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Waking Up Guilty: Vincent's Story
A true crime brutal murder, family strife, village's conundrum, haphazard police investigation, mistrial, arson, shocking confession.
230 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 8, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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February 13, 2020Historical crime...
Brought to the present day with masterful storytelling by a relative of the victim and just enough detail not to be bogged down by court testimony for those who don't like that, and doesn't contain pages upon pages of descriptive text about the town that many books do.
The authors brother was a witness in the trial of this tragedy, but he learned of it from the newspaper. It's not only tragic for the crime that was committed but for the injustice of an almost wrongfully convicted man after the fact and in the right one being convicted there was yet another, but that's a spoiler I will leave for you to read for yourself.
There are a few formatting issues with the e-book that come from either converting from paper to electronic format, or from copy/paste or converting from PDF to Word, such as lines ending with a lot of white space next to them and continuing on the next line with only two words, but I only found one instance where I was confused, wondering if there was text missing because it ended abruptly with no ellipses or ending quotation marks but a new speaker began. There is also about 3/4 of the book where a new paragraph is not made when a new speaker talks, so it can be confusing at times as it can all run together when there's a lot of dialogue. But, none of that takes away from the tragic and sad tale being told of this quiet farming community and how this murder affected not only the family, but the people in the county as well.
Brought to the present day with masterful storytelling by a relative of the victim and just enough detail not to be bogged down by court testimony for those who don't like that, and doesn't contain pages upon pages of descriptive text about the town that many books do.
The authors brother was a witness in the trial of this tragedy, but he learned of it from the newspaper. It's not only tragic for the crime that was committed but for the injustice of an almost wrongfully convicted man after the fact and in the right one being convicted there was yet another, but that's a spoiler I will leave for you to read for yourself.
There are a few formatting issues with the e-book that come from either converting from paper to electronic format, or from copy/paste or converting from PDF to Word, such as lines ending with a lot of white space next to them and continuing on the next line with only two words, but I only found one instance where I was confused, wondering if there was text missing because it ended abruptly with no ellipses or ending quotation marks but a new speaker began. There is also about 3/4 of the book where a new paragraph is not made when a new speaker talks, so it can be confusing at times as it can all run together when there's a lot of dialogue. But, none of that takes away from the tragic and sad tale being told of this quiet farming community and how this murder affected not only the family, but the people in the county as well.
March 7, 2021
A few generations removed from this murder, but still living and raising my family in the same village where it occurred, I found this story absolutely fascinating. While it is obvious that the author did extensive research into court proceedings, it was redundant at times and occasionally hard to follow. However, the grammar and fluency pales in comparison to the story being told and the historical significance that this case had on a small, quiet town. Highly recommend, especially for anyone with association or connections to Westphalia, Michigan.
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June 21, 2021Interesting perspective from the writer Ted Hengesbach who describes the trial of his first cousin Vincent Hengesbach.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews