Dead in the Water: My Forty-Year Search for My Brother's Killer

by Penny Farmer

Overview

“This account by Farmer is both intimate but also the dispassionate, clear version you’d expect from a journalist.”—OprahMag.com, “20 Best True Crime Books"

In this shocking true-crime drama, a forty-year-old double murder brings together a grieving family and two brothers—just kids when they witnessed their father commit the brutal act—to track down a psychopath once suspected as being the Golden State Killer.

“A real-life page turner more intriguing than anything on Netflix.” –Matt Nixson, Books Editor, Mail on Sunday (London)

In 1978, two tortured corpses—hooded, bound, and weighted down with engine parts—were found in the sea off Guatemala. Junior doctor Chris Farmer and his girlfriend, Peta Frampton, were still clinging to life when they were thrown from the yacht they’d been crewing.

Here is the gripping account of how Chris's family worked alongside police, the FBI, and Interpol to gather evidence against the boat’s Californian skipper, Silas Duane Boston. Almost four decades later, in 2015, Chris’s sister, Penny, used Facebook to track down Boston. Following the detailed, haunting testimony of his own two sons—who also implicated their father in a string of other killings—Boston was finally arrested and charged with two counts of maritime murder.

A story of homicide on the high seas, Dead in the Water is also a tale of a family’s fortitude and diligence in tracking down a monster.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982639907
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
Publication date:	04/03/2019
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Raised in Manchester, Penny Farmer graduated with an English Literature degree from Lancaster Universityand then moved to London to study for a Postgraduate Certificate in Journalism at City University. Experiencing something of a baptism of fire as a reporter on a North London local newspaper at the time of the Broadwater Farm Estate riots in Tottenham in 1985, she learned the trade and knew that writing was in her soul. She has also served as an editor for Woman magazine. Penny is now a freelance journalist and public-relations consultant.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Prologue xi

1 Adrift 1

2 Each Other's Compass 5

3 New Horizons 14

4 A Disastrous Tack 18

5 "Nothing Much Happens on a Boat" 27

6 Dead Wake 32

7 Headwinds 59

8 Time and Tide Wait for No Man 77

9 A Voyage to My Brother 81

10 Edging Forward 92

11 "On a Boat There Is Nowhere to Go" 105

12 After the Storm 125

13 Beneath the Surface 137

14 The Pearl in the Oyster 155

15 Caught…Hook, Line, and Sinker 167

16 Land in Sight 188

17 Death Roll 193

18 Hands Across the Sea 201

19 The Spawning Ground 210

20 Boston, the Destroyer 218

21 The Perfect Storm 230

22 Journeys End 238

Epilogue: Fair Winds and Following Seas-The Mother's Story 243

Appendix 1 The Anglo-American "A" Team 249

Appendix 2 Thoughts on the Case 251

Appendix 3 Chris's Music 259

Acknowledgements 263

About the Author 265

Editorial Reviews

04/08/2019

The emotional devastation from a double murder permeates British journalist Farmer’s moving debut, an account of her decades-long search for justice. In 1978, 25-year-old Christopher Farmer, her physician brother, and his 24-year-old girlfriend, Peta Frampton, left England to travel the world. In June of that year, the couple ran into Duane Boston, an American who ran a charter boat business, in a bar on an island off the Belize coast. Christopher and Peta arranged passage to Honduras on Boston’s 32-foot sail boat, which was also transporting Boston’s sons, 13-year-old Vince and 12-year-old Russell. When the volatile Boston began beating Russell, Christopher intervened. While Boston appeared to calm down, the next evening he battered Christopher with a club and tied up him and Peta before dumping them overboard with weights attached. Their bodies were found in the sea off Guatemala a few days later. In 2013, Penny’s internet research led her to Russell, who provided an eyewitness account of the murders. In 2017, law enforcement arrested Boston, who claimed to have committed more than 30 other murders, though he died of an infection before he could stand trial. This engrossing, heartbreaking story is sure to appeal to true crime fans. Agent: Robert Smith, Robert Smith Literary (U.K.). (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"[A] moving debut....This engrossing, heartbreaking story is sure to appeal to true crime fans." —Publishers Weekly

“The gripping story of a woman who turned detective to track down her brother’s killer—nearly four decades after he was brutally murdered. A real-life page turner more intriguing than anything on Netflix.” —Matt Nixson, Books Editor, Mail on Sunday, London

"[A story] almost too mad to make up, too good not to tell and which one day, no doubt, will be a film." —Ben Dirs, BBC World News USA and Canada

“This account by Farmer is both intimate but also the dispassionate, clear version you’d expect from a journalist.”—OprahMag.com, “20 Best True Crime Books

From the Publisher