Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns, and Murder

by Kathryn Eastburn

On a frigid New Year's Eve, just twenty months after the Columbine massacre, three teenage boys carefully plotted the murder of a schoolmate and his grandparents at their mountain hideaway outside of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306815524
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

True Crime as Literature

The reviews above have already given accurate synopsis's of the book. As a voracious reader of true crime books I am always looking for several things - a great story, well-written, and a book that can be considered literature. " Simon Says " is well-qualified in all categories. Not only that, it has social value as well. Rather than just catering to prurient tastes, it contributes to the reader's understanding of the power of the sociopath over those with undeveloped personalities. Think Charles Manson and his followers. Neither Charles nor Simon were there at the murders.

Struggling to understand the unfathomable events in the Colorado Rockies.

So just what is going on here? How can teenagers be so gullable and what's with this fascination with firearms? Whatever happened to playing varsity and intramural sports, going to Friday night dances and trying out for the school play? For me the harrowing events depicted in Kathryn Eastburn's "Simon Says" serves as a stark reminder that evil really does exist in this world and that young teenagers are a prime target for those who seek to spread it. You will find yourself just shaking your head again and again when you learn about the senseless murders of three members of the Dutcher family in the remote hamlet of Guffey, CO in the wee small hours of New Years Day 2001. Incredibly, the individual who ordered the "hit" on the Dutcher family and the two young men who carried out the bloody deed were all students at Palmer High School in Colorado Springs. "Simon Says" is a chilling tale that brings to mind the likes of Charles Manson and the Reverand Jim Jones. Author Kathryn Eastburn does a marvelous job of portraying the young men who would become caught up in this tangled web. The leader of the group was a young man named Simon Sue. Simon had moved to Colorado with his parents from his native Guyana. He was a natural born leader in search of malleable young minds to exert influence over. Sue was fascinated with guns and with the military and bragged to whoever would listen that he was part of a secret paramilitary group known as the OARA. In the fall of 2000 he found a pair of recruits in 15 year old Isaac Grimes and his older pal Jon Methany. Later on another young man named Glen Urban would join the group. Just a few short months later, Simon Sue would order his troops to kill the Dutchers and his willing accomplices carried out his wishes. Of course, "Simon Says" offers comprehensive coverage of the investigation into this heinous crime and of the subsequent trials of these young men. You will meet the detectives who finally managed to ferret out the facts of this case and the lawyers who argued for both sides during the interminable proceedings that would follow. Then you will learn how each of the families, the students at Palmer High School and the community at large tried to cope with these sensational events. There are so many issues to ponder here and I am sure that each reader will attempt to make sense of it all. But in my estimation this is simply not possible. At the end of the day far more questions than answers remain. Despite Kathryn Eastburn's best efforts to help us to understand I don't believe that anyone can present a rational explanation for what went down on that cold January morning in the Rockies. Nevertheless, I found "Simon Says" to be an exceptionally well written book that managed to hold my interest from cover to cover. Highly recommended!

A Story With No Winners

Make sure you have a significant amount of time available before you start to read this book, because you will have a difficult time putting it down. I read it in two sittings. It rates right up there with Judgment Ridge, the story of the two Dartmouth professors who were murdered by two Vermont teenagers less than one month later in January of 2001. Simon Says is an appropriate title for this new book because it is the tragic story of a very controlling and charismatic high school student named Simon Sue who manipulated those he saw as vulnerable into doing whatever he demanded. If they failed to do his bidding the threat of death to themselves and family members was made to appear real. One of the vulnerable boys, Isaac Grimes, murders his former best friend, Tony Dutcher, by cutting his throat as he slept while another, Jon Matheny, murders the boy's grandparents in their home by shooting them to death. The book covers the boys' relationship with charismatic leader Simon Sue, the murders, detective work needed to get confessions, the guilty pleas of each of the defendants, and subsequent appeals. This is a book filled with tragedy not only for the boys involved, but for other family members as well. It is a story without any winners. The only redemptive feature is a forgiving relationship between Isaac Grimes' mother and the mother of Tony Dutcher, the boy who Isaac murdered. It is the tragic story of an individual with a controlling and charismatic personality preying on vulnerable and younger individuals who otherwise would have never have become involved in such tragic behavior. The books' cover says it quite thoroughly, "A True Story of Boys, Gun, and Murder." I definitely got the feeling the boys, however belatedly, appreciated the beauty of their Colorado surroundings and would now not be able to enjoy the freedom they once had.

Outstanding

Kathryn Eastburn is at her best with the telling of this tragic tale. She approaches the subject with a reporter's objectivity, yet true to form with all of her writing, there is an underlying humaness that refrains from stooping to sensationalism or lecturing.

RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "SENSELESS MURDERS, BY TEENAGERS WITH NO SENSE!"

The shocking teen violence and depravity in this country that a decade ago seemed like a horrid anomaly, unfortunately now seems to have become a weekly occurrence. On New Year's Eve 2000 in the rural countryside outside of Colorado Springs, just twenty months after the Columbine massacre, a Grandmother, Grandfather and their fifteen year old Grandson were brutally and senselessly murdered. The investigation that followed revealed that four teenage boys with ages that ranged from fifteen to nineteen years old were involved in committing the murders, planning the murders, and destroying crucial evidence. One of the boys, fifteen year old Isaac Grimes, who was later convicted of murdering fifteen year old Tony Dutcher by slitting his throat from behind with a knife in such a heinous way as described in the court records: "at issue, is the brutality with which the defendant killed Tony. The autopsy showed he sawed back and forth." "The D.A. demonstrated a sawing motion with his hand against the loose skin of his own neck." "He severed the spinal cord, not just the spinal column." What makes this repulsive crime even more incredulous is the fact that Isaac and Tony used to be best friends. The Grandparent's Carl and Joanna Dutcher were slaughtered in a salvo of bullets. But the backdrop of this horrendous crime that joggles the imagination and all human sensibilities, is the relationship and "pecking order" of the four teenage criminal sociopaths Simon Sue, Jon Matheny, Isaac Grimes and to a lesser extent Glen Urban. (He destroyed evidence.) Simon at nineteen was the oldest high school student and he filled the role as a "Svengali" like leader. His parents were originally from Guyana a small South American country. None of the future criminals had many real friends, so Simon targeted them to become part of a non-existent "secret" paramilitary organization, "Operations and Reconnaissance Agents" (OARA). Simon said "OARA stood ready to serve should a coup arise against the standing Guyanese government, the People's Progressive Party. Under Simon's tutelage the boys learned to assemble and disassemble weapons, practiced shooting and planned and carried out burglaries. All without any of their parents knowing what was going on. When Simon demanded they murder Tony Dutcher and his Grandparents while Simon was conveniently out of the country, the other boys followed orders, later saying Simon's threats to murder their families kept them from telling anyone. After the murders the police and CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) during the course of their investigation turned up among other things at Simon's house alone; THIRTY SIX GUNS, MOST OF THEM MILITARY ASSAULT RIFLES, WEDGED INTO A CLOSET... THEY TAGGED UZIS, SKS,'S AND AK-47'S. As heart wrenching as the murders themselves are, the domino "death-affect" tremors of loss to all surviving family members is just as important in the telling of this tragic senseless crime. Charles Dutcher alone lost hi