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Here's What Happened

A True Crime Memoir

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Dad

by Heather Burnett

What can you say about a 45-year-old dad who died? That he was handsome. And smart. That he loved Bob Seger and Otis Redding. And Sinatra. And me. OK, I stole that from the opening lines of Love Story, but ever since I watched that […]

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Nude

by Heather Burnett

Daddy’s murder investigation continued to uncover new clues to the last moments of his life. Even as I tried to watch a VHS copy of Oliver Stone’s JFK, I couldn’t sit through it without my mind flashing to dad’s last minutes alive. Someone must have […]

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Aftermath

by Heather Burnett

Trauma hijacked my life in the little house on Oak Ridge Road. It wasn’t my first trauma and would not be my last, but we all became closer that day because of it. My mom, my brother Jason, dad’s assistant Beth, and others who worked […]

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News

by Heather Burnett

Even though Arkansas experienced a 2.3% drop in the murder rate in 1992, the number of stolen lives and set-free souls exceeded 100 by July 1. By the end of the year, Arkansas logged 258 murders with 53.5% committed using a handgun. For perspective, Austin, Texas, […]

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Questions

by Heather Burnett

“Are we having fun yet?” daddy used to ask his boat passengers as they raced across Lake Hamilton, balancing a mixed drink in one hand to avoid a spill as the boat hopped the wakes. I heard this question a lot growing up because it […]

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Hello

by Heather Burnett

There was a time when you could call a person on their land line phone, and it would just ring and ring and ring all day as long as there wasn’t an answering machine or person to pick up the call on the other end. […]

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Drive

by Heather Burnett

Lake Hamilton’s choppy waves slapped across the sides of the Act’n Up Ag’n as it hustled its way from Margarita Bay a little after 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, July 19, 1992. At 5:22 p.m., dad’s guest, Sandra Locke, borrowed his brick cell phone in a […]

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Sunday

by Heather Burnett

It happens every year in the middle of the summer. Tomato plants bloom, the cicadas come out and the days are so hot you have to mentally prepare yourself with a pep talk for the walk across an asphalt parking lot to your car. When […]

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Keys

by Heather Burnett

Carefully, the young, blonde Sandra Locke laid out the story for Det. Ronnie Smith of the Little Rock Police Department. An advertising account executive for a Little Rock television station, Sandra said daddy called her over to where he and his friends were sitting at […]

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Saturday

by Heather Burnett

In May 1971 on my parents’ one-year anniversary, daddy brought home the traditional gift: paper. They lived in a small, rented apartment in Hot Springs, daddy’s hometown, and dad gave his wife loan papers to co-sign for their first boat. Surprise! Before buying a house, […]

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Bedsheets

by Heather Burnett

Those were probably three interesting hours daddy and his estranged wife, Scharmel, spent together “discussing the divorce” on early Saturday, July 18, 1992. It appears daddy called her brother just after the sunrise to inform him about his sister being in bed with another man […]

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Photos

by Heather Burnett

A 4” x 4” headshot in a wooden frame sits on a bookshelf in my office. The photo of me at 18 years old stares back, grinning with excitement about the future and eager to matriculate to higher education at the University of Arkansas in […]

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