Some of you have asked how Simon Says is being received. Here are eight newspaper reviews of the book.
Denver Post, Sunday, Jan. 20
Kids with killer instincts
A triple murder by teen boys in tiny Guffey asks the unanswerable: Why do children kill?
By Diane Hartman
Special to The Denver Post
How many of our children are armed? How many of them live secret lives while turning an innocent face to their parents and teachers?
Those questions cut close to the bone in a place where the Columbine killings stunned and horrified us. The murders outlined in Kathryn Eastburn's new book, "Simon Says," happened in Colorado one year and eight months later, enacted by normal-appearing youngsters who killed people close to them.
The prose wrapped around this true story is excellent, and Eastburn manages to keep tension acute while describing a four-year period, much of it involving the ponderous legal system. That's a tough chore with an audience more attuned to the seemingly quick solutions presented on "Law and Order."
A warning: Don't expect to come away with answers you can immediately apply to your family situation. It's like the aftermath of Columbine, when we fumbled with a list of possible culprits, wanting desperately to pin blame on someone or something.
Was it bad parenting? Cults? Drugs? Access to guns? A violent society? Romantic disappointment? You won't find absolute answers here. Only a mother's sad wish that her 16-year-old hadn't told the truth to police. He's now serving 60 years in the San Carlos correctional facility in Pueblo, locked down 23 hours a day.
Three grisly surprises
The killings happened in an unincorporated town two hours southwest of Colorado Springs, so small it has no official population count. Its name, Guffey, was misspelled by the state on the only sign leading into town, and any fame came from the citizens' whimsical habit of electing dogs and cats as mayors. Eastburn writes, "Guffey is nestled among the craggy, scrub-oak- and pine-strewn wilds of the Colorado Rockies. Mountain lions feast on deer in this country and men feast on solitude."
On New Year's Eve 2000, 15-year-old Tony Dutcher was camped on a rocky ledge about 400 yards above the trailer home of his grandparents, Carl and JoAnna Dutcher. He was in a dug-out fort, with low timber walls and covered by a plastic tarp, waiting for his former best friend Isaac Grimes to spend the night with him and celebrate the new year.
Three days later, when various family members became frantic that the Dutchers' phone wasn't being answered, a deputy was asked to drive out to the rural homestead in Park County and check on them.
Only a yipping dog answered his knock. Once inside, the officer found Carl, a Vietnam vet, sprawled in the narrow hallway, dead. JoAnna, who worked in a nearby town, was wedged against the bathtub, lying in a dried pool of blood. Shattered glass was everywhere; sunshine streamed in through bullet holes in the wall.
When more law enforcement officers arrived, the sheriff sent a deputy to check the little fort up the hill. Tony was face down in his sleeping bag, blood pooled and frozen around his head, which had almost been severed from his body. Another sleeping bag was rolled up nearby.
Eventually, Isaac Grimes was arrested for killing Tony. He and Jonathan Matheny had left their work at a fast- food restaurant and driven the 50 miles to Guffey, where Isaac slit Tony's throat and Jon shot JoAnna and Carl. Five weeks after their arrest, Simon Sue and Glen Urban, two other friends, were charged as accomplices.
The rest of the book focuses on piecing together what happened and why.
The arsenal was real
One perspective came from a schoolmate named Anthony Jacobs, a longtime friend of Glen Urban's who watched Urban get involved with a group called the OARA — the Operations and Reconnaissance Agents. He told the police that there was a link with Guyana, where Simon Sue's parents were from.
Simon told the group there might be a revolution in Guyana and he was organizing a militia to fight if needed. All this would seem like a silly kids fantasy game if an arsenal of weapons hadn't been involved, the boys hadn't felt genuinely threatened by Sue, and of course if the three murders hadn't been committed.
The police confiscated 36 guns at the Sues' main residence — including Uzis and AK-47s — then went to a workshop and found handguns and ammunition.
Sue, a few years older than the rest, had chosen boys who seemed needy to be part of his group. He told them about "the situation" in Guyana, and wove tales of how he had been trained in the jungles and promised they would be too.
He expected his tiny cadre to be physically fit, not take drugs and keep their rooms like military barracks. He talked about a bigger organization, one that would exact revenge on their families if they told anything. Nobody suspected what was going on; all the parents considered Sue personable, nice and respectful.
Later, the Grimeses found out that Isaac had vomited so frequently before and after the murder that the enamel had worn off his teeth. They knew that he had been troubled, but wrote that off to normal teenage angst.
They never dreamed that instead of going to chess club on Wednesday nights, Isaac was being trained as part of a "paramilitary organization" dreamed up by Sue and that he was learning to take apart and reassemble semiautomatic weapons and learning guerrilla fighting tactics.
The story plays out with myriad fascinating details, including the family backgrounds of the boys involved.
Eastburn covered the court proceedings for nearly three years as a journalist, and she takes you on almost every step of this gruesome, puzzling crime, including all the places along the way where someone could have done something to prevent this tragedy.
— Diane Hartman is a principal in the media relations firm Hartman & Brown.
The Santa Fe New Mexican (New Mexico)
March 2, 2008 Sunday
MORE MURDERS, MORE QUESTIONS
By Tom Clagett
This "true story of boys, guns and murder" recounts the bloody events of New Year's Eve 2000 outside Colorado Springs, Colo., about a year and half after the Columbine massacre, when 15-year-old Tony Dutcher and his grandparents were brutally murdered.
Weeks later, the killers were identified as Isaac Grimes, Jon Matheny and Simon Sue, the cult-style leader who ordered the deaths. These three were teenagers. They attended the same high school with Dutcher. Grimes and Dutcher had been best friends.
Kathryn Eastburn, a newspaper reporter who covered the court proceedings against the boys, tells this tragic tale with clarity and compassion. Her narrative, culled from official records, direct observation and interviews, is swift, compelling, and without a hint of sensationalism. This look at darkness, dysfunction, and human detritus needs no manufactured thrills.
In looking for answers, investigators uncovered a sinister web of lies as well as a surprising naiveté, and parents learned too late that there is a subtle evil, "an evil that didn't blink."
Eastburn relates some truly chilling moments. When a father says, "I don't know how you could have given into this," his son replies, "You don't know till it happens." At the sentencing of Grimes, the judge states, "He chose to do this É he deserves every nightmare he wakes up from." And there's Simon Sue's simple, unnerving assertion that "Everyone is equal at gunpoint."
There have been a number of books published about heinous murders. Some may wonder then, why tell another story of murder, of lives taken, of other lives destroyed?
With Simon Says, Eastburn reveals wounds that may never heal. There are also open questions, doubts about guilt and innocence, and the conflicting stories of the participants. We may never have the answers, but this predatory tale reminds us that there are monsters, and they are very human. That's reason enough to tell the story.
- Clagett is a Santa Fe writer.
Summit County Daily News, Breckenridge, CO
By MITCH HANKINS
Special to the Daily
There are those words and images etched onto our collective unconscious that we are unable to shake, no matter how hard we may try. The Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination, photos of Charles Manson’s eyes, the manner in which Truman Capote described the executions of Smith and Hickock in “In Cold Blood.” With the release of her new book, “Simon Says,” Colorado author Kathryn Eastburn has added to this canon, and aficionados of masterful true crime tales are the beneficiaries.
This is an intricate study of the triple homicide that jolted Park County into the new millennium as the bodies of the slain grandparents and a grandson were discovered on Jan. 1, 2000. As a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette at the time of the murders, Eastburn wrote of the crimes at the time that they occurred. With this book, however, she has been able to uncover the stories of the victims of this senseless rampage, their families, as well as the cadre of young killers and accomplices that carried out the act. In so doing, she has been able to peel away layers and layers of courtroom proceedings and psychological underpinnings to expose the complex personality of Simon Sue.
To her readers, Eastburn will introduce a powerful and awful character that will morph into the human automobile accident from whom they will be unable to look away. He is our worst nightmare, the quintessential bad seed ... he is what happens when parenting, society, and the norms of human behavior fail, and he lived next door to us all.
There is no need for people to create horror fiction when situations such as these exist in the real world and in real time, and just over Hoosier Pass. In the world of Simon Sue, Stephen King is superfluous.
Sociopath, psychopath, amoral genius, master manipulator, Sue has the capacity to alter the realities of experienced educators, attorneys, judges, and other professionals.
The malleable minds of his fellow high school students in Colorado Springs did not stand a snowball’s chance as they were drawn into his fantastic world of South American paramilitary mercenaries, weapons, money, and a total dearth of parental involvement.
He systematically recruited and subsequently, using the harshest of discipline, created and developed his followers who are willing to literally kill or be killed at his beck and call. He was Jim Jones in gym class, and there were plenty of takers when offered his Kool-Aid.
This is an amazing and totally riveting story of how easily people are willing to sacrifice their basic notions of good and evil and right and wrong, in order to please and appease what would appear to be the most insignificant of relationships. With imagery equal to that created by Golding in “The Lord of the Flies,” or Conrad in “Heart of Darkness,” Eastburn opens the door into this hidden and macabre underworld that existed under the nose of respectability in Colorado Springs.
Unfortunately, however, this is not imaginary. It is all too real. And far too near.
Vail Daily News, March 6, 2008
‘Simon Says’ read this
A chilling Colorado-based true-crime novel worth the read
By Charlie Owen
It’s a little easier to digest events like the Columbine murders when you’re watching the news report in a living room 500 miles away from the crime scene. But what if those murdering teenagers lived in your neighborhood, and the crime happened right next door to you? That would be pretty hard to swallow.
Author Kathryn Eastburn gives equal time to victims and killers alike in her book “Simon Says,” a real and gritty look at what happens when violence comes to a small town.
Eastburn — with smart and engaging writing — relates the tale of a young boy and his family murdered by people they knew and considered friends. In the rural neighborhood of Guffey, Colorado on New Year’s Eve 2001, fifteen-year-old Tony Dutcher was camping in a crude shelter on his grandparent’s property when all three were brutally murdered by Tony’s best friend Isaac Grimes, and another teenager, Jon Matheny. Tony’s throat was slit and his grandparents shot at close range. In the following police investigation and judicial hearings, the lives of the families involved and the killers themselves were tragically smashed to pieces by grief, guilt and more violence.
But most disturbing of all was the discovery that the plot to murder the Dutchers sprung from the mind of Simon Sue, a fellow student of Dutcher at Palmer High School. Sue lured Grimes, Matheny and another boy, Glen Urban, into joining OARA (Operations and Reconnaissance Agents), a covert group of soldiers-in-training that would fight crime and punish evil throughout the world. Only that was a lie, and Sue used his recruits to do his dirty work instead. Sue convinced his small following to steal weapons and give him money for OARA’s cause, brainwashing them with threats that if they didn’t do what he told them, he would kill them and their families. Out of fear for their own lives, Grimes and Matheny obeyed Sue’s orders to kill the Dutchers.
The kids aren’t alright
Eventually, the four boys were tried as adults. The only member to escape serious repercussions was Urban, who destroyed evidence of the crime but never took part in it. Sue, Grimes and Matheny all received near-life sentences.
Eastburn provides no answer to the question of why the murders had to happen, only a sad and limited view into Sue’s sociopathic mind.
A journalist for the Colorado Springs Independent at the time, Eastburn covered the trials of Grimes, Matheny, Urban and Sue for three years before writing “Simon Says.” She takes a deep look at why children kill, how mind-control is possible in the underdeveloped brains of America’s youth and the crushing affects that violent crime has on not only those who commit it, but on everyone in the community. Through recorded documents and interviews with the victim’s families and police involved in the investigation, Eastburn painstakingly pieces together the events, thoughts and emotions behind one of Colorado’s most violent and disturbing crimes. “Simon Says” doesn’t give the reader any hope in humanity, it just reveals the slight difference between humans and monsters.
- High Life Writer Charlie Owen can be reached at 748-2939 or cowen@vaildaily.com.
Galveston County Daily News
Peer pressure turns deadly in ‘Simon Says’
By Mark Lardas
Correspondent
On New Year’s Eve, at the end of the year 2000, three people were killed at an isolated rural home in central Colorado. One of the victims, a 15-year-old high school freshman, had had his throat slashed. His two grandparents were shot.
Sheriff’s officials, responding to the calls from relatives, discovered the murders four days later.
The grandfather, a gun dealer, kept his stock at his rural home. Yet the storeroom was still full. Suspicion fell on the three adult sons of the murdered man. All had criminal records. The one who lived closest — whose son was the youngest victim — was estranged from his father. It soon became apparent that he and his brothers were uninvolved.
Investigators soon focused their attention on a classmate of the murdered teen. This boy, Isaac Grimes, eventually confessed to the murder, but the story he told sounded like a bad thriller novel.
Grimes claimed to be part of a secret paramilitary militia. An older classmate, Simon Sue, who ordered the killings, headed Isaac’s cell. If Grimes had disobeyed Sue, Grimes would have been killed. Grimes expected that his confession would lead to his death, as well as that of his family. Grimes believed the organization had agents hidden everywhere, including Colorado law enforcement.
The militia proved the product of Sue’s fertile imagination. Through a combination of persuasiveness and charisma, Sue convinced Grimes and other teens to commit robberies and ultimately murder. The teens were convinced that their crimes were “missions” required by the secret organization.
“Simon Says,” by Kathryn Eastburn follows the story of the murders, the police investigation that followed and the resulting consequences. It pieces together how one teen convinced other teens, never previously in trouble, to commit felonies — including murder.
“Simon Says” is tautly written and is as exciting as a crime novel. The book is at its best when Eastburn shows how the murders affected the families of those involved, both the victims and the perpetrators.
Eastburn shows the unstinting efforts of the parents of the four teens charged in the murder to retrieve their sons’ lives. Much less attention and effort invested beforehand could have prevented the tragedy. But why many parents will not apply a fraction of the effort they are willing to spend to rescue their children to prevent them from needing rescue is a question this book — or any book — cannot answer.
Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, amateur historian and model-maker, lives in League City.
Copyright © 2008 The Galveston County Daily News
Aspen Times, January 26, 2008
‘Boys, guns and murder’ in Colorado Springs
by Naomi Havlen
Aspen Times Weekly
Readers of the genre known as “true crime” strike me as a certain breed of people. They are the readers who can’t seem to get enough details out of gritty, sometimes grisly, murder cases, and want to be walked through the case, one detail at a time, as though they were the investigators themselves.
If not for today’s 24-hour news channels and the exhaustive coverage of some high-profile murder cases, I might have read more “true crime” books. But I’ve always felt I knew enough about O.J. Simpson’s alleged murderous rampage in 1994, how JonBenet Ramsey ended up dead in her own home in 1996, and why Scott Peterson ended up on death row after the body of his pregnant wife, Laci, washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay.
But when The Aspen Times was sent a copy of “Simon Says: A true story of boys, guns and murder,” I decided to read it. The book is about a triple homicide in a tiny Colorado town on New Year’s Eve 2000 that resulted in the arrest of three teenagers from Colorado Springs. Not only had I never heard of this particular crime, but the author, Kathryn Eastburn, was a reporter for the Colorado Springs Independent who covered the court proceedings for almost three years. As a former cops and courts reporter at The Aspen Times, I had covered one lengthy murder trial and I was curious how Eastburn turned her day job into a book.
Apparently she obtained transcripts and videotaped interviews between the suspects and police investigators, and of course, spent plenty of time herself in courtrooms and living rooms before and after the case was closed.
True crime books don’t tend to hold back any details; they delight in parceling out crime details to keep you reading. So without ruining any of those small details revealed in “Simon Says,” here’s a synopsis of the crime itself: Fifteen-year-old Tony Dutcher and his grandparents were found dead at the elder Dutchers’ home in the small town of Guffey, Colo., in early January 2001. They were killed on New Year’s Eve, but their bodies weren’t discovered for three days.
The investigation led to Tony Dutcher’s classmate and former friend, Isaac Grimes, who told police about being part of a secret organization led by his friend Simon Sue, who ordered Grimes and fellow student Jon Matheny to kill the Dutchers. Simon Sue further claims his paramilitary organization has ties to a group fighting in his native land of Guyana.
If your reaction at this point is “Huh?”, it probably should be. Eastburn does an impressive job of tying together the odd facts about this case as it limps along for three years.
Furthermore, the book contains relevant information about events before and after the murders that changed how the case was tried in the court of public opinion — the Columbine school shooting, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the sweeping Hayman wildfire of 2002.
“Simon Says” moves slowly at times, reflecting the process of moving multiple suspects through our justice system. The book could have benefited from some additional editing. But Eastburn diligently follows the story to completion and questions how these teenage boys got tangled in a drama that ultimately led to three needless murders.
For fans of true crime, “Simon Says” fits the bill.
- nhavlen@aspentimes.com
Denver Rocky Mountain News, February 1, 2008
Inside a teen murder mastermind
By Karen Algeo Krizman, Special to the Rocky
Book in a nutshell: On New Year's Day 2001, 15-year-old Tony Dutcher and his grandparents, Carl and JoAnna, were killed at the elder Dutchers' house outside Colorado Springs. As if the slayings weren't shocking enough, police later arrested four of Tony's classmates at Palmer High School in the murders and uncovered an elaborate plot involving a cultlike figure and a secret paramilitary group.
Isaac Grimes confessed to killing Tony Dutcher, but police said his pal Jonathan Matheny killed the boy's grandparents. Another teen, Glen Urban, helped destroy their weapons. All of this was done under orders from a fourth teen, Simon Sue.
Police said that Sue, despite vacationing in Canada at the time of the murders, had orchestrated the whole thing to prove Grimes' loyalty. Sue had recruited Grimes and Matheny to be agents in his self-created group, OARA, which "stood ready to serve should a coup arise" against the government in Guyana, where his family was from. He gave his "recruits" weapons from his family's vast collection and trained them to be soldiers.
He also controlled their every move and threatened to kill the boys and their families if they should defy him. As a fellow student said, "When you looked into (Sue's) eyes, you knew he wasn't thinking about what everybody else was thinking about. He had something else on his mind. He was a badass like Macbeth was. He seemed OK in normal life, but he knew how far he would go to get what he wanted."
Best tidbit: While being trained by Sue to be a soldier of the OARA, "Isaac described being randomly kicked and punched, when he didn't expect it, and he described one particularly bizarre incident . . . in which he had been forced to eat sugary snack cakes, energy drinks, and soda syrup until he vomited, then was forced to eat the vomit and continue eating those foods."
Pros: The author weaves a gripping tale out of a complicated investigation and years of legal wrangling.
Cons: There's not much to dislike in this can't-put-down read, except for how disturbing the whole case is.
Final word: Just where were these kids' parents when they were stashing loaded assault rifles in their bedrooms?
© Rocky Mountain News
Colorado Springs Gazette, March 3, 2008
3 books detail bloody murders in region
By Bill Reed
... Not only is this longtime local journalist’s writing crisp and engaging, but she follows the twists and turns of the “Guffey murders” tale down several roads worth following.
The triple murder committed by fresh-faced Palmer High School students Isaac Grimes and Jon Matheny was intriguing and horrifying when it happened in 2001. But the heart of this story is everything that surrounds the crime: bullies, the teenage longing to belong and become a man, gun culture, family dynamics, and the ongoing destruction from the crime.
Eastburn has a knack for the telling detail, noting that before and after the murder Grimes vomited so often he wore the enamel off his teeth, and quoting from a prison letter in which he tells his parents about a spider outside his window he’s named Oliver.
Some of the most haunting passages concern the parents of the boys. There’s the cautionary tale of Grimes’ parents, who regret missing the subtle signs as things went terribly wrong in his life. And victim Tony Dutcher’s mom lost a husband to suicide, her son to murder, and later killed a man while driving the wrong way down Interstate 25.
The story is sad and gripping, and it feels as if it is being told by a neighbor.
- bill.reed@gazette.com
Wow. I'm definitely getting this book.
I'm a huge true-crime fan, and an aspiring true-crime writer. I work as the night news editor of a daily newspaper, and do freelance manuscript editing (right now, I'm working on Gregg Olsen's latest TC book).
I'm glad I found your blog, and hope to have some good conversations about our mutual interest. If the reviews here are any indication, you and I share a mutual interest — less about splatter and police procedure, and more about why people do the heinous things they do (and why some people make the choices in some cases that make them victims). For me, it's all about people.
Congratulations on the positive words. I hope to be able to add to them soon.
Posted by: Jim Thomsen | March 24, 2008 at 01:01 PM