AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Madeline Martin, owner of the Next Chapter Bookshop and Evan Handy’s survivor, has spent the last decade trying to understand what happened to her, to her friends, and to her town. Just seventeen when Evan Handy attacked her and murdered her best friend, the years following were marked by the aftermath of trauma, and a kind of suspended animation.
“That night has never fully come back to me. I realize now that it likely never will. I remember watching Evan murder my friend, fighting him for her life. I remember him turning on me, chasing me into the woods. I remember feeling the life drain from me, thinking I would die, until Badger came for me. But it’s all dreamlike and strange. All I know for sure is that I lost my friends, my childhood, and big pieces of myself. Evan Handy is a monster. But he wasn’t the only one.”
Evan Handy killed Steph Cramer. The evidence and Madeline’s testimony supports that, though Handy still claims his innocence, and Mindy Lynn Handy still asserts that it was Madeline who murdered Steph. After a series of confessions, Chester Blacksmith, known as Chet, plead guilty to abducting Ainsley and Sam Wallace, offering them a ride home after giving them Jell-O shots laced with Rohypnol. He admits to a lifelong obsession with the two girls, and claims it was his new friendship with Evan that led him to connect with the darkest parts of himself. It was an ongoing friendship—through letters and email messages—that kept him connected to these dark impulses.
After that night, Chet Blacksmith went on to abduct and murder two more women. His last intended victim, Lolly Morris, fought and escaped him, finally being rescued by Madeline Martin and Steven Blacksmith, who discovered her whereabouts by revisiting evidence collected by Martin’s father, Sheriff James Martin.
“To think they were up there all this time. That my brother was this stranger to me, to all of us, stalking, abducting, murdering women. It’s—heartbreaking. Devastating.”
But is that the end of the story?
If Evan Handy knew that Chet Blacksmith abducted and murdered the Wallace sisters, why did he never tell? Did Evan Handy use Chet Blacksmith as an agent of destruction, pulling his strings, and getting some satisfaction in his crimes while he served his life sentence?
“My client has no comment on Chester Blacksmith or his crimes. My client has claimed his innocence in the Wallace sisters’ disappearance consistently. Based on the new evidence from your investigation, we will be seeking appeal on Mr. Handy’s murder conviction. And in the meantime, he will not be speaking with you, Mr. Granger.”
In life, there are often questions without answers. In my investigations, I seek justice, closure for victims and their families, and search for the truth. Police departments often struggle under limited resources—money and man-hours. Cases go cold. Other crimes take precedence. When I can, when a case calls to me, I try to step in where others step out.
After more than a year of investigation and interviews, some of which led to Madeline Martin’s finding of Lolly Morris, and the discovery of the Wallace girls remains, there are a few things that I think we know now for sure.
Evan Handy murdered Stephanie Cramer by stabbing her seventeen times. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His attorneys are currently seeking an appeal on his conviction.
When Madeline Martin tried to stop him, he attacked her with a knife, chased her into the woods, and left her bleeding to death by the bank of a river.
That same night, Chet Blacksmith gave Jell-O shots laced with Rohypnol to Ainsley and Sam Wallace, then offered them a ride home. Though he was driving illegally at the time, the girls must have gone with him. He took them to his family’s lake house where he kept them captive, tortured them, and finally killed them. He has confessed to those crimes.
Over the next ten years, he stalked, abducted, tortured, and killed two more women. He abducted Lolly Morris and would have done the same to her, if not for her attempts to save her own life and Madeline Martin’s reopening of her father’s case files and her work with Steve Blacksmith, Chet’s brother.
Sheriff James Martin suffered a stroke on the day he asked Chet about the lake house. Partially recovered now, he claims that the realization that Chet had been involved and living under his nose all this time contributed to his health event.
“I was in my office, poring over my files. I always felt a new urgency as the first half of the year ended. I knew Christmas was approaching, marking another year without answers. I had been creating a map that included the more recent missing women cases and started looking around the area for large properties. The Blacksmith lake house was there. The boys were long ago cleared as suspects, so I honestly didn’t think much of it.”
“Chet happened to be there one day around that time, doing some work around the house like he always did. I asked about the lake house, whether his family still owned it, who else he knew up that way. And something about his face, the way it changed. Pieces just clicked into place. Then there was a kind of helpless rage. All these years, he was right under my nose. And then I felt like I got hit with a Mack truck.”
Sheriff James Martin spent the next six months a prisoner in his own body, all the pieces of his decade long investigation fitting together but no way to make himself known. He is recovering at home with his daughter and will be a key witness in the Chet Blacksmith murder trial.
We also know that Chet had developed a secret friendship with Evan Handy, one that continued through letters over the next decade. Their correspondence will be used as evidence in Chet Blacksmith’s upcoming trial, detailing years of manipulation, and Chet’s evolution into a serial abductor and killer of vulnerable women.
