In The Mesquite

Retired LAPD Homicide Detective III, Steve Hodel, brings over 50 years of law enforcement, homicide, and private investigative experience to bear on what the Texas Rangers said, “Remains the biggest unsolved mystery in the American Southwest.”

March 1938—The breaking story started out slow, announcing that a mother and daughter, traveling in their touring car, cross country from California to the East Coast, “were missing on a West Texas highway.”

Within days came a second announcement cautioning that “foul play was suspected.” Next, their abandoned car was found, and on the fifth day of the search, the nation’s worst fears were realized.

August 2019—Eighty-one years later, in what can be considered one of the nation’s coldest of cold cases, IN THE MESQUITE carefully reconstructs the chronology of the double-homicide based on original law enforcement documents, newspaper reportage, and eye-witness accounts.

As silent passengers in the back seat of Hazel and Nancy Fromes’ brand new 1937 Silver Packard, Series-Eight 7-seater touring car we ride along on their journey from California to visit their daughter and sister and family in the East Coast.

The identification and naming of the mother and daughter’s sadistic killer(s) and the evidence presented offering the solution will satisfy both sense and reason.

The author, a highly-skilled former LAPD homicide detective, provides his readers with the answer to the three basic requirements needed to solve this crime: —the MOM—the killer’s Motive, his Opportunity, and his Means.