Hair Trigger: The True Story of the Investigation, Trial and Aftermath of the Katrinak Family Murders

by Mike McIntyre

On December 15, 1994, Joann Katrinak and her four-month-old baby, Alex, vanished from their home in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania, leaving behind a stunned husband and father, Andy Katrinak, who would soon become a suspect. Four months later, when Joann and Alex were found murdered in a forest fourteen miles from their home, the investigation took a hairpin turn away from Andy toward an unlikely suspect. As the man who prosecuted the Katrinak case on behalf of the Katrinak family and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, author Mike McIntyre shares his bird's-eye view, including his fact-based insight, of this true-life legal thriller. McIntyre recounts the inside details of the investigation, trial, and still-ongoing appeals in Commonwealth vs. Patricia Rorrer, a tragic case that has fascinated the public for over two decades, due to the cruel and bizarre circumstances of the crime, Rorrer's persistent claim of innocence, and the conspiracy theories that Rorrer's defenders have presented to try to cast doubt on the jury's verdict. Through his candid, expert account of the building of the prosecution's case with each discovery of a new piece of evidence, including the groundbreaking DNA analysis of several strands of Rorrer's hair - McIntyre, in his search for truth, deftly debunks the conspiracy theories, Rorrer's claim of innocence, and her cries of foul play - and proves once again that truth can be stranger than fiction.

393 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 12, 2020

About the author

Mike McIntyre is a justice reporter with the Winnipeg Free Press and a national radio show host. His previous books — Nowhere To Run: The Killing of Constable Dennis Strongquill (2003), The Yuletide Bandit: A Seven—Year Search for a Serial Criminal (2004), and To the Grave: Inside a Spectacular RCMP Sting (2006) have spent time on Canada's bestseller lists.

Reviews

[Olivia Danchik Fucci · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is very hard to read. Very choppy. I feel like it could have been written as a newspaper article as opposed to an entire book and I would have gotten the same