Janice Hisle’s book, “Submerged,” reflects her scrutiny of boxes of information never shared with jurors or the public.
A book written by a former Vindicator reporter is enjoying strong sales after revealing new clues about a hotly debated Cincinnati-area murder case.
Janice (Haidet) Hisle, who wrote news and feature stories across the Mahoning Valley in the late 1980s, later covered crime and courts for the Dayton Daily News and Cincinnati Enquirer.
Nothing she covered was as bizarre as the murder case against Ryan Widmer, a young suburban Cincinnati man convicted after his wife, Sarah, died in their bathtub in 2008, just four months after their wedding. Prosecutors needed three trials to get the conviction, but Ryan Widmer still insists vehemently that Sarah was dead in the bathtub when we went to check on her.
One of the highlights of Hisle’s book, “Submerged,” is the flood of information supporting the possibility that Sarah drowned because of a rare medical condition.
Hisle changed careers in 2013 but continued doing freelance writing. In late 2016, she started researching and writing the book, which was released this summer.
“This case hurt my heart and confounded my brain more than any other case I had ever covered,” she recalled recently. “That was partly why I felt compelled to write a book on it. I also felt obligated to share information that I knew had been kept away from the public and/or from the jurors.
“I strongly believed this was a story that needed to be told, and that I was uniquely positioned to tell it, based on my in-depth knowledge of the criminal justice system in general and about the Widmer case in specific.”
Public reaction so far suggests that Hisle’s motion toward book authorship was a good one. “Submerged” has earned more than 60 five-star reviews on Amazon.com, and the printed book and its Kindle version have ranked among the top 40 in their categories.
Hisle recently appeared live on CNN’s “Crime & Justice” show with Ashleigh Banfield about the fight over DNA in the Widmer case. Widmer’s supporters say Hisle’s book reveals more reasons to suspect that Sarah suffered from a disorder that might be detected through DNA tests. Those tests were never done, and prosecutors have refused to release Sarah’s DNA.
Shortly after “Submerged” came out, more than 100 people piled up on a waiting list to read it at the Cincinnati public library, even though the library had at least two dozen copies of the book.
“Submerged” and its author have been featured in nearly a dozen reports on TV, radio, Internet and printed news outlets.
Hisle recently shared some thoughts with the Nimble Communicator.
What convinced you there was a book-worthy story in this case you covered?
No other case I covered created such “buzz” in the community, such deeply entrenched opinions, such visceral emotional reactions from the public. This case really got under people’s skin. I think that was largely because Ryan and Sarah Widmer seemed ordinary, pleasant, relatable. They had “kid-next-door” appeal. And the way Sarah died–drowned in her own bathtub–was bizarre as an alleged murder method. Both of the possible scenarios in this case are incredible — a 24-year-old woman succumbed to an undetected disorder and drowned — or her husband, an ordinary young guy with a college degree, suddenly morphed from a law-abiding citizen into a vicious killer after just four months of marriage. Above all, the main factor that motivated me to write the book was this: Among the hundreds of homicides I had written about, this was the one with the most unanswered questions. So I sought to answer as many of those questions as best I could.
How did your newsroom skills or methods help you develop the book?
My job as a news reporter taught me how to figure out legal processes, how to translate legalese into English and how to interview people about emotional topics. I also learned how to comb through thousands of pages of records and to pull out the “nuggets” that are significant.
In terms of either the storytelling or the “business” aspects of the book, is there anything you would have done differently based on what you’ve learned through the process?
Not really. But I will say that the smartest thing I did was to hire an editor/publisher I trusted, which allowed me to maintain editorial control and also allowed me to possibly sell the rights to this book someday. I have heard horror stories from writers who have signed away their rights, then the publisher changes the title or other important aspects of the book and the writer has NO RIGHT to “veto” those changes.
Should more news people write books about things they’ve covered?
Yes, I would encourage more journalists to write books about topics they’ve covered. Invariably, reporters’ news articles are cut significantly. There just isn’t time, space and/or interest to run everything in detail in a news report, whether online, in print or on TV. Sometimes, in the rush to report and edit news, this creates a distorted picture of reality. A comprehensive review, away from deadline pressure, can provide important new insights to the writer AND to the news consumer/reader.
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Want to support this former Youngstown journalist? Buy a signed copy of “Submerged” at Hisle’s website, www.janicehisle.com, and benefit her work directly.
