Seeds of Evil

by Carlton Smith

On Easter Sunday, multimillionaire Dale Ewell, his wife, and 24-year-old daughter were gunned down one by one as they returned home from their beach house. The stone-cold killer waited on a sheet of plastic to avoid leaving clues and calmly retrieved all the bullet casings before leaving the house of blood.

The Ewells' tony Fresno community was shocked by the grisly murder of the socially prominent family. Only the son, handsome 21 year-old Dana, seemed strangely unaffected except for his outrage at not receiving his slaughtered family's entire multimillion-dollar fortune immediately.

Although the father Dale Ewell, was a ruthless businessman with a score of enemies, Detective John Souza immediately suspected the spoiled son with the new airplane and the Armani suits. But the brilliant college student sneered at the veteran investiagtor's efforts and appeared to have an airtight alibi. But Souza knew there has to be a hole and when he found it he would bring a cold-blooded killer to justice.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

272 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published September 15, 1997

Reviews

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but it feels incomplete because it came out before the trial.

[Charles Reimler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Horrific “True Monster Family Member Crime” Deceptive Appearance, But “EVIL SOUL” Darkness Ruled Within! I THINK Entire Family Was Inwardly Messed Up Lacking “Character Values”! Read This Book For The Story; But Author Lacks Writing Skills As Reason (2-Star), Yet! The Story Itself “Flesh & Blood Real Monster” Is Quite “A True Crime Tale!”

[Tabbitha Rivera · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished this true crime read. Shocker! Spoiled rich boy wants more money, money that he hasn't earned. What does he do? Hire a friend to kill his family. He insists that he is innocent but all the evidence isn't looking too good for him. 🌞🌞🌞 (3/5 Stars) I gave it 3/5 because I felt like it was super repetitive at times.

#tabbyslibrary #seedsofevil #truecrimereads

[Renika Jacobs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring book

The writing is slow and drags and makes this book rather boring. Admittedly the crime itself was not very interesting and this book makes it even duller. Would not recommend it.

[Eileen Granfors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating early on in the development of the son's narcissism and family dynamics. Bogged down as the early steps of the trial got under way and even more so because the book ended before the actual trial began. I had to use the Internet to follow up on the trial and the outcome.

[Rosemarie Cattuti · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please don't

Love true crime books. This was a waste of money! Continued to flip pages. Ridiculous. First chapter of so held my interest then downhill after that.

[Traci · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the beginning of this book to be tedious and unnecessarily slow. I get the need to paint a picture for the reader and to set the scene, but I don't need to go back 100 years in the past of the town the crime took place, I don't need to know how and by whom the town was founded. And I don't need to know how far back the murderers and conspirators can trace their lineage. However, once the book finally moved away from that and onto the actual families and people in intimately involved in the crime, I found the book engrossing and a fast-paced, interesting read that I really did quite enjoy. I was surprised and disappointed to find out, however, that ironically while the beginning of the book was slow and tedious with unnecessary and uninteresting information that had nothing or at least very little to do with the actual people and the actual crime, the end of the book (especially the last chapter) not only went too fast to the point of giving the feeling of being rushed but the author never said how the jury trial went. Whether Joel and Dana were convicted, and if so what their sentence was. He never mentioned what became of Jack Ponce and Peter Radovcich, either. Nor whatever happened with Monica Zent and her father. A lot of unanswered questions and an open-ended ending. Also, the author seems to have some kind of an odd disdain for people who are part of Generation X that I find eyebrow-raising at best, and oddly attributes Dana and Joel being part of this generation as at least reason in part for the way they "turned out," for lack of a better phrasing, which makes no sense whatsoever. The meat of the book was interesting and I easily got lost in it, but overall because of the beginning and lackluster (and incomplete) ending, it's not anything special. I'd recommend it to other true crime fans, but I would feel an obligation to caution them about the problems with the ending. I will admit that the ending is the way it is because the book was published a year before the outcome of the jury trials, but that really only means that perhaps the author should've waited a little longer to publish. It's also possible there is an updated version of this book that I don't know about. But that isn't the book I read, and I don't read true crime novels to create my own ending or have to Google the actual outcome.

[Stacy Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kinda had where the book was going right off the rip. It flowed pretty good but not having an in depth trial telling u exactly what the prosecution was charging them with and what they were sentenced to.

The ending sucked like I said it had no trial and charges in it I had to look it up on the Internet. For the love of god if you are going to write a crime novel the reader wants all the trial and outcome information not just a long in depth behind the scenes play by play.