Customer Reviews

Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky

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Few titles are published in the True Crime every year but new voices are rare. Anyone who cares about the genre has to wonder when the next Ted Olsen or Darcy O'Brien or Shana Alexander is going to arrive. Or wonder is they'll ever arrive at all. A new voice has arrived with Bluegrass.

The lives of three young people, all barely out of their teens, intersect as a typical college frat party. The girl gets her heart broken, gets drunk, acts out and then gets tossed out. One of the boys has spent the party passed out in a pickup truck after an all too successful pre-party. The second boy is unimpressed by his first frat party. By morning the girl is in ICU suffering horrific injuries. The investigation and murder trial that follow leave many questions unanswered.

William Van Meter tells this story with nary a trace of hysteria and what's even more impressive is that he also does it without an ounce of condescension. Life in semi-rural Kentucky would be filled with only alcohol and Ten Commandments road signage in the hands of other writers but Van Meter avoids the clichés. He shows us the aimless lives of the two boys and the semi-aimless life of the girl, their stunningly bad choices and their almost innocent kindnesses. His occasional commentary on their lives is devastating in its brevity. Case in point is his assessment of Stephen Soules: "a sluggish existence wholly in the present - a life structured around `chillin'."

This is the rare true crime book that is successful despite a genuine ambiguity about what actually transpired. Van Meter never hands the reader an easy out of "this is what I think happened", leaving us to sort it all out for ourselves. It's not a perfect book, the writing could stand a bit more polish in places but this is Van Meter's first book I'm willing to overlook a few rough edges when the overall content is this good. At 240 pages this is a short book well worth the time of any True Crime fan. Highly recommended.

This is hands down one of the best books I have ever read. The author, William Van Meter, returns to his hometown to investigate the brutal murder of Katie Autry and the people involved.

What benefits this book so much is the fact that Van Meter has no agenda; he's not here to preach against college drinking or rant about the breakdown of family values. No judgment is passed; he simply tells the story and allows you to draw your own conclusions- that makes for excellent investigative writing.

It is clear Van Meter is a journalist through his writing style, he is descriptive enough that the readers can place themselves there, but he avoids being long-winded and rambling. This skill is especially effective in his descriptions of Kentucky; I've never been there but I felt as if I were sitting next to Van Meter as he talked about the landscape, culture and people.

The outline of the book mirrors a Greek tragedy- the beginning of the story follows three people as they go about their lives, completely unaware of what is going to transpire a few days. As each detail brings Katie, Stephen and Lucas closer and closer to the party, the reader can't help but feel an overwhelming sense of doom.

Although this is a phenomenal book, be warned it is a very heavy book. I've read stories about crime for years and no other books have had that kind of emotional effect on me. It's been weeks since I read this book and I still think about Katie every day. At the same time I think it is important to know that these brutal, senseless things do happen in America. This is really well written book. I look forward to reading more William Van Meter in the future.

When you first get into the book, you feel like you know who committed the crime and it seems like an open and shut case, but then the author lets a second story unfold just when you think you have your mind made up and it takes you on a back and forth ride of who committed the crime. Beyond being a true crime book, it is also a great study of a small southern town and the relationships within. You feel connected to the victim in this book and the story is shocking. Great read!

In 2003 someone raped and murdered a Western Kentucky University freshman named Katie Autry in her campus dorm room. Eventually, police charged two young men - Stephen Soules and Luke Goodrum - with the murder. The case became a local sensation. Bluegrass is Willam Van Meter's account of the case and his description of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the surrounding area.

Van Meter makes characters vivid to the reader. Also, his account of the murder is graphic and disturbing. Autry had been raised by foster parents and she hoped to find a better life at WKU. Instead, she fell into a "party" lifestyle and worked as a stripper.

Goodrum was a troubled man without ambition, in spite of his distant ties to the family that founded Dollar General stores. Also, he chronically abused the women in his life. Soules is more of a mystery, a weak-willed follower who blames his troubles on everyone else. Van Meter makes it clear that - in his opinion - Soules falsely accused Goodrum of the murder in order to avoid the death penalty.

Bluegrass also focuses on the local community around Bowling Green, Kentucky. This part of the book is unsatisfying. In describing the area, Van Meter falls back on the things that have been used to describe small-town America in the past: fundamentalist religion, lack of economic opportunity, and racism. Also, his portrait of WKU is very unflattering.

On the whole, Bluegrass is still an interesting book. True crime fans will enjoy it.

Katie Autry was a friendly and pretty coed who was caught in the middle of two homes. One with her mother who had many problems of her own, and another with a foster family that tries their best to give Katie love. One night, Katie in a drunken stupor, gets a ride home from an aquaintance. Another passenger in the vehicle is Stephen Soules, who is also drunk. When they arrive at Katie's dorm, Stephen follows her to make sure she gets in alright. Moments later Katie's friend speaks to her on the phone and also Stephen. Hours later, Katie has been raped and set on fire in her dorm room. Stephen Soules is arrested but implicates another friend: Luke Goodrum. Goodrum is certainly no upstanding citzen (and he likes to manhandle his women) but that doesn't make him a killer or does it? Both men go on trial. Soules changes his story several times and claims he was so frightened of Goodrum that he partakes in Katie's murder. From the start Goodrum complies - giving DNA samples and offering to take a lie detector test. Soules DNA was all over the place, Goodrum's was not. Some say it was a case of rich vs poor and race. I don't agree. It has to do with evil, plain and simple. Soules did it and decided to blame someone else. The ultimate shame is that Katie is dead.

When a front page story came out in the Bowling Green(Ky)Daily News recently that a book had been written regarding the freshman murder of Katie Autry at Western Kentucky University, I knew that I had to get the book. I ordered the book online the first day it came out. Autry was raped and set on fire on the front mid-section of her body with hair spray in her dorm room after getting drunk at a party at the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity house on campus. She later died at Vanderbilt Hosptial in Nashville, Tenn., which is about 60 miles south of Bowling Green, a couple days later.

When I received my book, it immediately grabbed my attention and I hated to break away from it because I had to go to bed or go to work. However, the book is a short read with only 231 pages and it can be read in a brief amount of time especially if you're extremely interested in the case like I was. The author is William Van Meter, a Bowling Green native who apparently now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is a freelance journalist who contributes to such publications as "New York magazine," "Harper's Bazaar" and "The New York Times." I don't know Van Meter personally but I know of the family--the Van Meters--a prominent Bowling Green family who made a fortune in the insurance business. There are rumors that the Bowling Green community is not too happy that a book was written regarding this notrious murder case because it is a major public relations disaster for Western Kentucky University which is also located in Bowling Green. The university definitely wants to put this case to rest because of the bad publicity, I can assure you. Even one of the major local chain book stores, I heard, is not having a book signing for Van Meter and the book because they don't want to support the senationalism of the tragic death of Autry. I even heard from one person who lives in Bowling Green who knows the Van Meter family personally say that Van Meter probably would not have written the book if his mother were still alive and was still living in the community.

Being a native of Memphis, Tenn., and having lived in North Mississippi where I graduated high school and attended Ole Miss in Oxford, Miss., for five years, I have now lived in Bowling Green for the last 21 years of my life. This crime is probably of the most bizarre, shocking, grizzly, heinous and tragic murder cases that has ever hit Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky since I have lived here, as far as I'm concerned. However, there was one particular case that happened in the mid-1990's in Bowling Green which was the kidnapping and murder of a little five year-old girl that drew national attention. She was kidnapped by a child predator in van at a Bowling Green apartment complex and taken across the state-line in Tennessee where she was sexually molested, raped and murdered. Police later found her skeletal remains in a ditch on a side road off Interstate 65 south of Bowling Green at the White House, Tenn., exit. Police never did find the child predator but it was speculated that it was probably a serial killer who travels the country committing these horrible and evil acts.

This particular book, "Bluegrass," summons up past events of the murder from May of 2003 to the court room trial in March of 2005 in Owensboro, Ky. At the time, I wasn't subscribing to Bowling Green Daily News, so I didn't keep up with all the details of the murder case and the trial. But I did see the news reports on the local television station WBKO Channel 13 from time to time. Mainly, I remember people in the community commenting about the case and I think the majority of citizens in Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky felt that Lucas Goodrum, the 21-year murder suspect from Scottsville, Ky., was responsible for the crime and who made Stephen Soules, another young man from Scottsville, a guilty partner in the crime by forcing him to commit rape also. However, after the reading the book, I am not sure that Goodrum is guility even though he was not found guility at the trial. Some people around here still think he is guilty. Soules made a plea bargain with life without parole in order to avoid the death penalty if he implicatd Goodrum in the case. Goodrum was connected with an extremely wealthy family from Scottsville and Soules, a mixed racial person, half white and half African American, was from a poor family, and the victim, Autry, was from a broken home and had lived in foster care for half of her life. Autry was experiencing new found freedom at Western Kentucky University where she drank alcohol at fraternity parties and was dancing a local strip club as a part-time job. Autry, being a white girl, was friends with a lot of African Americans on campus as well as being in love with a Western Kentucky University African American football player. All of this was apparently a new life for her especially since she had come from extremely strict living conditions with her foster parents in Pellville, Ky. Goodrum had a history of domestic violence in his family where he was known to have choked his ex-wife and slapped her around. Soules was known to be a follower and could easily be controlled by others such as Goodrum and even though he was thought to be a gentle person by always checking on his grandmother where he lived. There are stories of elicit sex, foul rap song lyrics and drug and alcohol abuse revealed in the book.

However, one of favorite parts of the book is where Van Meter describes Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky in a chapter about the culture and history of the area and how this part of the country between Louisville, Ky., and Nashville is a growing area in population and economically with Western Kentucky University being here along with two major hosptials and the General Motor Corvette plant, the only place in the world, where the car is produced. Not to mention, the hundreds of other factories that are in Bowling Green and in the Southcentral Kentucky area, which adds to the local economy and job market. Van Meter also describes Scottsville, Pellville, and Morgantown, Ky. Morgantown is where Katie's aunt, Betty White lives. White was and probably still is the most outspoken critic against Western Kentucky University by blaming the university for her neice's death and even filed a lawsuit against the university.

Being a former newspaper reporter and book reviewer for the Bowling Green Daily News, I would have to say this is one of the biggest books to ever be published by a writer from Bowling Green and about a murder that happened in Bowling Green which has drawn national and probably world-wide attention now because of the book being published. I highly recommed this book if your interested in true crime stories and especially if you live in Bowling Green or Southcentral Kentucky and are somewhat familiar with the case like I was. I don't think the citizens of Bowling Green or Southcentral Kentucky and the staff at Western Kentucky University, should shun Van Meter for his endeavor of writing this book. Van Meter obvisouly had the guts, the talent, the intelligence and the ability to write a book about a tragedy that we should never forget that happened in this community. Universities and college towns across America and society in general should learn a lesson from this tragic murder case and how drugs, alcohol and sex involving young people can affect them at parties and after parties on campus and off campus. When all of these elements are mixed in together, they can create a deadly combination that can affect families and friends of all races and backgrounds with a tremendous sense of loss and pain for years to come.

well being a Kentucky resident all my life...i can relate to the way of life. this is a good story and well written...not sure what leads to the one boy being arrested cant figure that out...oddly enough i dont remember hearing anything about this story??? good book though!!!

Van Meter uncovers a microscopic overview of the case in Kentucky at the University, but; relegates to the reader a conclusion that each might draw a different viewpoint.

It is obvious to one who read mysteries and / or Murder novels; or has been within that field of Law Enforcement, that a lot of unanswered questions are raise. Many more can be brought to mind, about a botched investigation against Lucus Goodrum, but; a sucessful sellout to Stephen Soules case, his plea agreement, his sentence and his cooperation into a case that if he did not step forward might never have been solved.

I should write a sequeal to this book, about the legal aspects or facts missed within the evidence or a detectives point of view, or from another attorneys point of view.

As a Bowling Green native, remembering the story well, I thought I knew alot about the case. Needless to say there was so much more that Vanmeter brought to the reader that only through his research and writing we have come to know. I have read the book more than once and would recommend the book. This is not just a book about a murder in university town in Kentucky but it brings to light the background of social differences, lifestyles of small town america and sometimes how economic status can prove to be the enemy. Well researched and well done.

This is a very accurate account of the tragic murder that stunned southcentral kentucky in 2003. The local media put a completely different spin on the story. Sadly, most people around the area still assume that version to be the truth. I wish more people would read this book, so they could get a better idea of what really happened. It doesn't completely explain what happened or why, but it gives insight into the case that previously wasn't made available to the general public. The author, Willie Van Meter, lives in Brooklyn, NY, but grew up in Bowling Green, KY. He still has close ties in Bowling Green, and the people there seem to still hold him in high regard (even after writing about this touchy subject). He has always been an outstanding writer, but I think this is his first time doing true crime. He comes across as an old pro. This is a very interesting and quick read, and I definitely recommend it.