Showing results by author "Robert Kolker" in All Categories

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Don y Mimi Galvin encarnan como nadie el espíritu ingenuo y entusiasta de los Estados Unidos de su época. Jóvenes y llenos de sueños y ambiciones, el futuro es para ellos un horizonte abierto. Los hijos no tardan en llegar: en 1945 nace Donald, el primero de los doce que tendrá la pareja a lo largo de dos décadas. Atléticos, inteligentes, talentosos, atractivos y felizmente instalados en la idílica casa de Hidden Valley Road, los Galvin se dirían la perfecta familia americana. Hasta que un día, tras una serie de extraños comportamientos, diagnostican esquizofrenia a Donald.