MARDI LINK: At Library She Tells of Trials Becoming Full-Time Writer
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Mardi Link
The story behind the story may turn out to be better than the story itself.
Mardi Link, perhaps the most notable author to hail from Bay City, told a packed house at Booked For Lunch at the Wirt Library last week of her struggle to become a fulltime writer.
Mardi, a 1980 Handy High graduate, has parlayed a brief career as a police reporter into a career many aspiring writers yearn for -- a fulltime gig as a novelist.
Her memoir, "Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm," published by Random House, followed true crime thrillers "When Evil Came to Good Hart," and "Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder and Confession in Northern Michigan."
Another Northern Michigan crime yarn, entitled "Wicked Takes the Witness Stand: A Woman, A Lie and Five Innocent Men," about a 1986 murder has been delayed indefinitely, the U-M Press has announced, without stating a reason for the delay. After hearing Mardi's discussion of the research on this book, many readers doubtlessly will be unable to resist it when it finally appears.
There may be a book centered solely on the writing of this book, which involved a lone female witness whose testimony sent five men to prison for the murder of Jerry Tobias, a Gaylord man, some 27 years ago.
"Wicked" made the 2013 spring catalog of the U-M Press, where we first learned of it, being described luridly as follows:
"A twisted account of unsolved murder, vindictive prosecution, and a psychotic key witness whose testimony led to the wrongful imprisonment of five innocent men.
"On a bitterly cold afternoon in December 1986, a Michigan State trooper found the frozen body of Jerry Tobias in the bed of his pickup truck. The 31-year-old oil field worker and small-time drug dealer was curled up on his side on the truck's bare metal, pressed against the tailgate, clad only in jeans, a checkered shirt, and cowboy boots. Inside the cab of the truck was a fresh package of expensive steaks from a local butcher shop -- the first lead in a case that would be quickly lost in a thicket of bungled forensics, shady prosecution, and a psychopathic star witness out for revenge.
"Award-winning author Mardi Link's third book of Michigan true crime, Wicked Takes the Witness Stand, unravels this mysterious and still unsolved case that sucked state police and local officials into a morass of perjury and cover-up and ultimately led to the separate conviction and imprisonment of five innocent men. This unbelievable story will leave the reader shocked and aching for justice."
The book is already listed on Amazon and Barnes & Noble but is not available. A U-M statement, posted on Facebook, said: "Sadly, this book has been delayed indefinitely--we'll be resoliciting it once we have a new publication date, likely in Fall 2014. Thanks for your interest!"
Ms. Link told the Bay City library audience of spending long days in the Otsego County courthouse researching the Tobias case after being asked by former Prosecutor Stu Hubbell and his brother Dan, also an attorney, to look into the case.
As she learned in the research, the woman witness had been in 11 mental institutions in six states; and, the accused men had never met each other until they went to prison for a crime the lawyers, and the author, believed they did not commit.
Mike Norton, writing in 2003 for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, summarized the case: "Since 1986, the Tobias case has absorbed millions of taxpayer dollars. Suspects were arrested, prosecuted and jailed, only to be freed when the evidence against them turned out to have been fabricated. Police and prosecutors have been accused of serious violations of ethics. And the case itself remains a convoluted web of official misconduct, perjury and outright craziness."
See:
http://truthinjustice.org/travesty-justice.htm
Hubbell and attorneys J. Bruce Donaldson and Ray MacNeil were honored in 1997 by the State Bar of Michigan with the "Champion of Justice" award for their work on the Tobias case.
The men were exonerated "but their lives were ruined," she said. Then, in 2010, Stu Hubbell died.
It was while she was working long hours on the Tobias case, at a table in the Otsego county clerk's office furnished by sympathetic workers, that she began her search for a literary agent.
After a couple of unsuccessful cell phone contacts, she tells of finally clicking with Jane Dystel, of the noted Dystel & Goderich agency of New York. Ms. Dystel's credentials were blue ribbon, having represented Barack Obama with his best selling memoir of his youth, "Dreams From My Father."
With her agent's urging, and a series of essays as a basis, she compiled the memoir "Bootstrapper" that was published by Random House.
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