Chuck Hogan brings true crime into focus at Stonehill talk

By Mack Eon

For bestselling novelist and screenwriter Chuck Hogan, stepping into the world of nonfiction wasn’t something he ever expected to do. But on Monday afternoon in Martin Auditorium, Hogan told a packed crowd that his latest book, The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case, was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

“The interesting thing to me is that I had never planned to write nonfiction,” Hogan said. “It’s an opportunity to try something outside my comfort zone and try something new.”

Known for his crime novels like The Town and Gangland, Hogan admitted that telling someone else’s story- especially one as sensitive and unusual as this - was a challenge.

“This is me for the first time telling someone else’s story,” he said.

The story follows four suburban mothers-Marissa, Nicole, Samira, and Jeannie-who, with no background in law enforcement, unraveled a 15-year-old cold case in Los Angeles. What began as a curiosity about the disappearance of a small business-owning couple ultimately uncovered a deeper conspiracy.

“These were mothers first and investigators second,” he said. “I’m married to a mom, so I have some experience with them, and I wanted to make sure I got it right.”

The women’s journey began when Marissa noticed how strange it was that the couple had suddenly vanished. Rumors swirled that they had fled to Mexico, but the truth surfaced when their car was discovered at the bottom of a ravine.

Digging deeper, the group uncovered troubling details: a child of the couple had shut down the family business, the family faced a million-dollar bank lawsuit, and life insurance policies had been taken out before the bodies were even found.

Working through the COVID-19 lockdown, the four women pieced together a case that police had long since closed. They conducted about 50 phone interviews, consulted lawyers and accident reconstruction experts, and slowly earned the trust of a retired homicide detective- who, after receiving their theory via text, replied with a simple lightbulb emoji.

“They worked like hell to solve this case,” Hogan said, noting that the women became emotionally invested, even building a close bond with the victims’ daughter. “She almost became a client for them, someone to solve it for, to bring closure to their lives.”

Their investigation didn’t just reopen one cold case-it connected to other unsolved murders. Hogan recalled being stunned when the women presented him with a two-inch binder full of evidence. But shaping their meticulous research into a narrative was daunting.

“A few weeks later, despite how excited I was with all the evidence I had at the start, I thought it was awful. The challenge was sorting through a mountain of evidence to create a story,” Hogan said.

The result was a nonfiction book that Hogan said was both rewarding and exhausting.

“It was wonderful to work on this, but safe to say, this is my last nonfiction book,” he said with a laugh.

While taking questions from the audience, Hogan said that the women have since been approached by a district attorney with other cold cases, including a set of Jane Doe murders from the 1980s that may point to a serial killer. While they declined official jobs for safety reasons, their work has already left a mark, he said.

For Hogan, the story was worth the effort; not just because of its shocking twists, but because of who was at the center of it.

“True crime is very popular, especially with women, and the detective world is male dominated. So, this was a story I found that I wanted to tell. I had to make sure I made a good book; I didn’t exactly want these four women to absolutely bury me,” he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd.