Witch

 

Witch: The True Story of Las Vegas's Most Notorious Female Killer

This story was a whirlwind. I was expecting a female serial killer who dabbled in the dark arts. But what I got instead of this treasure trove of a crime family.

 

There are several people within this family that the book follows.

The mother, Christine Smith, went to prison for shooting her lover. The father, Leroy Smith, was deeply invested in witchcraft and Satanism. His last wife makes an appearance before the book is over too. Then there's the kids, Travis and Brookey. No one has seen of heard from Travis since the early 2000's, to this day he has not been located. Brookey takes up the bulk of the story. She shot one of her husbands in the neck and is suspected to have killed him a few weeks later. She admitted to stuffing her mother in a trashcan and concealing her inside her storage unit for close to four years. She attempted to use a stun gun to immobilize her stepmother towards the end of her father's life. Some investigators even believe Brookey is also responsible for her brother's disappearance.

There are some things that aren't quite as heinous.

Christine and Brookey were involved in multiple theft rings where they would steal high end items, just to steal them. Both received charges for their involvement. They would also frequent a rehab center for Native American men who struggled with alcoholism. Brookey read tarot cards with her mother's Las Vegas neighbors.

But what keeps tickling the back of my mind, Brookey told Christine's friends and neighbors that she was taking her mother to live with Travis, her brother. But we all knew Travis was homeless....that makes me wonder if she was involved with his death as well. In a way, it seems she was stating the obvious. She knew her mother was dead, she knew Travis was dead. So the easiest lie, wasn't really a lie at all. Her mother and brother really were in the same place after all.