Blood Relative: Portrait of a Mass Murder

In a slight, insignificant true crime study, Milwaukee Sentinel reporter Stephenson, who covered this 1987 case for his paper, here recreates the murders of five members of the Kunz family, residents of impoverished, rural central Wisconsin. The family first made the news in 1905, when a son adjudged insane killed his mother. Their descendants were reclusive and semi-literate, living in a ramshackle house overrun with animals and filled with garbage and porn videos. There seems little question that at least some of the latter-day Kunzes were involved, as well, in incestuous relations. A suspect tried for the slayings in 1989 was acquitted for lack of evidence. Stephenson has padded his book with the full autopsy report on each victim, interminable inventories of the contents of the Kunz house and transcripts of the many interrogations of the relative who discovered the bodies of four of the victims. Photos not seen by PW. (June)