A deadly silence
Subtitle: the ordeal of Cheryl Pierson, a case of incest and murder
By: Dena Kleiman
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
Published: 1988
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 305
Subjects: Pierson, Cheryl.; Murder -- New York (State) -- Suffolk County -- Case studies.; Incest -- New York (State) -- Suffolk County -- Case studies.; Parricide -- New York (State) -- Suffolk County -- Case studies.
Description: From the front jacket flap: On February 5, 1986, James Pierson, a burly forty-two-year-old electrician, was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Long Island home. At first the crime seemed irrational; he was the average American man and his was the average American family. Who could have done such a thing and why? The answers to these questions rocked the town of Selden, Long Island, and broke the silence on society's last taboo. Award-winning New York Times reporter Dena Kleiman covered the Pierson case from the beginning. But she quickly saw that this was more than just another murder. This crime had roots that went back for more than a generation and its repercussion would haunt the families of the teenagers involved and the quiet community in which they lived for years to come. For this murder was patricide and its cause was incest. Cheryl Pierson claims to have been sexually abused by her father since she was eleven years old-from the time her mother was stricken with the illness from which she would eventually die. But Cheryl never told anyone until she had already hired a killer. Sean Pica, who sat next to Cheryl in their high school homeroom, agreed to commit the murder for $1,000, a contract that would bring together two families in a tragedy that seemed almost preordained. The sixteen-year-old cheerleader had found a way to make sure her father would never sexually abuse her again. Dena Klieman masterfully pieces together this psychological jigsaw of a crime within a crime. A Deadly Silence explores heretofore unchartered territory, the undercurrent of violence that permeates the American family and the shroud of secrecy that permits it to flourish.