Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls

Today’s post is on Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller. It is 319 pages long and is published by Berkley. The cover has a picture of a burning trailer on it. The intended reader is someone who likes true crime and writing memoirs.  There is foul language, discussion of rape and other forms of sexual assault, and discussion of violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- The stranger-than-fiction cold case from rural Oklahoma that has stumped authorities for two decades, concerning the disappearance of two teenage girls and the much larger mystery of murder, police cover-up, and an unimaginable truth...

On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, sixteen-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing.

While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police collusion abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved and the girls were never found.

In 2015, crime writer Jax Miller--who had been haunted by the case--decided to travel to Oklahoma to find out what really happened on that winter night in 1999, and why the story was still simmering more than fifteen years later. What she found was more than she could have ever bargained for: jaw-dropping levels of police negligence and corruption, entire communities ravaged by methamphetamine addiction, and a series of interconnected murders with an ominously familiar pattern.

These forgotten towns were wild, lawless, and home to some very dark secrets.

Review- This was an interestingly written book about a very cold case that is still an open wound in the town where it happened. On December 30 1999 the Freeman’s were having a small party for Ashley Freeman with her family and best friend. The next day their trailer was on fire, the parents were dead, and the two girls were missing. For the next twenty years their families searched wherever they could, spoke to everyone from local cartel drug lords to find the author to come in and write up everything about the case. Miller was consumed by the case and the people in it. Miller is deeply changed by this story and the people she meets over the course of her research. There is no real ending as the girls are still missing but to me it is very clear that they are dead and their bodies will never be found. It's a heartbreaking but still fascinating story to read. 

I give this a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.