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Elaine Gere - Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder

Jack Olsen (1925-2002)

Salt of the Earth: A Mother, A Daughter, A Murder is a true story of how Elaine Gere fought and triumphed over life-shattering violence, after her twelve-year-old daughter, Brenda was abducted and murdered and her husband, Joe, later committed suicide.   

Elaine and Joe Gere were tough farmers' children who fell on hard times. They had three children, a daughter and two sons. Joe, a deputy sheriff in San Bernardino, California, was forced to retire at age 28 after being overwhelmed by a mob and beaten with ax handles and baseball bats while in the line of duty causing him to lose half his sight. This created a devastating financial situation for the Geres.  The family moved between California and Idaho at least a dozen times. Elaine always managed to find a clerical federal job wherever Joe moved the family. Joe started drinking and abusing Elaine.  He would always regret hitting her and promised to stop. Elaine remained loyal. 

On September 19, 1985 Elaine returned home, expecting to pick up Brenda, their oldest child, and drive her to soccer practice. Instead, she found an empty house. Brenda's school books were there.  But where was she?

Michael Green became a prime suspect in Brenda's disappearance after her neighbors noticed his car in the neighborhood on the day that she disappeared. Green was questioned twice by detectives and had determined from evidence at her home that she had met with foul play. Green had been identified as the man who tried to get into a house with a 16-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother a block away from the Gere home the day before Brenda disappeared. In addition, on the day Brenda disappeared, a neighbor saw a man, later identified as Green, walking ahead of Brenda as she was coming home from the bus stop. But the investigation stalled because a body could not be located.

Joe moved his family back to Idaho and two years later committed suicide in front of Elaine and one of their sons. Being an ex-cop, he had become consumed by guilt and rage because he felt he should have been able to protect Brenda.

In August 1991, six years after Brenda was abducted, a man and his friend found her remains on a brushy hillside at the northwest corner of the Tulalip Indian Reservation.

As soon as the remains were identified as being Brenda Gere, the County Sheriff's Office filed murder charges against Michael Kay Green, who was serving a prison sentence for a rape committed about the time Brenda disappeared in September 1985. 

Michael Kay Green was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the kidnapping and murder of Brenda Gere.

Other best selling books by Jack Olsen
with case background:

• The Man with the Candy: The Story of the Houston Mass Murders (1974) - A brilliant, investigative, journalist's story of the mass murder of almost 30 young boys in Houston by Dean Corll, a homosexual owner of a candy factory, and his two teen-aged accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr., and David Brooks.

• SON: A Psychopath and His Victims (1983) is the story of Kevin Coe, Spokane's South Hill rapist whose rich and influential mother was sent to prison after trying to hire a hit man to kill the judge and prosecutor who convicted her son.

• Give a Boy a Gun: The True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West (1985)- "Give a boy a gun and you're makin' a man," Claude Dallas, Sr., said this about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and "mountain man'' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens.  Was this a case of self-defense or outright murder?

• Cold Kill: The True Story of a Murderous Love (1987) - A double murder of Texas lawyer James Campbell and his wife Virginia by their daughter Cindy and her lover, David West.

• Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (1989) is an incredible account of a rural Wyoming doctor who relied on his patients' naiveté and Mormon female submissiveness to rape generations of women on his examining table.

• Predator: Rape, Madness, and Injustice in Seattle (1991) - This book focuses on three men: McDonald ("Mac") Smith, a serial rapist who preyed on women; Steve Titus, a carefree partygoer who was wrongly convicted of the predator's crimes; and Paul Henderson, a reporter for the Seattle Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for tracking down the truth.

• The Misbegotten Son: A Serial Killer and His Victims (1993)- An account of the life and crimes of convicted killer Arthur Shawcross describes how Shawcross, after being found guilty of the murders of two children, was released only to murder eleven prostitutes.

• Charmer: A Ladies' Man and his Victims (1994) - A true crime story of George Russell, Jr., a charismatic young African American from an affluent Seattle suburb who targeted and killed three beautiful women and whose charming outward appearance kept him from suspicion.

• Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation (1998) - This true crime features a delightful hero: a female private investigator who calls herself "Rat Dog Dick." Rat Dog relies on an ancient Everex 286 computer (Evil Evie), a Toyota Tercel (The Frog Prince) that is so outrageously green it's useless for surveillance, and a big, funny-looking dog (Beans). Once she gets her teeth into the "Foxglove" case in which several old people have dwindled and died quickly after being "befriended" by a local Gypsy family, Rat Dog is outraged that the police are ignoring clear evidence of elder abuse.

• Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt (2000) - This is a story of true crime American injustice. Pratt, a war hero and leader of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murder based on the perjured testimony of a paid FBI informant. After spending twenty-seven years in prison, he was finally declared innocent and released.

• I: The Creation of a Serial Killer (2002) - In February 1990, Oregon State Police arrested John Sosnovke and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennet. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They had the wrong people...

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