PURE EVIL: THE MACHETTI MURDERS OF MACON, GEORGIA by Jaclyn Weldon White
When it comes to books based on true crime there is no better example than Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD. That book told of horrifying murders and made the facts read like fiction. That is Capote’s genius and it has been handed down to Jaclyn Weldon White. Her latest story PURE EVIL: THE MACHETTI MURDERS OF MACON, GEORGIA is the story of a true crime and it talso reads like fiction.
When you read this story of a woman named Becky you have to keep telling yourself that everything in the book has been fact checked as truth. It is so bizarre to learn she was a married mother of three daughters who decided she wanted her husband dead. When she couldn’t pull it off by herself she quit trying and divorced him.
She took her three daughters and moved from Macon, Georgia to Miami, Florida. There she began a relationship with a man who was more easily pliable to her wishes. After she married him and had him change his name to Tony Marchetti, she began to hatch a plan whereby Tony and his friend John Maree would drive to Macon and kill her ex.
The ease with which she calculated such a cold and heartless plan makes for fascinating reading. Becky Marchetti does come across as “pure evil”. She is able to convince people around her to do the unthinkable and direct their every move from 500 miles away. She also manages to so terrify her three daughters that they stay silent for years as to what they know. They lived in total fear of her doing to them what she planned to do to their father.
White researched the case upon which PURE EVIL is based backwards and forward. It is amazing to read details of the story such as the temperature of the day the murder was scheduled to occur. Or the way the wind blew on a certain day and ruffled a person’s hair. It is detail layered on detail, and that is what makes the story both readable and believable.
White has done this kind of writing before with WHISPER TO THE BLACK CANDLE and THE EMPTY NURSERY. I recommend both of these books about actual crimes to you. They, along with PURE EVIL, confirm that the art of true crime writing did not die with Truman Capote but now resides in the skilled hands of Jaclyn Weldon White.
PURE EVIL: THE MARCHETTI MURDERS OF MACON, GEORGIA is published by Mercer University Press. It contains 256 pages and sell for $18.00.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
