The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation

Very interesting case. Well documented & written. Great author

Picked this one up because of "interrogation" in the subtitle and because I liked Bowden's previous "Blackhawk Down" and "Killing Pablo". This was an excellent read, but although I respect the significant effort put into the investigation of this cold case I can't agree with the characterization of "masterpiece" for the interrogation.As you would expect from the title, the book is focused primarily on the interrogative aspects of the cold case investigation of a horrific 39-year old crime. The narrative does a great job of detailing the investigative support necessary to support a complex interrogation of a difficult subject on a decades-old case. The "interrogation" itself was a series of lengthy interrogations stretching over more than a year-and-half.The approach to the interrogation, as described in detail throughout the book, was typical LE investigative interviewing, with extensive use of themes, both lengthy and abrupt leading questions, good cop - bad cop approaches, coquetry by the female officer on the team, and monstering as a standard approach. The only reason this approach succeeded as much as it did is because they had a subject who couldn't stop talking.The real difficulty, and it was significant, was that they were dealing with a pathological liar, who constantly changed and shifted his tale, which presented continuing investigative challenges.No more details, if anyone wants to read it. This was a fascinating read and really drew me in.

Thirty years earlier 2 sisters, aged 10 and 12, disappear forever from a shopping mall. The case goes cold, but never leaves the mind of the detective involved and the young journalist who doggedly pursues it. Now, 30 years later, because of a quirk, it again catches the attention of the police and the journalist-turned-author.The book concerns itself mainly with the battle of wits between 4 detectives and an imprisoned pedophile, a compulsive, canny liar. In the process we meet the prisoner's extended family, a passel of mean-spirited, amoral hillbillies. We also meet briefly the girls' parents, who are everything the prisoner's family aren't: warm, caring, pillars of the community.Dave Davis is the main detective; he establishes a seemingly warm, empathic relationship with the prisoner. Over a period of 17 months, during painfully long interviews, Dave and his colleagues, who include 2 women (one of whom is a polygraph expert) and another man, endure endlessly repeated tales from the prisoner, each repetition veering a tiny step closer to the facts. And the facts are horrendous. Without a trace of remorse the prisoner reveals the details, of how the girls were not seen as human, but rather as objects for the pleasure and convenience of the several men.The bare facts were that the girls were drugged, repeatedly raped by several members of the extended family, and finally killed. Unlike fictional police stories, the details remain murky to the end.The book is mostly concerned with the battle of wits between the police and the prisoner. The principal interrogator, Dave, is brilliant at what he does. Despite inner revulsion he establishes a friendship of sorts with the prisoner, who views him as his advocate and buddy. In essence, he and his colleagues facilitate Lloyd (the prisoner) digging his own hole. We see Lloyd as narcissistic, self-deluding, and completely lacking in empathy. His lone purpose is to maintain a facade of injured, misused innocence. And in this he completely fails.Despite my revulsion and nausea at the emerging details I was fascinated by the painstaking, thought-out police work. Baldwin sets about his task with a clear, very human writing style. He lets his police reveal their humanness and their errors, and admires their professionalism. We are always aware that we are dealing with human beings, even to the monstrosity of Lloyd.What I found most fascinating was the interaction between Lloyd and the detectives, and their influence on each other. I could only admire the doggedness of the police, and their willingness to plunge over and over again into the morass that was Lloyd.For me, this was a page-turner. In reading the previous reviews, I'm aware that some people found the book a slog and a bore. Others, like me, were fascinated. It's a very personal decision.

THE LAST STONE is a difficult book to read for more reasons than one. Mostly it’s the subject matter.Two little girls, 12 and 10, go missing in 1975. In 2018 Lloyd Welch is finally convicted of their murders. It is what happened to those little girls, which Lloyd tells us over and over again, that is a horror to picture as we read.Mark Bowden structures the majority of THE LAST STONE with actual transcripts of Welch's interviews with police over nearly 2 years. They are repetitive, tedious. And for all that, the whole truth is never learned, just enough to convict him.In the end, police can only theorize about what actually happened. So that is how Bowden concludes his book, with the various theories. They are all heartbreaking.

There is much to admire about Mark Bowden's "The Last Stone" but there are also some quibbles that prevented me from loving this book. Bowden is intimately familiar with the case of two sisters who disappear and the cold case that followed until the arrest and conviction he covers here. Bowden started his career as a journalist in the Baltimore/DC area and reported on the case back in 1975 when the sisters were last seen at a suburban mall in Maryland.Despite the case being almost 45 years old, Bowden's detail of the disappearance and reconstruction of the immediate aftermath of the disappearance and investigation is focused and clear. When detectives question Lloyd Welch in jail while investigating one of the primary suspects back in 1975, they get a fortuitous break that opens up what had been a cold and frustrating search for justice. The best portions are the narrative about the Welch family as they investigate Lloyd, his lies, red herrings and ability to blame everyone but himself. Sure, he had no role models coming from this awful hillbilly clan, a dysfunctional group of predominantly people.The aspect of the book that fell down for me is the verbatim interviews with Welch -- not that they don't add context to the story, Lloyd and his personality and the investigation that finally broke the case --- it's just that Bowden could have streamlined the sheer volume of what he contained here. By the end, I felt a bit exhausted (probably how Lloyd felt), but think things could have been shortened a bit and achieved the same desired effect, making for a more compelling read.

This is a muct read for those involved in investigative law enforcement. I read True Crime and I rate this book as my most interesting find for the full year 2021. V. Steel

It’s a history of a investigation more than it is about the crime itself. very well written. I highly recommend.

Absolutely addictive reading. Mark Bowden has used the original interviews carried out by detectives who spent many man hours using different techniques to try to get Lloyd Welcher to confess to a heinous crime committed against two children. I agree with other reviewers that Bowden’s style of writing immerses the reader and you’re gripped by the questions aimed at this lying freak called Lloyd Welcher. Welcher, who told Mark Bowden that he must never use his name, was a member of a clan who lived life on the edges of society. His dialect, which is part of the clan culture reads like a character out of the Beverly Hilly Billies but without the humour. Instead it is dark and depressing - “He drug it (the bag) over from the car“. It took a while to understand what Welcher was saying.. But the style of language used puts you right there in that room and you’re with the detectives every step of the way wanting Welcher to confess and understanding the frustration of the police and their desperate attempts to get him to open up. But he never truly does open up because of his clan culture which is insular and inherently guarded. My own opinion (for what it’s worth) is that Uncle Dick Welcher, the Security Guard at the mall, was key to the 2 children going off with strangers. I agree with Kate, the detective who interviewed Lloyd Welcher, that he didn’t have the capacity to commit this crime alone but the uncle, dressed up in uniform, was more likely to have lured the children away from the mall with some cock and bull story about their parents looking for them. The IBM worker who saw a young girl bound and gagged in the back of a car should have followed it or taken the registration number.The detective named Kate had a lot of experience in child abuse and looked at the possibility that their abduction may have had links to high powered people involved in child trafficking. How strange that the police officers who were digging in the hills where they thought they may find the bodies, found a tooth. They took the tooth to the police station and the next day when they went to get it to do tests on it, it had disappeared. It really all does make you wonder.

Not your usual whodunnit book. More a record of the practices used by the investigators to get one particular suspect to confess to brutal murders. Like all of Bowden's books the narrative zips along nicely, however, i personally felt that this effort was not quite up to the standard of some of his previous work, most notably "Killing Pablo" and "Guests of the Ayatollah"The conclusion of the book was a little anti-climatic. And although important questions were answered pertaining to the case I couldn't but feel that so many aspects of the case went unanswered. I appreciate that this is not the fault of the author, it would no doubt have been an obvious source of frustration for him also, it just left the ending of the book feeling a wee bit empty.

What was an interesting insight into the way some police investigations are carried out became boring. Reading it I became as frustrated as the police were.