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Meet Author James Renner

Join us when author James Renner visits to discuss his new true crime book, Little, Crazy Children.

About the author:

James Renner is an investigative journalist, podcaster, and critically acclaimed author of both nonfiction and fiction books, including True Crime Addict and The Man from Primrose Lane. Previously the host of Lake Erie’s Coldest Cases on ID Discovery, he currently hosts the podcasts “The Philosophy of Crime” and “True Crime This Week.” He is the Founder and Director of The Porchlight Project, a nonprofit that provides genetic genealogy for cold cases in Ohio. He lives in Akron with his wife and children.

Little, Crazy Children follows the story surrounding sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett, a poetry lover and member of a church youth group, who was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy’s home. The September 1990 murder cast a palpable gloom over the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa’s friends and peers.

Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: “weird” high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence, the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn’t squelch the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin had gotten away with murder. Renner's revelations and perspective offer a unique in-depth take that boldly proposes another suspect more likely to have committed the murder.

With a fresh perspective and painstaking research culled from police files, court records, transcripts, uncollected evidence, and new interviews, Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed.

Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.