Dance with the Devil

Book excerpt: Immortalized in the acclaimed documentary Dear Zachary, this brutally honest memoir chronicles a system’s failure to prevent the murder of a child. In November 2001, the bullet-riddled body of a young doctor named Andrew Bagby was discovered in Keystone State Park outside Latrobe, Pennsylvania. For parents Dave and Kate, the pain was unbearable—but Andrew’s murder was only the beginning of the tragedy they endured. The chief suspect for Andrew’s murder was his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. Obsessive and unstable, Shirley lied to police and fled to Newfoundland before she could be arrested. While fending off extradition efforts by U.S. law enforcement, she announced she was pregnant with Andrew's son, Zachary. Hoping to gain custody of the child, the Bagbys moved to Newfoundland. They began a drawn-out court battle to protect their grandson from the woman who had almost certainly murdered their son. Then, in August 2003, Shirley killed herself and the one-year-old Zachary by jumping into the Atlantic Ocean. Dance with the Devil is David Bagby’s eulogy for a dead son, an elegy for lives cut tragically short, and a castigation of a broken system. “[An] incendiary cri de coeur.”—The New York Times DANCE WITH THE DEVIL is a eulogy for a dead son, an elegy for lives cut tragically short, and a castigation of a broken system.