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  • The Last Stone

  • A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation
  • Written by: Mark Bowden
  • Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
  • Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (39 ratings)

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The Last Stone cover art

The Last Stone

Written by: Mark Bowden
Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
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Publisher's Summary

The true story of a cold case, a compulsive liar, and five determined detectives, from the number-one New York Times best-selling author and “master journalist” (The Wall Street Journal).

On March 29, 1975, sisters Katherine and Sheila Lyons, ages 10 and 12, vanished from a shopping mall in suburban Washington, DC. As shock spread, then grief, a massive police effort found nothing. The investigation was shelved, and the mystery endured.

Then, in 2013, a cold case squad detective found something he and a generation of detectives had missed. It pointed them toward a man named Lloyd Welch, then serving time for child molestation in Delaware.

The acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down and Hue 1968 had been a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper at the time of the original disappearance, and covered the frantic first weeks of the story. In The Last Stone, he returns to write its ending. Over months of intense questioning and extensive investigation of Welch’s sprawling, sinister Appalachian clan, five skilled detectives learned to sift truth from determined lies. How do you get a compulsive liar with every reason in the world to lie to tell the truth? The Last Stone recounts a masterpiece of criminal interrogation, and delivers a chilling and unprecedented look inside a disturbing criminal mind.

©2019 Mark Bowden. Recorded by arrangement with Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about The Last Stone

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very long and very dramatic

what can you say about the murder of children? a lot. s lot worth listening and learning from. if you dare...

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Unexpectidly Good

I listened to this one on a whim, and wow. It just goes deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. The murderer is so cunning and spins so many stories it really had me guessing until the end. One of the best true crime narratives I've listened to on audible.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A Fascinating Case

I listened to this one on audio book and it is a truly fascinating look at the work that went into unraveling the INCREDIBLE ball of lies one man fabricated to keep his secrets safe.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Misleading

The problem with this book is it is extremely repetitive. The other problem with this book is if you took out the repetition, you would not have a book at all. This 14 hour book could have been a one chapter parable in another book. Or fleshed out to a few chapters wouldn't have even been so bad. I wont spoil anything for those who still wish to read it, but here are the story beats:

Introduction - A guy might be involved in something bad
Chapters 2 through 18 - He lied to us, so we questioned him again (this is the book by the way.)
Ending - Well, we didn't really get the answer we were looking for. Nor the one we wanted. Hooray!

Most of the book is spent working over some guy who lies every time. You spend the whole story waiting for something to happen, but you are just taken to the next chapter where they talk to him again and find out he is lying. And then they talk to him again, and he is lying. And after that, they talk to him again and believe he is lying. Then have one last conversation with him but it turns out he was lying. The story does not get much farther than that. If you ask yourself what they knew at the start and what they knew by the end, it would not change that much. We started by knowing people were dead. We ended by knowing people were killed.

How this is called a "masterpiece of criminal interrogation" I wont know. But I guess it sells better than "we interviewed a guy over 10 times for hours at a time, asking the same questions and only got lies every time". My title is kind of long too.

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