Customer Reviews

Dangerous Attraction

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an unusual true crime story -- it takes the reader inside of gangs, including prison gangs. This story is about a young woman who was raised in a decent home with a good family, but for some reason decided to get involved with a guy in prison who was also a gang member. After he got out, she tried to cut ties with him. She wound up dead, and the killing was so senseless. The loser who killed her still lived with his mother, who covered up the crime and wound up going to jail herself as a result. This book is very easy to read, it's not that long, and it is a good story that I wish every high school kid would read. It does not put "the wild side" in a very good light.

I thought this book was great so good that I will be looking up more books from this author.I have read alot of these kinds of books and at a certain point in the story they start saying the same thing over and over but in different words,not this author.I found it so interesting and was pulled in that I re-read some pages over a couple of times because I found this guy to be a true monster, it's also the way this guy Robert Scott writes,I'm scared to know that there are people out there in the world like this ,your put in the story into the pages with these people into there life.How sad for this girl's family,if you like books like true crime & murder than you will really like this one.I have never been interested in the neo nazi gangs before, if not for the writing being so good I would of put it down on the first page, instead I stayed up and read it and couldn't put it down until I new the ending, if justice was going to be served or not.I recommend this book and will be getting more books by Robert Scott and hope they are just as good.

How far will a mother go to protect her adult son from a murder charge? Sometimes, pretty far, as is revealed in the book Dangerous Attraction, by Robert Scott.

Twenty year old Katrina Montgomery was a lovely and warm young woman who was also a very beloved member of her family. None of her family is sure why she began to hang out with the lethal street gang in Ventura, CA. called the Skin Head Dogs. It appears that Katrina felt some sort of thrill involved with "taking a walk on the wild side."

Katrina befriended a member of the gang, the tattooed and drug abusing Justin Merriman, who himself was also twenty years of age and was doing time for the assault of a correction's officer. Katrina and Justin spent much time writing letters back and forth to each other until the day that Justin's time had been served and he was released.

Justin came out of prison with the impression that Katrina was his girlfriend, but that is not the way that she saw it. At a gang party on Thanksgiving of 1992, Katrina proceeded to get herself quite intoxicated and ended up at Justin's family home along with two other of the gang members. In Justin's bedroom, she was taken and raped by Justin right in front of his buddies. He then stabbed her in the neck with a knife, beat her over the head with a heavy wrench, then finally cut her throat. Her body was never found.

It was not until six years later, when he was stopped for a bike riding violation by police and ran, that he was caught.....and even that was after a wild chase and a harrowing seven hour standoff.

So, where does Justin's mother fit in?

Beverlee Sue Merriman had her own ways. She did everything within her powers to protect her son, no matter what the consequences were to her. She made sure to keep in close contact with Justin's other skinhead gang buddies, to ensure that no one would "talk." She ended up doing her son more harm than she would ever imagine.

This case had grown cold by the time the police had finally gathered enough evidence to bring Justin to trial, where the jury concluded that he was to die by lethal injection at San Quentin Prison in California.

This is a very well written true crime book. Robert Scott, also the author of Rope Burns and Like Father, Like Son, has done an excellent job of laying out this story which occurs over an eight year time span. Fans of true crime will find this story of murder, along with all of the terrorizing used to keep the gang members silent, to be a very interesting read.

Justin Merriman was a member of the white supremacists gang known as Skin Head Dogs in southern California.

Katrina "Trina" Montgomery, while not a member, frequently partied with the group and dated its members.

When Justin went to prison, Trina began to correspond with him. What initially started out as friendly banter between the two, quickly turned into a raunchy, torrid affair on paper.

Justin believed that Trina would be his girlfriend when he was released, but he was wrong.

He decided that if he couldn't sway her, he'd just take her.

And when he was done, he killed her to keep her from telling.

But his raping. torturing and terrorizing didn't end there, and it would take police four years and a great deal of maneuvering to get the evidence to put him on California's death row; and his mother behind bars for her role in witness and evidence tampering.

Robert Scott's 2003 book Dangerous Attraction, is quite the misnomer considering that Justin was not attractive and Trina, obviously, had none for him when he was on this side of freedom.

Yet that aside, the first 100 pages of this book are bam-bam-bam with the info, making a gripping page turner; but after that first 100, the remaining 155 just fizzle out with an occasional peak here and there.

Definitely not the best work of Robert Scott, and not even a story that is necessarily book worthy.

Recommendation: skip it.

Hi, this is my first review on amazon. I enjoyed the book and found troubles putting it down. As others have pointed out, its about skinheads, rape, murder, and some seriously whacked out people. This mother of Justin Merriman shows absolutely the worst parenting skills possible. She enabled her son to live a life of crime. It seemed like ANYTHING her son wanted she did it for him. I don't believe the young Merriman fellow ever knew of the consequences of any bad decisions he had ever made. There really were not many "likeable" characters in this story. There were a lot of "interesting" characters though. I felt bad for the Montgomery family. They seemed like a typical suburban family, who's daughter made bad decisions as to the friends she made.

I picked this book up in the local used bookstore. I knew nothing about any of the characters in this book prior to reading it. If you enjoyed the movie American History X, you would probably enjoy this movie.

This was written more like a newspaper article than a book. Didn't get to know the victims very well-just here they are - they killed them. I can't believe these girls had such low self esteem to let these immature losers treat them like they did. And the mother! Such a loser- hanging on to these weirdos as if she had no life of her own.