Crazymaker

by Thomas Joseph O'Donnell

Book Overview

An account of the brutal murder of Chris Hobson describes how Hobson's stepmother conspired with her son to kill her stepson, driving him to a remote place, making him dig his own grave, and shooting... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061004251
• ISBN13: 9780061004254
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

True Crime Fans Will Love This Undeservedly Little Known Book

In CRAZYMAKER, author Thomas J. O'Donnell has created a densely textured and outstanding work of true crime. To try briefly to summarize the plot, the main characters are Sueanne Hobson, her husband James Hobson, her stepson and James' son Chris, her son Jimmy Crumm, and her daughter Suzanne Crumm. Sueanne left her first husband, James Crumm, taking with her 4-year-old Suzanne while leaving 7-year-old Jimmy with his father. Jimmy memory of that day is watching from an upstairs window his mom and sister leaving and saying to himself, "Bye, Mommy. Bye, Mommy." Jimmy's life was not easy. His dad was an alcoholic and Jimmy lived with his father and a variety of relatives, moving regularly and never experiencing any stability. He learned to adapt his behavior to whatever the current arrangement so that he could please whoever he was living with at the time, and consequently he never really developed a firm sense of himself. Jimmy always felt a huge sense of abandonment by and longing for his mother, who showed her indifference to him by seeing him twice in seven years even though they all lived in the same area of Kansas. When he was 17, Suzanne found her brother and initiated contact. By this time Sueanne had been married to Ed Hobson for a year or so. Sueanne and Ed invited Jimmy to live with them, and Jimmy, who had been living in near poverty, eagerly accepted, partially for the material goods he'd have, but more so in the hope that his mother would accept and love him. Sueanne was a compulsively neat, manipulative, materialistic, and supremely selfish woman. In the words of Suzanne, "Mother married simple men so she could manipulate them as much as possible," Ed Hobson being the most perfect of all possible examples. And she hated her stepson, 13-year-old Chris, who didn't conform to her compulsively restrictive expectations, and whose behavior - though perfectly normal for a boy his age - irritated and embarrassed her. "Mother was narcissistic, " Jimmy said. "In narcissism it's not just how she appears to herself, but how she appears to others, how her image comes back from them. The way things looked to others was more important than the way they were. She was obsessed with what others said about her and her family." And using Jimmy's need for her affection and his newfound material comfort as weapons, Sueanne coldly manipulated Jimmy into murdering Chris CRAZYMAKER details the not only the crime, but also the trials, some interestingly unusual jailhouse machinations, and the continuing story of Ed Hobson's unfathomable weakness when dealing with Suzanne, preferring as he did to believe what she, as opposed to the evidence, told him. And most importantly there is impressively thorough research into the backgrounds of all the major players so that the reader gets a real feel for their psyches. O'Donnell's writing is literate, intelligent, professional, and a pleasure to read. CRAZYMAKER is 477 pages long, and I enjoyed all 477. O'Donnell has