Glenn Puit

Ex-newspaperman Glenn Puit spent a grim, gritty decade covering the crime beat for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He has been channeling those experiences into a series of books in the “true crime” genre,” including 2005’s Witch, 2007’s Fire in the Desert, and this summer’s Father of the Year-Bill Rundle: An American Jekyll and Hyde. Puit’s latest tells the rotten tale of Rundle, whose son Richie died at age 11 as he waited for a school bus. A casino security officer, Rundle had practically raised the diabetic boy himself, only to lose him to a drunk driver. Despite being been named “Father of the Year,” thanks to an essay written by Richie a year earlier, Bill Rundle’s real tragedy was that he’d masked years of gambling, conning and alcohol abuse. He presented himself as a likable, grandpa-next-door, until one day he revealed his authentic self — a killer who bludgeoned his wife to death and likely murdered his own mother. Puit covered the case for the R-J back in 2003 when Rundle was sentenced. Now, having interviewed Rundle and everyone who knew him personally, Puit tells the whole horrible saga in a book that’s available in every bookshop and grocery store in the U.S.

Puit sat down with Las Vegas Noir editor and CityLife contributor Jarret Keene to discuss how a crime reporter becomes a literary author, and what makes a monster like Rundle so fascinating to readers and other observers of human behavior. Puit will be signing copies of Father of the Year on Friday, May 15, at the Summerlin Barnes & Noble (in Crossroads Commons, 8915 W. Charleston Blvd.), from 3 to 7 p.m.

CityLife: What first drew you to crime reporting in Las Vegas?

Glenn Puit: I got hooked early on as a reporter covering murder in a 10-county region in rural South Carolina. There are probably two experiences that stand out. In one, I was assigned to cover a murder in which a woman was found dead, her car submerged in a river, and her boyfriend was charged with the murder. I interviewed the suspect in a rural jail that was out of the 1800s or something. Terribly crowded, dark, wet, and there were all these inmates-shadows behind bars-looking at me, listening to the interview, and some were yelling crazy stuff at me, and the suspect was basically crying, begging me to help him get out of there. It scared me. The second was when I covered the exhumation of a dead body at a cemetery in South Carolina during the investigation of a possible serial killer. It was very foggy. Just as the authorities cracked the ground, this huge flock of blackbirds swarmed down from the sky, buzzing the cops and coroner. The birds flew back and forth, time and again, and it was very creepy. These incidents, along with some others, convinced me that the crime beat was the most interesting beat to be on.

CL: Is there a difference in the intensity of Vegas crime as compared to crime in South Carolina?

GP: No, but I think when you live in Las Vegas for a period of time it’s easy to forget how fascinated Americans are with the city. The city’s dark side intrigues people.

CL: Father of the Year actually seems more subtle as compared to Witch and Fire in the Desert. Witch starts with bucket of decomposed goo and an eccentric forensic dude, and Fire in the Desert starts with, well, a desert fire. By comparison, Father of the Year sneaks up on you a bit before you realize just how lethal the guy is. In other words, as the title suggests, the story hinges more on an irony than your other books.

GP: In the Rundle case, it took several weeks for the cops to figure out the full scope of what they had on their hands. Bill and Shirley Rundle disappeared, and no one knew where they were. Then it became, “Where’s Willa, Bill’s mother?” Bill Rundle also seemed a completely normal guy to everyone around him, and it took time for people to see the monster. Given those two themes, I thought the readers should have the same experience as the people who had the great misfortune of being close to Bill.

CL: As a reader, I couldn’t help but admire the guy for how he genuinely cared for his diabetic son Richie.

GP: Uniformly, the people who have read the book tell me the chapter in which Richie is killed in a car crash is very powerful literature. The fact is that Richie Rundle was a great kid, and Bill was a good dad and took care of him. This demonstrates what people in the criminal justice system already know: Most bad people aren’t bad all the time. There are redeeming characteristics in almost every human being.

CL: You’ve confirmed that Bill was a serial forger. Did he write Richie’s letter, the one that earned Bill “Father of the Year”?

GP: That’s a damned good question. I’ve asked myself that and talked to the detectives about it. As it is right now, it’s signed by Richie, Bill Rundle seems convincing in talking about his son writing the letter, and that’s about as far as I can go with it. Richie was a very special kid, so if I had to offer an opinion, I think Richie really did write it.

CL: You found the guy pleasant when you interviewed him?

GP: I interviewed Bill knowing he’d killed his wife. I knew his mother was missing, and he was the prime suspect. Yet when I walked out of the prison, I was like, “I really like him.” Totally freaked me out. I still think about that a lot. Also, the victim in the case, Shirley Rundle, was a very good person.

CL: Does writing true crime impact your life, or give you a dim view of the world?

GP: Actually, the hardest part of covering crime was the first few years I spent covering the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at the Review-Journal. I was very depressed about all the car crashes and plane crashes and murders I went to, and I did some really important work on suicides in Las Vegas that left me profoundly saddened, but journalism and newspaper work is public service. It’s the most honorable trade, and it was meaningful to me personally because I was able to help the families of violent crime on a day-to-day basis. The experience also left me with the stark realization that we, on an individual level, really only have a little bit of time on earth considering the bigger picture of life. So I spend my time doing what I want to do, and I always tell people closest to me on a daily basis that they mean the world to me.

CL: I think it’s interesting that the book is dedicated to late Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley. Tell us about his music and how it shaped you as a writer.

GP: Staley was an artist, he had an incredibly unique rock voice, and the words of his songs expose the pain and suffering of his tragic life. Mostly, though, I just wanted to note his great talents and encourage people to never give up even if it seems like you can’t go any lower in life. I’ve been through some very rough times in my life. Everyone has, but people can make comebacks. People can change, and life is too precious to waste it needlessly. Staley’s story saddens me because he could’ve partied like most of us do – every now and then – and had a great life, but he had to do heroin. I wanted to remind people that this particular drug is a scourge that is indiscriminate in who it destroys, and that you should never go there, ever.