This is a review of Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida by Mikita Brottman. Please note that this review contains spoilers. The facts of this case are well-known, but the Devil – as they say – is in the details. If you don’t want to know, or don’t want to read about a fairly gruesome murder, read no further.
This book is about two couples who live in a religious community in the suburbs of Tallahassee. Mike – who did not grow up wealthy – spends most of his time working and neglects his wife (Denise), so she starts hanging out with his best friend Brian, who is having his own problems with his wife (Kathy). Brian and Denise start an affair. She doesn’t want to get divorced, so they start talking about devising a ‘test of God’s will.’
This ‘test’ involves Brian luring Mike out to a lake to go duck hunting and then pushing him off the boat. If he sinks, it’s God’s will. Since Brian and Denise believe that a person wearing duck waders will always sink, it’s not much of a test. Mike doesn’t sink, so he passes. Brian shoots him in the head anyway, drags his body into his truck, stuffs his corpse into a dog crate to control the bleeding, and then drives home. After which, he goes to Home Depot to purchase a shovel, tarp, & weights, and buries his best friend’s body in an unmarked grave.
The obvious question is, why didn’t Mike and Denise get divorced? People end relationships all the time and for all sorts of reasons, but mostly it boils down to money and compatibility, or lack thereof. People who aren’t God’s chosen are allowed to drift apart or even dislike each other. Sometime people discover they aren’t compatible, because reasons (insert your own). It’s when you deny those reasons because you are thinking about God’s will or God’s plan that you can run into problems.
Before Mike is murdered, he takes out two life insurance policies. Denise cashes in on both of them, and this is what catches the eyes of the authorities. Brian divorces his wife and marries Denise a few years later. The authorities suspect, people talk, and Mike’s mother won’t give up trying to find her boy. But none of that is the reason they are in prison today.
Brian and Denise get to a point where they can’t stand each other. Yes, there’s that compatibility thing again. When Denise divorces Brian, he kidnaps her at gunpoint and threatens to kill himself. This is a serious crime, especially in Florida. Denise asks the prosecutor for a life sentence, which is when Brian confesses. He gets a lenient sentence of twenty years behind bars. Denise, who was not involved in the actual execution of the murder, gets thirty years. Did she deserve thirty years? I do not know. This is a fairly recent case, which means that most of the people involved – families and friends – are still around, so it wouldn’t be right to speculate.
Ms. Brottman does a good job recounting the source material and getting the known facts of the case correct. She is a therapist, and will sometimes psychoanalyze her characters. Because ultimately that’s what they are, characters she invented. Please note that I am not saying Ms. Brottman made them up. We all have biases and prejudices, so our view of certain people is always going to be fictional to a degree.
For example, Brian is depicted as a jealous manchild with too much money. He doesn’t need to work, and fills the empty holes in his life with porn. There is less information about Denise, which makes her more of a tabula rasa. When a person seems like a blank slate, people will project. Some observers of the trial viewed Denise as an evil mastermind or puppet master. Maybe that’s true, or maybe she just wanted to block the whole thing out. She didn’t share Brian’s desire to confess, that’s for sure, and she’s not a big crier. So what?
I have no idea about ‘tests’ or ‘God’s will.’ To me, this book seems to be about obsession and human frailty. The author quotes the Bible and James M. Cain, the author of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Ultimately, this is a story about a pair of lost souls who are drawn to – and ultimately destroy – each other.
Abandoned Places 