Portland State Magazine Winter 2007

Legwork is the hallmark of a good reporter. But perhaps no journalist has taken that truth to heart as much as James Curtis, a certifiable oddball who once slept in a murderer's bed as a way to get inside the killer's head. IT WAS CURTIS'S PECULIAR habicscombinedwichamacabreincerescin executions that brought him co the zenith of his profession in the 1820s, when a shocking murder captivated pre-Victorian England. After the killer had swung on the gallows, Curtis wrote what is perhaps the first modern true-crime book. Bue despite his innovation, Curtis was forgotten-until a chance "meeting" between Paul Collins, assistant professor of English, and the long-dead author. "I was in Powell's Books on Hawthorne, reaching up for a book," Collins says, "and another book fell off the shelf and hie me." The slender blue volume chat fell was a reprint of che author's 1828 book, An Authentic and Faithful History ofthe Mysterious Murder ofMaria Marten. As Collins flipped through the musty pages, he read Curtis's first-person account of looking our the window of the local hoed and seeing the house of the victim and che nearby scene of the crime. "When I read that," says Collins, "I was floored. It didn't read anything like other reportage of rhac time. What struck me was how it was like Truman Capote ... an amazingly inventive, crazy journalist who actually created a whole new genre." Bur this "early Capote" was elusive. Nothing had been written about him in more than 100 years. Fortunately, Collins travels frequently to the great libraries of New York and London to compile research for his steady stream of published works. Still, it cook James Curtis (top) wrote a true crime book in 1828 about victim Maria Marten (center) and her murderer William Corder (bottom) that had aTruman Capote tone, says English professor Paul Collins. WINTER 2007 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 11