Normally self-publication as a rule is not noteworthy, but last week’s Boston Globe article by Sarah Schweitzer highlighted a particularly startling claim by the self-published memoir of Joseph Horak, the retired Merrimack police detective who not only wrote about the unsolved 1973 killings of two teenage girls, but names the killer – never arrested, never charged – in the final chapter. “I’ll tell you something: If I wasn’t sure he was the killer, I would never have put it in the book,” Horak, 78, told the rapt crowd. “I put myself at risk, but when you spend 34 years on a case, you have an obligation to do whatever it takes to bring it to conclusion.”
Understandably, the naming has caused a minor sensation in this southern New Hampshire town, sparking macabre curiosity among longtime residents who recall the all-consuming grief at the time of the girls’ deaths and the rampant speculation that the killer might be living among them. And the man, whom the Globe would not identify, was outraged. “I live in this town, I do business in this town, and I’ve lived in this town for 35 years and I haven’t gone anywhere.” He continued, “The man has committed quite a travesty naming me in a book like that . . . using my name.” Legal specialists said Horak could be open to a libel lawsuit for accusing the man, as could Airleaf Publishing of Indiana, the publisher.
Which, of course, explains the self-publication angle: no commercial publisher would dare touch a book that makes such accusations when the person is still alive, leaving open the possibility – and in this case, it sure seems like a good one – for a libel suit. I can understand Horak’s reasons, stemming as they do from an obsession with the case, but it sounds like the legal trouble may not have been worth putting what was a certain claim in his mind on paper.