Ron Franscell Biography

Ron Franscell is an American journalist, novelist, and true crime writer best known for the true account The Darkest Night about the 1973 crimes against two childhood friends in the small community where Franscell grew up.

Ron Franscell Age

Ron Franscell was born on January 29, 1957. He is 67 years as of 2019 and his nationality is American.

Ron Franscell Family

Franscell was raised in Casper, Wyoming. While there he attended Kelly Walsh High School. He later attended and received an associate degree in journalism from Casper College, where he was the editor of the school newspaper (The Chinook). He also graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wyoming in 1979.

Ron Franscell Wife

Franscell is a married man. He tied the knot with his wife Mary Franscell who is an English teacher. Together they live in San Antonio with their two children.

Ron Franscell Net Worth

Ron is a journalist and novelist. He lives a luxurious life with his primary source of income being his journalism and crime writing. His estimated net worth is still under review and will be updated as soon as it’s clear.

Ron Franscell Career

He started off working as a journalist in Wyoming, New Mexico, and California for Gannett newspapers from 1983–1989 and is a past president of the Wyoming Press Association.

When Hurricane Rita made landfall in Texas, Franscell, who was a managing editor at the time for the Beaumont Enterprise, rode out the storm with staff members in the newspaper’s building.

In 2001, he was hired as a senior writer and columnist to write about the American West by the Denver Post, where he stayed two years. Following 9/11, he went on assignment for the Post to the Middle East. From 2004–2008, he worked for the Hearst Corporation. He was a judge for Knight-Ridder newspaper’s Top Books of 2003.

In 2008, the book Fall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town, his book about his next-door neighbor in Wyoming, was republished by St. Martin’s Press with the new title The Darkest Night.

His book Delivered From Evil, for which he interviewed survivors of notorious mass killings in America, was released in January 2011. After the assassination attempt near Tucson, Arizona the same month of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords’, when 18 other people were shot, six of whom died, he was asked to comment for media outlets about mass murders.

True Crime Zine gave his ninth book, The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Washington, DC released by Globe Pequot Press in September 2012, a five-star review. The Huffington Post reviewed The Sourtoe Cocktail Club, about a father-and-son road trip before Franscell’s son Matt, left for college. Franscell’s The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Pennsylvania was released by Globe Pequot in October 2013.

Awards

In 2017, the true-crime book, Morgue: A Life in Death, was nominated for an Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America. In 1995, he was awarded the Freedom of Information Award from the National Newspaper Association.

He was awarded the 1996 Wyoming Literary Fellowship for his first novel Angel Fire. In 1999, the novel Angel Fire was named in the San Francisco Chronicle’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century West.

In 2003, he was given the Distinguished Alumni Award by Casper College. “The Darkest Night” also won ForeWord Reviews magazine’s gold medal for 2007 Book of the Year in true crime

Ron Franscell Books

He has quite a number of books. He has authored both fictional and non-fictional.

Fiction

• The Obituary: A Winchester Bullet Mystery (2003) (ebook editions)
• The Deadline: A Winchester Bullet Mystery (1999) Write Way Publishing. (ISBN 1885173733)
• Angel Fire: A novel (1998), Laughing Owl Publishing (Reissue: Berkley/Penguin Putnam 2000). (ISBN 0965970124)

Non-fiction

• Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story (2019) Prometheus Books (ISBN 978-1633885127)
• Morgue: A Life in Death (2016) St. Martin’s Press (ISBN 978-1250067142)
• Southern Fried Crime (2015), Notorious USA
• Evil at the Front Door (Notorious Louisiana) (2014), Notorious USA
• Nightmare at Noon (Notorious Texas) (2015), Notorious USA
• Delivered From Evil: True Stories of People Who Faced Monsters and Survived (2011), Fair Winds Press (ISBN 1592334407)
• The Sourtoe Cocktail Club: The Yukon Odyssey of a Father and a Son in Search of a Mummified Human Toe … and Everything Else (2011), Globe Pequot Press (ISBN 978-0762771561)
• The Darkest Night: Two Sisters, a Brutal Murder, and the Loss of Innocence in a Small Town (2008), St. Martin’s Press. (ISBN 0312948468). Originally titled in hardback, “Fall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town” (2007), New Horizon Press (ISBN 0882822799)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Texas (2010), Globe Pequot Press (ISBN 978-0762759651)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to the Outlaw Rockies (2011), Globe Pequot Press (ISBN 978-0762771639)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Washington, DC (2012), Globe Pequot Press (ISBN 978-0762773855)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Pennsylvania (2013), Globe Pequot Press (ISBN 978-0762788330)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Arizona (2014), Angel Fire Press (ISBN 978-0692026823)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw New Mexico (2014), Angel Fire Press (ISBN 978-0692026816)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Southwest (2014), Angel Fire Press (ISBN 978-0692218471)
• The Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Los Angeles (2017), WildBlue Press

Ron Franscell Morgue: A Life in Death

In this clear-eyed, gritty, and enthralling narrative, Dr. Vincent Di Maio and veteran crime writer Ron Franscell guide us behind the morgue doors to tell a fascinating life story through the cases that have made Di Maio famous – from the exhumation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to the complex issues in the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

Beginning with his street-smart Italian origins in Brooklyn, the book spans 40 years of work and more than 9,000 autopsies and Di Maio’s eventual rise into the pantheon of forensic scientists. One of the country’s most methodical and intuitive criminal pathologists will dissect himself, maintaining a nearly continuous flow of suspenseful stories, revealing anecdotes, and enough macabre insider details to rivet the most fervent crime fans.

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