By Garrick Moritz, Gazette
Former South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long and the authors of “Gitchie Girl,” Phil and Sandy Hamman, have co-authored a new book entitled, Duct Tape Killer.
“The Hamman’s contacted me,” he said. “They told me that this story needed to be told and that I was the right person to help them because I knew the story and had firsthand knowledge of the case. I could only agree. As a prosecutor, some cases stay with you and this one was extremely important, not just from the perspective of a career, but it was important for us as a state and our society. To the best of my knowledge, and I hope this remains true, Robert Leroy Anderson is the first and only home grown serial killer South Dakota has ever produced and experienced, and I hope that remains to be the case.”
In his legal and political career in South Dakota, Long has written a lot of documents. But this was his first go-around aimed at the reading public.
“I’m grateful to the Hamman’s, because they had a plan going forward,” Long said. “When you prepare documents for a judge in a court case, or a document for a client or case notes or any of the other documents someone in the legal profession must do on a daily basis, it’s different from writing a book. The writers of a book, even a non-fiction book, are ultimately telling a narrative. When you’re working on a court case or conducting an investigation, it doesn’t flow like that. Much of it is routine, and detail-centric. Think of it as doing a jigsaw puzzle in reverse without knowing what or where you’re going to find the pieces that might help you solve the puzzle. It would sure be nice to know where the story is going ahead of time, but you don’t usually get that kind of clarity until the very end.
