Who Killed My Daughter?
by Lois Duncan
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On July 16, 1989, Kaitlyn Arquette was shot to death in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The police gave up, but her mother would not . . .In this tragic memoir and investigation, Lois Duncan searches for clues to the murder of her youngest child, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette. Duncan begins to suspect that the official police investigation of Kaitlyn's murder is inadequate when detectives ignore her daughter's accidental connection to organized crime in Albuquerque. When Duncan loses faith in show more the system, she reaches out to anyone that can help, including private investigators, journalists, and even a psychic. Written to inspire other families who have lost loved ones to unsolved crimes, Who Killed My Daughter? is a powerful testament to the tenacity of a mother's love.
A heartbreaking personal account by an Edgar Award–winning author known for such books as I Know What You Did Last Summer, this is a true story with "all of the elements of a suspenseful mystery" (School Library Journal). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lois Duncan including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author's personal collection.. show less
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This is the heartbreaking true story of the shocking murder of a young woman as told by her mother who just happened to be a famous author. I read Lois Duncan books as a preteen and I didn't know until recently that her youngest daughter was murdered. Even if I had known, I never would have guessed at the nature of this brutal killing and the tangled web of organized crime, conspiracies, and psychics that lurked under the surface.
I think this book suffers a bit from being written by the mother of the murder victim. Ms. Duncan's grief drove her into the obsessive pursuit of her daughter's killer - a response that is certainly easy to understand. However, the unfortunate reality, as that their are few answers in this case and much of the show more hunches that drive the author's investigation are the product of the numerous psychics she contacted. Every communication with the psychics, automatic writers, and others is reproduced in this volume in their entirety. Furthermore, sections of these communications are reproduced numerous times as the family repeats parts to each other as they frantically search for ways to make the readings make sense with the facts.
It was honestly really sad to read these incoherent ramblings and witness a grief stricken family work themselves night and day to apply such nonsense to detective work. It's true that the police department failed this family, as police departments across the country have failed grieving families. But I also could not forgive the way these charlatans took advantage. Perhaps it was encouraging. Perhaps it helped to drive the family to continue working to see justice brought to their daughter's case. However, these psychic readings were just not in any ways convincing and it made me sad to see previously reasonable people quote such gibberish as if it were a sacred text.
More than that, the psychic readings were just boring. I got very little out of the pages and pages of overwrought language and almost ludicrously vague portents. It really made the book drag. I think the story could have been told better by someone farther from the case and more able to edit it down to a coherent narrative. This is less a true crime book and more a tale of grieving, coping with sudden and unfair loss, and the story of a family trying to hold together under the weight of this trauma. show less
I think this book suffers a bit from being written by the mother of the murder victim. Ms. Duncan's grief drove her into the obsessive pursuit of her daughter's killer - a response that is certainly easy to understand. However, the unfortunate reality, as that their are few answers in this case and much of the show more hunches that drive the author's investigation are the product of the numerous psychics she contacted. Every communication with the psychics, automatic writers, and others is reproduced in this volume in their entirety. Furthermore, sections of these communications are reproduced numerous times as the family repeats parts to each other as they frantically search for ways to make the readings make sense with the facts.
It was honestly really sad to read these incoherent ramblings and witness a grief stricken family work themselves night and day to apply such nonsense to detective work. It's true that the police department failed this family, as police departments across the country have failed grieving families. But I also could not forgive the way these charlatans took advantage. Perhaps it was encouraging. Perhaps it helped to drive the family to continue working to see justice brought to their daughter's case. However, these psychic readings were just not in any ways convincing and it made me sad to see previously reasonable people quote such gibberish as if it were a sacred text.
More than that, the psychic readings were just boring. I got very little out of the pages and pages of overwrought language and almost ludicrously vague portents. It really made the book drag. I think the story could have been told better by someone farther from the case and more able to edit it down to a coherent narrative. This is less a true crime book and more a tale of grieving, coping with sudden and unfair loss, and the story of a family trying to hold together under the weight of this trauma. show less
I find it very interesting that Lois Duncan (author of oh so many supernatural/mysterious young adult novels) had a daughter who was murdered under mysterious circumstances.
This is a non-fiction book written with a novelist's steady hand. It is a very interesting story, slightly frustrating and heartbreaking because the mystery is never solved, tho i guess that happens in real life more than we know or are willing to admit. Very fascinating read.
This is a non-fiction book written with a novelist's steady hand. It is a very interesting story, slightly frustrating and heartbreaking because the mystery is never solved, tho i guess that happens in real life more than we know or are willing to admit. Very fascinating read.
It is terrifying what grief and suffering can do to people.
This is the true story of talented young adult writer Lois Duncan. The woman is a prolific and gifted poet and author, and has been financially successful in a cut-throat business. She is warm, gracious, friendly, and a real class act. But when one of her children was murdered, Lois became a devout believer in communication with the "other world". Her book, Who Killed My Daughter? is the rather incoherent tale of her contacts with various spiritualists and mediums who she believes gave her the vital clues necessary to solve her daughter's murder. The "clues" these mediums gave Ms. Duncan are so vague as to mean practically anything -- and even a cursory reading of the book show more shows the reader that it was really Lois' own determined investigation of her daughter's rather problematic life and risky choices that ended up pointing to the reasons her daughter was targeted for death.
But Ms. Duncan falls into the common trap of believing that if only she repeats something often enough, and emphatically enough, her audience will take it as an established fact, as she desperately needs these mediums' "communications" with her dead daughter to be. She admits in the book that she was on the verge of a complete breakdown after her daughter's untimely death, and as a mother myself I can totally sympathize with her distress. What must be worse for her is that her discovery that she knew very little about her daughter's activities during that last, fateful year. So it makes sense on a human level that Lois was desperate enough to clutch onto any straw that would both assuage her guilt and allow her to convince herself that she and her daughter could reunite, if only temporarily, to find the girl's killer.
It's a sad book, but made even sadder by Ms. Duncan's complete inability to see how it was her own determination and detective skills that allowed her to put the pieces of the puzzle together, not some fragmentary phrases from the dead.
The book is well worth reading, though, just to see how even the most brilliant and talented among us can be seduced by despair into believing the most bizarre ideas. show less
This is the true story of talented young adult writer Lois Duncan. The woman is a prolific and gifted poet and author, and has been financially successful in a cut-throat business. She is warm, gracious, friendly, and a real class act. But when one of her children was murdered, Lois became a devout believer in communication with the "other world". Her book, Who Killed My Daughter? is the rather incoherent tale of her contacts with various spiritualists and mediums who she believes gave her the vital clues necessary to solve her daughter's murder. The "clues" these mediums gave Ms. Duncan are so vague as to mean practically anything -- and even a cursory reading of the book show more shows the reader that it was really Lois' own determined investigation of her daughter's rather problematic life and risky choices that ended up pointing to the reasons her daughter was targeted for death.
But Ms. Duncan falls into the common trap of believing that if only she repeats something often enough, and emphatically enough, her audience will take it as an established fact, as she desperately needs these mediums' "communications" with her dead daughter to be. She admits in the book that she was on the verge of a complete breakdown after her daughter's untimely death, and as a mother myself I can totally sympathize with her distress. What must be worse for her is that her discovery that she knew very little about her daughter's activities during that last, fateful year. So it makes sense on a human level that Lois was desperate enough to clutch onto any straw that would both assuage her guilt and allow her to convince herself that she and her daughter could reunite, if only temporarily, to find the girl's killer.
It's a sad book, but made even sadder by Ms. Duncan's complete inability to see how it was her own determination and detective skills that allowed her to put the pieces of the puzzle together, not some fragmentary phrases from the dead.
The book is well worth reading, though, just to see how even the most brilliant and talented among us can be seduced by despair into believing the most bizarre ideas. show less
With a promise to see her family later, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Arquette rushed out the door into the balmy midsummer evening. Little did Kaitlyn's mother, Lois Duncan realize that those were the last words she would ever hear her daughter speak. On July 16, 1989, Kaitlyn was shot to death as she drove home from a friend's house along a deserted strip of New Mexico highway. The police concluded that it was a random shooting - even though it showed all the earmarks of a professional hit...
Kaitlyn's brutal murder left her family broken-hearted and grieving, and her mother pondering a thousand unanswered questions. Who would put out a contract on a beautiful young honor student? Was it grief that made Kaitlyn's Vietnamese lover try to show more take his own life? - Or was it not an attempted suicide at all?
Lois Duncan's search for answers would eventually lead her into the seamy underworld of Vietnamese gangs that stretched across three states. It would lead her to an extraordinary psychic and to a courageous journalist determined to expose the devastating truth. And it would send her on a soul-numbing odyssey into Kaitlyn's shocking double life as she desperately sought justice for the daughter she would always love...even in the face of shattering betrayal and threats to her own life.
Today, Lois Duncan's search for her daughter's killer continues. She will never give up. The best-selling young adult novelist has made finding her daughter's killer her life's mission. After all, a mother's blood vow to her deceased daughter is paramount.
I thought this was a truly heartrending book. I completely sympathized with Ms. Duncan's burning desire to discover the entire devastating truth behind her daughter's still unsolved murder. As an author of young adult suspense novels, Ms. Duncan proves that sometimes the most terrifying and suspenseful events are the ones that actually happen.
Understandably, this was perhaps the most difficult book for Lois Duncan to write, because this is a story that involves herself and her family. Her relentless search for justice for Kaitlyn is a quality for which I admire her greatly. I was certainly aware that Ms. Duncan was an author of young adult novels (Mareena read quite a lot of her novels while she was in high school), but I never realized that her youngest daughter was actually murdered, and that Kaitlyn Arquette's murder was still unsolved to this day.
Despite feeling tremendous sympathy for Lois Duncan and her family for their daughter's murder, I must also admit to feeling slightly angry at Kaitlyn herself. She was eighteen-years-old and got involved in an impossibly dangerous situation - one that ultimately cost her her life. While it is certainly true that young people will do anything for love - and teenagers can and do make mistakes - what Kaitlyn did subsequently endangered her entire family.
This book was certainly well-wriitten, but it was so convoluted that I had trouble sorting out the plot of the murder. I give Who Killed my Daughter? by Lois Duncan an A! show less
Kaitlyn's brutal murder left her family broken-hearted and grieving, and her mother pondering a thousand unanswered questions. Who would put out a contract on a beautiful young honor student? Was it grief that made Kaitlyn's Vietnamese lover try to show more take his own life? - Or was it not an attempted suicide at all?
Lois Duncan's search for answers would eventually lead her into the seamy underworld of Vietnamese gangs that stretched across three states. It would lead her to an extraordinary psychic and to a courageous journalist determined to expose the devastating truth. And it would send her on a soul-numbing odyssey into Kaitlyn's shocking double life as she desperately sought justice for the daughter she would always love...even in the face of shattering betrayal and threats to her own life.
Today, Lois Duncan's search for her daughter's killer continues. She will never give up. The best-selling young adult novelist has made finding her daughter's killer her life's mission. After all, a mother's blood vow to her deceased daughter is paramount.
I thought this was a truly heartrending book. I completely sympathized with Ms. Duncan's burning desire to discover the entire devastating truth behind her daughter's still unsolved murder. As an author of young adult suspense novels, Ms. Duncan proves that sometimes the most terrifying and suspenseful events are the ones that actually happen.
Understandably, this was perhaps the most difficult book for Lois Duncan to write, because this is a story that involves herself and her family. Her relentless search for justice for Kaitlyn is a quality for which I admire her greatly. I was certainly aware that Ms. Duncan was an author of young adult novels (Mareena read quite a lot of her novels while she was in high school), but I never realized that her youngest daughter was actually murdered, and that Kaitlyn Arquette's murder was still unsolved to this day.
Despite feeling tremendous sympathy for Lois Duncan and her family for their daughter's murder, I must also admit to feeling slightly angry at Kaitlyn herself. She was eighteen-years-old and got involved in an impossibly dangerous situation - one that ultimately cost her her life. While it is certainly true that young people will do anything for love - and teenagers can and do make mistakes - what Kaitlyn did subsequently endangered her entire family.
This book was certainly well-wriitten, but it was so convoluted that I had trouble sorting out the plot of the murder. I give Who Killed my Daughter? by Lois Duncan an A! show less
After her 18 year old daughter is shot while leaving a friend's house, teen author Lois Duncan begins a desperate search for answers about her death. Kaitlyn Arquette, a bright and vivacious 18 year old, is shot twice while driving late at night in Albuquerque. At first, her shocked family rallies around her life in boyfriend a young Vietnamese man. However, as the boyfriend's shady , criminal activities come to light, Duncan begins to investigate on her own. This search includes consultations with a number of psychics, which leads Duncan into an examination of her own paranormal abilities and past lives.
This book is interesting, but probably not in the ways that Duncan intented. First off, Lois Duncan was not the right person to write show more this book. Her perspective is hopelessly skewed as the mother of the victim, which gives an unbalanced view of events, and sadly, she seems not to have gained any catharsis from writing it. Duncan seems to hold her daughter completely blameless in her own death, only cursing Kait's guilelessness. However, if Duncan's theory of the death is correct, that her daughter was involved with insurance scams/drug smuggling/Asian street gangs; then Kaitlyn was either involved or too sheltered, too willful or too something to notice the warning signs.
What is interesting about this book is Duncan's need to create meaning, both in the meandering and often contradictory readings of various psychics, and as actual facts are revealed about the case. Also interesting is her jaundiced view of the Albuquerque police department, who, while not blameless in the lack of action on Kaitlin's murder, are not the villainous bureaucracy that Duncan paints them as.
All in all an interesting, if difficult to read and frustrating book. show less
This book is interesting, but probably not in the ways that Duncan intented. First off, Lois Duncan was not the right person to write show more this book. Her perspective is hopelessly skewed as the mother of the victim, which gives an unbalanced view of events, and sadly, she seems not to have gained any catharsis from writing it. Duncan seems to hold her daughter completely blameless in her own death, only cursing Kait's guilelessness. However, if Duncan's theory of the death is correct, that her daughter was involved with insurance scams/drug smuggling/Asian street gangs; then Kaitlyn was either involved or too sheltered, too willful or too something to notice the warning signs.
What is interesting about this book is Duncan's need to create meaning, both in the meandering and often contradictory readings of various psychics, and as actual facts are revealed about the case. Also interesting is her jaundiced view of the Albuquerque police department, who, while not blameless in the lack of action on Kaitlin's murder, are not the villainous bureaucracy that Duncan paints them as.
All in all an interesting, if difficult to read and frustrating book. show less
After her 18 year old daughter is shot while leaving a friend's house, teen author Lois Duncan begins a desperate search for answers about her death. Kaitlyn Arquette, a bright and vivacious 18 year old, is shot twice while driving late at night in Albuquerque. At first, her shocked family rallies around her life in boyfriend a young Vietnamese man. However, as the boyfriend's shady , criminal activities come to light, Duncan begins to investigate on her own. This search includes consultations with a number of psychics, which leads Duncan into an examination of her own paranormal abilities and past lives.
This book is interesting, but probably not in the ways that Duncan intented. First off, Lois Duncan was not the right person to write show more this book. Her perspective is hopelessly skewed as the mother of the victim, which gives an unbalanced view of events, and sadly, she seems not to have gained any catharsis from writing it. Duncan seems to hold her daughter completely blameless in her own death, only cursing Kait's guilelessness. However, if Duncan's theory of the death is correct, that her daughter was involved with insurance scams/drug smuggling/Asian street gangs; then Kaitlyn was either involved or too sheltered, too willful or too something to notice the warning signs.
What is interesting about this book is Duncan's need to create meaning, both in the meandering and often contradictory readings of various psychics, and as actual facts are revealed about the case. Also interesting is her jaundiced view of the Albuquerque police department, who, while not blameless in the lack of action on Kaitlin's murder, are not the villainous bureaucracy that Duncan paints them as.
All in all an interesting, if difficult to read and frustrating book. (cross-posted from MeriJenBen) show less
This book is interesting, but probably not in the ways that Duncan intented. First off, Lois Duncan was not the right person to write show more this book. Her perspective is hopelessly skewed as the mother of the victim, which gives an unbalanced view of events, and sadly, she seems not to have gained any catharsis from writing it. Duncan seems to hold her daughter completely blameless in her own death, only cursing Kait's guilelessness. However, if Duncan's theory of the death is correct, that her daughter was involved with insurance scams/drug smuggling/Asian street gangs; then Kaitlyn was either involved or too sheltered, too willful or too something to notice the warning signs.
What is interesting about this book is Duncan's need to create meaning, both in the meandering and often contradictory readings of various psychics, and as actual facts are revealed about the case. Also interesting is her jaundiced view of the Albuquerque police department, who, while not blameless in the lack of action on Kaitlin's murder, are not the villainous bureaucracy that Duncan paints them as.
All in all an interesting, if difficult to read and frustrating book. (cross-posted from MeriJenBen) show less
I was waiting for my daughter in the library one day and this book caught my eye. I started it while waiting for her because I had vaguely remembered hearing something about the case. The book is by Lois Duncan, a very famous author whose daughter was murdered when she was eighteen. How you feel about the book probably depends on how you feel about past lives and psychics. This was kind of a frustrating book to read. The initial pages hook you in and then there is page after page of psychic mumbo jumbo that from an objective point makes no sense. Seriously, you could apply it to anything. Poor Lois spends many more pages hashing it out with her family in an effort to try to make sense of it. The murder happened over twenty years ago show more when forensics weren't what they are now and the police had no leads that panned out. My not caring for the book has nothing to do with my feelings for Lois herself. She has my utmost empathy. If something like that happened to my daughter I would entertain every crack pot too. However you cannot avoid the fact that if the psychics had something the case would have been solved. The story is a real travel back in time. Lois actually uses a phone book to try to find witnesses. Even with the internet I have not been able to find any progress that has been made in the case which leads to the other reason I felt frustrated. There is no satisfying end to the story. It is beyond awful having your daughter murdered and double that when you can't get justice. I really hope her family gets their answer someday. Very sad indeed. show less
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Author Information
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Lois Duncan was born on April 28, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the age of 13, her first story was published in the magazine Calling All Girls. As a senior in high school, she won Seventeen magazine's annual short-story contest. She continued to write for magazines after getting married and having children. She entered her young adult show more manuscript Debutante Hill in Dodd, Mead and Company's Seventeenth Summer Literary Contest and earned the grand prize, which was $1000 and a book contract. That first title was published in 1958. She published several young adult novels at that time including Love Song for Joyce and A Promise for Joyce, both under the pseudonym Lois Kerry. After her first marriage ended in divorce, she wrote freelance magazine articles and taught in the journalism department at the University of New Mexico. After she married for the second time, she started writing books again. Her young adult novels included Ransom, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Killing Mr. Griffin, Night Terrors, Stranger with My Face, Don't Look Behind You, and The Twisted Window. She also wrote works for younger readers including Silly Mother, The Circus Comes Home: When the Greatest Show on Earth Rose the Rails, Hotel for Dogs, News for Dogs, and Movie for Dogs. Her best-known non-fiction book, Who Killed My Daughter?: The True Story of a Mother's Search for Her Daughter's Murderer, is about her family's experiences following the murder of her youngest daughter in 1989. Her works have earned her several awards including three Parents' Choice awards, the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1992, and the 2015 Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. She died on June 15, 2016 at the age of 82. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Vem mördade min dotter? : [den sanna berättelsen om en mors kamp för att avslöja sin dotters mördare]
- Original publication date
- 1992-06 (1st ed.) (1st ed.); 1994-03 (2d ed.) (2d ed.)
- People/Characters
- Lois Duncan; Kaitlyn Arquette; Don Arquette
- Important places
- New Mexico, USA; Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
- Epigraph
- It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
— Krishnamurti - Dedication
- For Kaitlyn Clare Arquette
September 18, 1970 - July 17, 1989
with love - First words
- Author's note
Our teenage daughter was chased down and shot to death while driving home from a girlfriend's house on a peaceful Sunday evening.
Prologue
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there dwelt a man who was a teacher of things strange and wonderful.
Our daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, was murdered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Sunday, July 16, 1989. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Impatient for new adventure, she eagerly pushes aside the veil, and without so much as a backward glance at the teacher, steps joyfully, confidently forward into the light.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Epilogue
When you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that were they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? . . . Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole is composed by the will within you. And just as people who you will have met apparentlyby mere chance become leasing agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. . . .
It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.
-- Joseph Campbell (Epilogue)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)When you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that were they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? . . . Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole is composed by the will within you. And just as people who you will have met apparentlyby mere chance become leasing agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. . . .
It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.
— Joseph Campbell
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)But one thing we're absolutely sure of in our own minds is that this was not a random shooting — Kait was assassinated. (1994 paperback ed.) - Disambiguation notice
- The original edition was published in 1992. An expanded edition was published in 1994 with an additional chapter called an Afterword. I don't believe that there is a great deal of difference, otherwise. The... (show all)y are separated when it is clear which edition is referred to, but this may not be perfect.
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, Teen
- DDC/MDS
- 364.1 — Social sciences Social problems and social services Criminology Criminal offenses
- LCC
- HV6534 .A35 .D96 — Social sciences Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Crimes and offenses
- BISAC
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- Reviews
- 13
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- (3.75)
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- English, German, Swedish
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- ISBNs
- 15
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