two occasions and saying he says I’m going to be killed and laughs when he says that no one will ever find my body.

Mark Horner: She did that right up until September 8th, 1999 with the FBI, and the following day she had been kidnapped and she had been murdered and here we are now, Paula, speaking six years later just a month short of six years now and her body still has not been found that really resonated with me right off the bat because the fact that someone could be living in such fear, with such resolve that her abuser planned to have her kidnapped and murdered and go to the authorities and yet still meet the fate that she feared that struck me is just horrible and that there must be something that could perhaps eliminate the odds of that happening somehow the system perhaps might be improved in some way I didn’t want to see this happen again although unfortunately domestic violence is all too real and all too serious right so there was that immediate component and then quickly there were layers that ultimately piled itself on top of that core component I identified it those components would be this sensational con man and the same perpetrator here Diazien Hossencofft he’s just a con man beyond belief conning people mainly women but men too young and old out of not only their cash their finances their possessions but even their blood and then you get into this real sensational aspect of shape-shifting reptilian aliens of belief in such creatures which one of the defendants and ultimately convicted people believes are in fact ruling this world and horrifyingly she’s not the only one who thinks this this stems from the teachings of a former british broadcasting corporation presenter slash reporter David Icke who has a worldwide audience and is right there on the internet and has produced many videos and then ultimately finally just to quickly hopefully wrap up here — there’s this whole notion of one of the defendants Diazien Hossencofft’s girlfriend linda henning she captures the first national exposure really on CourtTV.com they seem primarily interested in the fact that here is a woman who could become the first woman to get the death penalty in new mexico’s history really modern day history a woman hadn’t been convicted given the death penalty in new mexico since it was a territory well back into the 1800s that seemed to fascinate court tv especially in light of the fact that a body had never been produced so that was the first national hook and then it played out from there with dateline and the history channel’s dead reckoning court tv complete trial coverage a program on court tv called the investigators and A&E’s american justice with Bill Kurtis

Paula B: Tell us a little bit about the victim

Mark Horner: Sure Girly Hossencofft some have portrayed her as a mail-order bride but I don’t believe she was that at all she certainly was getting to know some men on the internet she grew up in malaysia she um was 36 years old when she would ultimately die that was in 1999 and it was in seven years earlier december of 1992 having corresponded with Diazien Hossencofft and having in fact I believe come to this country and met him on a previous trip from malaysia to the u.s she ultimately decides in december of 92 to come here to marry him and when we write true crime we want to tell the truth we don’t want to color anybody and anybody in a noble light if that’s not there but it’s hard to find anybody outside the man who killed her and his accomplice to say anything bad about Girly Hossencofft she was this petite woman she was obviously very well raised and I’ve come to know her parents through communications with their son andrew Girly’s brother um over the years in malaysia she kept her problems in large part to herself she kept a cheerful smile she worked at a bank where she was the best employee she always won these awards for being the best teller and won trips to san francisco and other places when she came to new mexico she embraced the culture she wanted to learn how to cook the food she made some good friends.

Mark Horner: Ultimately as she she begins after a few years to discover that her husband’s entire life is a lie and you know moving forward when she moves out and she’s feeling the serious threat of being killed she does something which really given her life’s history was out of character she signed up for karate she specifically said she wanted to learn to protect herself against two attackers and she approached those karate lessons as she approached everything else in life with full gusto and her co-workers start noticing the defined muscles and her legs and arms and she actually just signed up in july of 99 and it would be september of 99 just a couple two three months later when she would disappear but it’s hard to find a bad word said by anyone about Girly Hossencofft

Paula B: In the book you certainly get that idea across she seems like such a lovely person and hardworking and honest and friendly and just everything good about her and coming from a wonderful family and it just makes it all the more tragic

Mark Horner: Right and getting back to that domestic violence core of the cases I’ve identified it what also struck me early on in conjunction with that is that also often it’s hard for a victim in a domestic violence situation usually a woman to break away from her abuser I’m not an expert on the subject but I would hazard to guess it’s kind of a potential flashpoint where once they actually try to make that separation I.e move out but it’s very volatile time potentially and she had done that she had also navigated herself through the court and that takes some doing even if you are from this country here was a woman from malaysia relatively new to this country a world away and she did all that and she kept a peace and quiet about it, so to speak — a respect about it and I give her credit for her determination once she realized what she had in her life in Hossencofft and what he really was and I commend her for her efforts to break away from him but unfortunately I don’t know if it’s quite fair to say the system let her down or not but the system could have done better I think

Paula B: Well she did have a restraining order against him.

Mark Horner: Yeah she did. Yeah she did there were some violations there were three charges of violation of the restraining order because Hossencofft would continue to call her at work in such that case ultimately gets postponed and when it finally shows up before a judge in court she’s already disappeared a lot of good that did her

Paula B: There was a child involved in this case can you talk a little bit about that

Mark Horner: Right, this is a theme to the story that seems to resonate with a with many many people in fact I think the most asked questions I get pertaining to my book relate to that child because there’s no doubt that people’s hearts go out to him because of what he endured his name was Dimitri and it is Dimitri to this day as far as I know the good news is he’s still alive and we’re told he’s doing okay in 1996 Hossencofft had gone without giving too much right away to canada and he was working yet another one of his cons Hossencofft was a guy who had women usually acquaintances made through the internet all over the country and even parts of other countries but primarily the u.s this particular woman though that he would set out to conquer was in alberta canada at the banff hotel where she worked in a jewelry store Long story short, Paula, as you know from reading the book he ultimately gets her pregnant and she’s japanese and she goes back to japan to have the child now believe it or not with this man’s combat ability he convinces her before the child is even a month old to fly from japan to mexico with the child and after three tearful days in a hotel room in Juárez he manages to con her to convince her for what she thinks are noble reasons to hand over the child to Hossencofft knowing that she’ll never see it again and I’ll believe the reasons why she does this because everybody can’t believe that’s possible when you tell it like that but there are there is an explanation it’s in the book and Hossencofft then smuggles the child into the country shows up in albuquerque Girly’s at home he says honey I’m home we’re adopting this child you know the paraphrase though as I point out the book perhaps no different than one of us might return home with a bag of groceries

Paula B: Let me just stop you and ask you a question there now he was married to girly at the time that this child was born how did he explain the fact that he was gone

Mark Horner: Hossencofft was always giving stories about his constant sojourns away from home Hossencofft told people including his life that he was typically the story was a heart surgeon something in the medical profession he was to go off and save lives where people were on operating tables and no one else could save them did heart transplants and was a leading genetics uh genetics researcher all sorts of medical related professions that’s what he spouted to people when in fact he was going out and he was working in his conquests and he was successful a lot of times people cringe at the notion especially if they’ve seen his picture or have watched him on tv or just let alone read about him in the book or seen a picture — they just they can’t believe that there are women who would fall for this guy they don’t many people don’t consider him particularly attractive he certainly wasn’t a big man he was quite small and he had this kind of odd voice at times so somewhat like Truman Capote but he certainly knew how to lock in and work his charisma on some people and he knew, I write in the book, within 30 seconds whether or not he felt he could exploit your flesh for his gain and if he thought he could he moved in and if he thought he couldn’t he moved on

Paula B: So he shows up with the child and then what happens he tells girly what does he tell her

Mark Horner: Well first of all girly knew at this point that she could not have children she did not learn that until after she married Hossencofft and one thing that Hossencofft Diazien Hossencofft is long maintained was that she knew the deal she meaning girly that she was to come here and bear him children and look after him basically he wanted matronly servant of sorts I think certainly a conservative wife someone who’s going to stay home someone who’s going to bear him children and shortly after she got here she wasn’t able to get pregnant and she went for repeated medical tests; it was learned that she could not have children and it’s possible that there had been some discussions between the two about it ultimately adopting at some point but I think that coming home with a child appears to have been out of left field from girly’s perspective and in fact she called her friend Ernestine Johnson up and she worked closely with her years at the local bank they’re both tellers and says Ernie we have a baby Ernie was Ernestine’s nickname and Ernie is a much older lady sweet um older lady from New Mexico she thought at first girly must have meant a pet — another dog; they had had dogs before Interestingly they get these puppies and they die.

Mark Horner: Ernie suspects Diazien had done something to those dogs but anyway Ernie went over to the house and lo and behold there in fact was a baby and girly seemed to be as surprised it seemed to Ernie as it was surprising to Ernie herself I don’t know that we have the full light of the truth shed on all of that but it does at first blush and that’s based on people I’ve spoken with seemed to have been a surprise to girly but she accepted the child and she truly loved Dimitri very very much

Paula B: Let’s leave some of this as a mystery for readers of the book it’s a very heart-rending tale to say the least

Mark Horner: That’s an understatement.

Paula B: There was another person involved in the case a man named Miller do you want to tell us just a little bit about him and then we’ll go on to something you know talk about the writing a bit

Mark Horner: You bet Bill Chappell is someone who stands out in the telling of the story because many people believe that Hossencofft and his mistress did not act alone that in fact there was a third person this person you just mentioned named Bill Chappell. Bill Chappell is a big guy from New York originally people who know him well in his northeast Albuquerque neighborhood say he’s a wonderful kind-hearted giant wonderful with children helped out with soccer team things like that although prosecutors in the case to this day and investigators from the police department still believe that Chappell was directly involved in the plot and execution of the plan to kidnap and murder Girly Chew Hossencofft he had numerous weapons guns he was a collector of guns there are those who say he was into things like the militia and it was an outdoor survivalist type mentality and Hossencofft says that Chappell himself said he wanted to be part of the plan because he’d always wanted to get a human being to hunt a human being and gut it like a fish and I’ll leave it at that people when they finish the book I do believe spend a lot of time thinking about Chappell and to what extent his role may or may not have been

Paula B: There’s so much in the book actually you couldn’t possibly begin to tell all of it in this short interview but still just the way you phrase things in the book people have to read it to believe it let me talk a little bit about the book with you

Mark Horner: Sure

Paula B: Is it fair to say that that you’ve chosen to tell the story in a semi-fictionalized way it certainly seemed that way to me as I was reading it that you had quotes and people’s thoughts and even instant messaging conversations and chat transcripts sure how did you decide to tell the story in that way

Mark Horner: Well the quotes or italicized I believe it was people’s thoughts those are directly out of transcripts I didn’t make them up they would be asked well what were you thinking at that time this type of thing and were appropriate to work well to insert them in that fashion in the storyline and the second I’m sorry you mentioned the quotes and the other part was all the instant messaging transcripts right the transcript I had all the transcripts I had all the transcripts so for example Julie McGuire who’s a love interest of Hossencofft to end up being a key witness in the case she had corresponded with him on the internet for a year somewhat obsessively and she saved everything oh that’s incredible yeah she saved everything I thought well instant messaging is so ephemeral where would these transcripts come from it never occurred to me that someone would save them oh she saved everything she even shared with me she has nude photos of herself that she took and shared with Hossencofft though you won’t see those in the book but this woman shared everything with me I mean she shared her most inner honest moments with Hossencofft and felt horrible about what happened because Hossencofft she says had revealed to her that girly would be killed and she never thought that that would happen and in fact it did but she became a key witness and the fact that she saved everything I mean she turned over her entire computer to the authorities and she saved herself copies of every single instant message that they had whether it was an ICQ or AOL wow so I had the benefit of quoting directly from those I didn’t make that up

Paula B: I’m surprised because one of the first things that struck me when I started reading was that you reveal people’s thoughts and some of their conversations you’re the second person to actually bring that up

Mark Horner: Yeah but I took those I took those directly their words actually word for word some transcripts for me it just seemed to be a compelling way to tell the story this was my first book I hadn’t done a whole lot of print writing but for me I knew if I guess if I wanted to read it this helps make it seem alive and right now as if it was happening in front of me and you know I’ve written for television for 18 years one of the things I kind of wanted to do with the book is I’d hope that the reader would go through it much like I go through the case itself and that is trying to put pieces together right and I think perhaps I reveal elements of the case as I might have discovered them too and ultimately wondering what the ultimate truth is

Paula B: You do a wonderful job of keeping people on the edge of their seats even though we know how it’s going to end but it doesn’t matter we just want to read every word and I came across a passage that I thought was particularly compelling there’s something about this passage that not only describes the person in a really vivid way but also makes the reader want to keep going and I wonder if I just like to read it and if you could talk a little bit about what you did here it’s on page 156 and it’s about Hossencofft’s divorce lawyer okay based on that photo Kelly was a poised and competent divorce lawyer not bad for a former disc jockey and mother of three and she was still only 32 years old on February 5th 1999 she established a relationship with a client who would be far from ordinary From that day Kelly agreed to represent Diazien Hossencofft’s strange occurrences soon unfolded I found that so compelling the way you paint her and the way you instill a sense of foreboding can you talk a little bit about what you did there

Mark Horner: Sure and I think this kind of illustrates I think it does illustrate that sense of what I experienced okay early in this case very early I mean it was not a whole lot of media pressure I think I was probably the annoying reporter to some people involved with the case because I found it very compelling the story early on and I was probably the nuisance guy out there who wouldn’t let it go and that includes with miss Kelly I had contacted her and over and over set up interviews with her and over and over she said yes and then over and over she backed out I’d even been to her office and she wouldn’t come out from the door even though we’d set up an appointment ultimately her secretary as I recall and this was back in 1999 tells me oh well she’s agreed to give you a photograph so I went to her office and I picked up this beautiful dolled up glossy headshot very emotional oriented right and she’s a knockout in that picture she really is she’s quite beautiful and then as I continue to investigate the case here and there you learn more things about Kelly some things seem odd to say the least in terms of things that she did for Hossencofft their relationship seems to cross a line there’s a corrections officer at the jail who says he observes Kelly and Hossencofft kissing she takes an interest not to give too much away here expresses an interest in adopting Hossencofft’s baby and this is his divorce lawyer yeah this is a divorce lawyer her mother puts down escrow money to buy Hossencofft’s house there are things about beneficiaries and wills that start happening good heavens she even gets him off for dwi in a neighboring county convincing the court and the judge that this man’s gonna die soon from leukemia Hossencofft and ultimately the icing for me come much later years later after dealing with miss kelly in the early parts of 04 I finally obtained some information the notes that were taken by investigator at the time with the district attorney’s office who had interviewed miss kelly and spent a lot of time observing miss kelly both out and inside of the courtroom and he took detailed notes and wrote down notes from their conversations and her behaviors and an investigator had moved on to another state to work for another law enforcement agency but he ultimately shared these notes with me that he had always kept and that just further solidified that this would not be the typical attorney-client relationship very strange did I answer your question

Paula B: Well one of the things actually that I was wondering about was the things about kelly that you chose to emphasize in this particular paragraph which I thought gave a very interesting picture of her first you say yes okay she’s a divorce lawyer but then she’s a former disc jockey well that’s pretty interesting for an attorney and mother of three very young and then you talk about how she got involved with this very weird guy and here’s the foreboding strange occurrences soon unfolded so you go from an ordinary description here’s a divorce lawyer to oh she used to be a disc jockey she’s a mother she’s young she got involved with this weird guy and oh and just you know four or five sentences well

Mark Horner: Here’s here’s the deal she had worked very very hard to lift herself up professionally I think and yes she you know she was saddled with I don’t know that’s how she felt about it but she had kids early and I think it’s commendable that someone could lift themselves a young woman could lift herself up from I’m not disparaging the profession in any way but you know disc jockey seems to be a long way from you know the courtroom but disc jockey, children and yet somehow number one the first thing I think it’s going to cost some money to go back to school you know get that law degree but she does all this she worked hard to get there you know what and it’s interesting that she was on this very determined and seems like a noble path to me but that kind of course of her life is going to be severely disrupted it seems to me there could be some turbulent waters let’s put it that way because of this one encounter which will lead to many she happened to come across this guy named Diazien Hossencofft and he would like he did on so many people have a profound impact on their lives

Paula B: One of the things that I found incredible reading the book as a person who considers herself a rationalist is the number of people who fell for the most bizarre stories that he came up with and I just wonder how there can be so many people who are so gullible I mean I know that’s something that you can’t answer but that was certainly an overwhelming feeling that I got from the book and some of the stories were you know a lot more complicated than oh I’m dying of leukemia things like there are aliens ruling the world and people bought into that

Mark Horner: Yep yeah absolutely I think that certainly there are people whose BS detector if I may say will go off and they’ll walk away from a Hossencofft and then I think oh perhaps to simplify it there perhaps are two different types of people beyond that one type of person who just wants to see the good in all people and perhaps are all too trusting and they would only want to see the good in Hossencofft and they would want to believe him then I think there’s also a type of person who wants to believe that there’s more out there than what we can physically touch and what we can see and a particular type of person who’s perhaps geared toward conspiracies and things of that nature they want to believe in such things and UFOs and so forth and Hossencofft certainly knew how to seize the enthusiasm of many of those folks so I don’t think anybody anybody and everybody was susceptible to become Hossencofft’s prey but I think that there were those who had certain predispositions where they had vulnerabilities where he could lock in and go for it and then hopefully the potential victim might catch on oftentimes they did not many times all sorts of people did not one of the sadder cases and my estimation is the story of the woman who ultimately would give Hossencofft about $25,000 a month for a period of a few years who believed that he would cure her of her breast cancer and she did not utilize modern medicine at all put all her faith in him and he would write up these long medical bills for reporting to have given all sorts of different treatments and just charge outrageous figures and meantime they went on cruises together in Alaska and the Caribbean and but she ultimately died of very very painful sad death as a result of no medical attention real medical attention so he could manipulate people of all all sorts

Paula B: That was an incredible story I I hope that people read your book and learn from that example let me ask you something about another thing about the writing of the book you had so much material that you had to go through and I’m just wondering this was a huge research process how did you manage the material and organize it and make sure that you actually knew where everything was and where everything was going to go I mean I think I would be completely inundated and probably run out of the house screaming

Mark Horner: Oh you cut me off anytime on this one okay where to begin well you know first of all I just was aggressively on the case and my appetite for the story exceeded that of the local newsroom it wasn’t only a big story at first for years really but I accumulated all the police reports and you know there were probably 50 odd search warrants in this case alone the supplemental that the police department which are basically the progression of all their police reports through the investigation I think was seven or eight volumes I had copies of every supplemental the court papers I did interviews with people I saved emails from people I had started a website shortly after Girly’s disappearance I had people contacting me so I started to amass all these materials I started interviewing people even in the case of one great resource man who would die before there were even any convictions in this case and thankfully I memorialized our interviews on tape when I finally got down to the writing of this book years into the case I skimmed through a couple of two or three how to write true crime books and one of the things that struck me was the importance of organizing one’s material so I said about doing that and doing my best to file like-minded materials if you will I built you know my files on Bill Chappell, Diazien Hossencofft I had Henning files, my Girly files my location files I organized up search warrants I had all these tapes I had all I had taken hundreds of photographs but I had an embarrassment of riches to be honest with you just an embarrassment of riches I had always had this and it’s always been part of my makeup as a reporter I guess to go out there and just gather as much information or treasure if you will if possible and just bring it all in a pile and then carefully sift through it once that job is done and bring out the very best bits or jewels if you will the most essential stuff and the best stuff and organize it in the most attractive fashion so that’s what I had set out to do and then literally you know I would spend a day taking one court document night for me you know from the writing aspect of this I would take like an extensive transcript maybe it was I don’t know 150 pages hours of interviewing with one witness alone conducted by both the prosecutor and detectives I would sit there and I’d have this cup with all these different colored markers in it and I would find different themes and each theme for that interview had a color associated with it so I knew that if this particular part of the transcript addressed, I might identify its theme as orange and I would highlight it in orange and then wherever that theme came up again I would highlight in orange and then I had my purple marker my blue marker my green mark so I have it look like you know a rainbow by the time I was done with it but I could quickly find stuff and then you know I might walk away from it for a while and go for a run and come back to it and then during that process of writing, stuff — things would start to fall into place in my mind and I could better organize it then that night I might be up all night writing that particular chapter that addressed a certain theme or just that interview that moment in the story where this Bill Chappell guy is being interrogated by the investigators in the case so that’s how I set about doing it.

Paula B: If you had different themes in say one document how did you relate those to other documents I mean you said you filed like things together but if something covered many subjects how did you make sure that it was tied to other documents that had maybe also many different themes in it?

Mark Horner: Right well then I’d have to go into my computer and I’d open up a word file and I write notes for this particular day and I write remember this and refer to this and you know and then you go back and you when you got to that part of the book then you go back and you pull this file that you had previously worked out of and you’d say oh yes okay I had made a note of this and now it’s being brought up again here now do these two belong do they do they fit together at this moment in the story or I need to remind myself that we had earlier in the book said this but now we’ve learned this and we need to acknowledge for the reader that you know we were looking at this differently once upon a time and I tell you what with so much material years of stuff this was quite the jigsaw puzzle in that regard I had read in one of those true crime books about the importance of organization and if you’re not organized how you can be buried in your work and going nowhere I can believe that I think that was probably the most important thing I took away from those books in terms of preparing myself to write this story and I had other writers I had the benefit of two other true crime writers who are very generous to me just giving me support they would say mark you know so much about this story and you have to remember that the reader probably doesn’t want more than 20 names to have to work with and there was a lot you could argue that I didn’t write about although when I finished my first draft of my manuscript I’m sure everybody thought I did write everything I knew and I hadn’t but I still my first draft I learned was a book and a half and I had to eliminate upwards of 50,000 words in less than two weeks because I’d written too much so organization if anybody’s listening up there and they’re setting up to write for the first time I can’t stress that I’m not the importance of organization it’s not just important for the clarity of the story which is your ultimate goal but it’s going to save you so much time and it makes you a much more efficient writer and you know make better use of your time both as a writer and incorporating the rest of your life if you go into it really well organized can’t stress that enough

Paula B: It was so obvious to me reading the book how carefully organized because there was so much material there and I could tell that it had come from so many different sources and I was just really overwhelmed and very impressed how many cubic feet would you say you have material

Mark Horner: Well I don’t know how many cubic feet but let me give you an idea what I would use is you can go into like a target or a Walmart and just forgive me for not knowing the proper term but you can buy those kind of like plastic tubs with a lid you know they’re probably about it could be like three feet long and about I don’t know about 16 inches deep or what have you I filled up five or six of those with files and materials I had one strictly Linda Henning Bill Chappell actually I think I’d Bill Chappell I shared with some other files I still have all those materials too and I have CDs with all these pictures that I’ve taken over the years and pictures of others who have found my website who knew Linda Henning who knew Diazien Hossencofft over the years people sent me pictures and gave me their blessing to use their pictures I even have video that has never been seen by anyone other than the person who provided it to me and her close friends of Hossencofft on that Alaskan cruise I just mentioned in our conversation in the early 90s where he’s with the old woman you know who’s given them the 25 grand a month excuse me I mean the Caribbean cruise I have pictures from the Alaskan cruise I mean I have so much material and it’s an embarrassment of riches so to speak and and I continue to hold on to it all I just made a move from New Mexico up to Washington state and shipped it all up here so it comes with me but I think it’s important to hold on to it you never know what’s going to happen in the future absolutely particularly with something like this a legal case yeah and from a writer’s standpoint my material also includes numerous CDs where I would just burn copies of my work as I went along you gotta back that stuff up yeah always important yeah

Paula B: There were some interesting things about the writing of the book that had to do with where you wrote it can you talk a little bit about that

Mark Horner: I’d always wanted to write a book and I’d previously come across two other stories which I thought man this would make a great book over my 18 years in television and I never did it in fact the second one I ended up being in the two books that were written about the case so when I finally set out to write this one I thought it for me I needed to have a little bit of solitude and I was going to step away from my job in TV and I was going to take at least three months of the solo time to plow into this I was very intimidated with all this material I had and not knowing through the process that I was even going to be able to pull this off I just get my fingers crossed and said here we go let’s make this work let’s do our best and so I chose to go to a little nearly a ghost town in southern New Mexico called Hillsboro and there are people who do in fact live there to this date but it’s an old mining town very small very isolated it’s in a very large county but the entire county has only one stoplight and it’s 30 some plus miles away from Hillsboro the drive to the grocery stores 30 plus miles away gosh and it was still in the desert but just on the foothill just just beneath these mountains called the black range where once you go up there you get out of the desert you find some nice hiking trails and I very much enjoyed that area and the experiences I had living there and just writing this book will forever be with me and just the people that I met were just tremendous very very good people

Paula B: That’s great that you were able to do that in fact while I was living there I got a letter from Linda Henning from prison informing me that I would never live to finish the book I was going to ask you about that

Mark Horner: Yeah it was interesting because that night I was sleeping about one o’clock in the morning sudden repeated hard pounding on the back door which is only about a foot away from the foot of my bed I’m renting this home and it’s a house without drapes it’s in the middle of nowhere and these large glass windows and having just gotten that letter from Linda it was a little unsettling to say the least

Paula B: You want to hear the whole story

Mark Horner: Yes I spring out of bed my dog is barking like crazy she um slept at the foot of the bed and um I don’t know what’s out there and I don’t want to turn a light on because I don’t know who’s out there and I’ve never had a gun but the homeowners had left a loaded gun and so it was I knew where it was and I grabbed it but the phone was at the other end of the house and so I crossed all my hands and knees for the phone and it took me 10 minutes to call 911 because it was a cordless phone and it didn’t illuminate it was absolutely black and out in the middle of nowhere I’m going to time — sheriff deputies I finally get all of them they came out and they scouted around the place and at the back of the house I remember the the bedrooms at the back of the house there’s a an adobe wall outside the back door with a small garden just inside beyond my bedroom and just beyond that it just on the other side of the adobe wall they found these sneaker prints right up against the adobe wall they look fresh it’s not a it’s not a place where someone would typically walk right up against the wall there was a path beyond that beyond some tall grass where you would typically walk so I kind of always wondered about that but it was just one of those moments where you’re alone you’re living in solitude and you’re very much living and breathing the story and it provided a little drama for me let’s put it that way and kind of interesting to recall it a few years later now

Paula B: And you

Mark Horner: Never found out who it was never found out who it was uh-uh before the deputies left they they gave me Weapon Safety 101 told me all about it so that was that was kind of interesting

Paula B: How did you feel when you got that death threat from her

Mark Horner: You know it was just consistent with Linda. Linda for the first few years of the case was adamantly loyal to me would write me numerous letters in fact there was one day where I didn’t appear for court in one of her early court appearances and she’s being led into the courtroom handcuffed law enforcement officers at all sides she doesn’t see me so she says Who works with Mark Horner?

Mark Horner: And a photographer says I do — and this is all on tape — and she goes, Give this to Mark Horner and she manages to pull a letter folded letter out of her pocket and throws it at the media and the interesting thing about that was that all the photographer scrambled before it and the security eventually seized it and the judge chose to seal it and I’ve never seen it but I’m not sure how profound it would have been the point is is that linda was fiercely loyal to me for the longest time and then someone sent her something off my website about the case and she didn’t like it so she couldn’t trust me quote-unquote anymore and but she continued to correspond with me and You take the Coast to Coast AM Art Bell / George Noory show you multiply that program by the 100 power and you get linda I mean everybody is out to get her — the world’s inhabited by aliens ruling the world and all sorts of horrible things are going on in front of her faces and we’re too dumb to see it she’s so sick with these beliefs and I believe truly mentally ill that you know I get the warm Linda one day I get this frighteningly cold Linda the next day and this is a pattern that’s continued on for years and she’s done this not just to me but even someone who has done everything in the world to support her from the moment he learned that she hooked up with Hossencofft before girl’s disappearance Steve Zachary in New York he’ll read about in the book used to date Linda years ago but remains fiercely loyal to her or has done so for throughout most of this ordeal he’s gone out of his way spending much of his own money despite his failing health and failing financial circumstances in terms of the fact that he’s not the rich man he once was but he just invested his life into trying to help her and she continues to write him very vile and wicked letters totally unappreciative and filled with foul language a linda that he never knew because that’s not who she was up until she met Hossencofft no one ever saw that part of Linda because it wasn’t there

Paula B: I found that so amazing because the way you describe her in the early years is as a very confident attractive intelligent businesswoman and then all of a sudden something happens and she kind of just loses it

Mark Horner: Right well Steve Zachary that longtime friend means convinced that after meeting Hossencofft she went from one person to a completely different person within five weeks and and continues to insist that it’s this Manchurian Candidate type of effect where she was either drugged or hypnotized or brainwashed and you know he can’t get over the fact that she was given opportunities to strike a deal over and over again or but she would have to admit that she’d been somehow compromised mentally basically or influenced by him and she wouldn’t do that and Zachary’s whole point is you know one of the drunk driver admit when pulled over that he’s drunk you know someone who’s been mentally compromised in Linda’s fashion isn’t going to come out and say yeah he did this to me linda if nothing else is fiercely staunch in her position I mean she stands right where she stood five years ago spouting the same hate the same denial of any involvement and then the same loyalty despite his terrible testimony that didn’t help her at all fiercely loyal to Diazien Hossencofft to this day

Paula B: That’s just incredible that’s just mind-blowing let me ask you did you have to get any kind of exclusive rights to tell this story

Mark Horner: See I had to get numerous permission forms signed by people you know whomever I interviewed in person if I was going to use any part of that interview I needed to get them to sign release form if anybody provided me with a photograph that was going to be considered for the book I had to get them to sign release forms

Paula B: But nothing say another reporter wanted to tell this story I mean what would happen I mean I guess they you have all the material

Mark Horner: Well yeah but I don’t think there’s anything keeping anybody from writing the story for example there was another case in southern New Mexico I mentioned my name comes up in both books there are two books written about that particular case Scott Peterson case — there is more than one book out there what I like to think about my book this book that I put out there is that because I lived and breathed it for so long I ultimately gained an incredible amount of trust from people on all sides truly not everyone I’m not gonna I’m not about to say everybody associated with the case trusted me wanted to warm up to me absolutely not the case but many people did and as a result I think that the book has a depth to it layers of information that no one else could have provided and that I think is quite different than say a reporter who comes out of nowhere post facto covers the final days of a sentencing or something or maybe even comes out after it’s all been resolved in court and then begins to collect some court documents and do some interviews so I’ve seen the twist the terms the osmosis the amoeba like movements of this case from the very beginning and I feel very blessed and fortunate to have had some people open up to me the way they did even after the final manuscript was done I had people contacting me who I didn’t think I’d ever hear from and shedding new light for me on people involved with this story

Paula B: You mentioned when I was talking with you yesterday that you’ve had quite a few different reactions to the story that were very unexpected and you gave me a couple of examples could you just talk about some of the reader reactions that you’ve gotten

Mark Horner: Yeah the one that jumps out at me right away it was a woman who wrote to me to say that she really enjoyed the book and she would particularly latched on to this part of the book this aspect of the book of the Hossencofft on the internet talking to so many different women and she says that she doesn’t go out of her way to look for boyfriends on the internet but she says she has occasionally flirted on the internet she says she will no longer do that she made it clear that she’ll know that she’s going to change her patterns her behaviors on the internet no more flirting carrying on with men she doesn’t really know and as a writer I have found it surprising to learn what things along the way the little nuggets along the way that seemed to resonate with people that was one in that particular case another woman I was a little bit more benign but there’s a mention in the book about take you up to what’s called the Four Corners area that part when New Mexico comes together with three other states and there’s a scene up there and I talk a little bit about the Navajo history there and so their language is Diné and is a word for monster which literally means that which gets in the way of a successful life and this person shared with me earlier this week that that really resonated with her for reasons which I’m not certain of but you know let’s go back to our interview right here right now Paula Kelly the divorce attorney we talked about her earlier she met Hossencofft that which seems to gotten in the way of a successful life it’s just neat the way people pick different bits out and that was one of the nice things about writing the book one of the many nice things actually that if I continued to research through the telling of the story I wanted to know more like for example if there was a scene up in the Banff hotel in Alberta Canada I wanted to learn about that hotel and I did research on it so even things that are there are things in the book which when I started writing the book I didn’t know that I was going to delve into momentarily but I wanted to take people to those places I wanted to learn more about those places myself and oftentimes there were themes that would help take the reader there and then also a theme that would that theme could carry like a nice segue into our story that Girly and her killer, Diazien Hossencofft.

Paula B: Mark, is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you would like to tell our podcast listeners

Mark Horner: Well if you have people out there as I imagine you do who have often thought about writing but haven’t done it I would fully encourage them to do it it’s in the doing you’re looking at a guy who thought about it you know most of his adult life I’m nearly 42 now and I always felt that there was a writer in me and this was for me never about making money I haven’t seen a lot of money this was about just doing something that I thought was in me that needed to be realized and we talked a lot about organization if you’re not the most organized person no — take it from the fact that I never was either, believe it or not. I just accumulated.

Mark Horner: I can’t believe that — I never was really finally organized but I learned how to do it and I stayed in motion once you set out to do this stay in motion even if you’re taking small steps they are steps nonetheless and you are moving forward you can do it whether it gets published or not of course we all like to get published that’s great but if it’s in you do it make it happen that’s what I would leave you with

Paula B: That’s great advice you have a website you want to tell our listeners about it

Mark Horner: Sure the easiest website to give you is just the simple markhorner.com there’ll be two links at the bottom it’s a pretty simple basic page and one of them will say the Girly Chew Hossencofft case click on that and you’ll find years of accumulated materials stories that I’d written along the way going back to 1999 photographs court documents you’ll find links to a message board things like that so there’s plenty there and of course I’ll have a link to you on my website which is www.writingshow.com

Paula B: Fantastic

Mark Horner: Thank you Paula I’d like to encourage any of your listeners if they would like to contact me they’re more than welcome to do so they can find my email address at my website or simply — it’s pretty simple — it’s info@markhorner.com

Paula B: The book again is September Sacrifice by Mark Horner. The publisher is Kensington Books. I highly recommend this book. It is gripping I could not put it down I have to warn people that it is not for the squeamish however but you did a beautiful job, Mark, and I wish you all the success with it

Mark Horner: Thank you so much Paula I really appreciate your having me on today it’s been a joy

Paula B: Thanks so much for being with us today

Mark Horner: You’re welcome

Paula B: I’m Paula B, and you’ve been listening to The Writing Show.