Unheard Witness

What Jo Scott-Coe has managed to do in Unheard Witness is utterly remarkable: she has restored a voice left silent for far too many decades. Kathy Leissner Whitman’s murder was eclipsed by her husband’s horrific act on a hot summer day in 1966 when he shot and killed fifteen people from the clock tower on the campus of UT Austin. To learn of Kathy’s life is to render her heartbreaking loss anew, her homicide a portent of things to come in America. May her life and death remind us of how far we have yet to go.

~Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

In Unheard Witness, Jo Scott-Coe takes a story you might think you know and turns it on its head. The life of Kathy Leissner Whitman, told with intimacy, empathy, and care, reveals how private cruelty and public violence are deeply entwined. Too often, stories about mass shooters inadvertently glorify the perpetrators while the victims remain an afterthought. This perceptive, beautifully written book shows how much there is to learn when we do the opposite.

~Rachel Monroe, author of Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession