My name is Keith Elham.

If you want to talk about the moon keeper and the murders he committed in 1997, I can't

talk about forensics or motives or evidence.

You can go to Wikipedia for that.

What I can tell you is what it was like to be closer to the murders than anyone but the

killer and his victims.

Because I lived among them in a way no one else can claim to.

In June of that year, I was 20 years old and just barely scraping by in Watford, North

Carolina, working a picker machine in an industrial basement for about minimum wage.

I dropped out of college in a self-righteous fervor I was trying to live the life of an

angry, idealistic writer with no success at all.

My poverty filled me with a dark, selfish satisfaction.

I could consider myself a man of the working people, the downtrodden.

But then something happened.

My lease for my cruddy little room was at the end on June 30th.

And I had called to arrange for an even shoddy or one in a little house in the age of town

with a moving day of July 1st, perfect timing.

I had not heard back from my prospective landlord for a while and needing to sign a lease.

I walked to the new house after work two days before that on June 28th.

When the guy opened the door, he informed me in kind of a squirrely way that the room

wasn't available anymore.

He just failed a housing inspection the day before and it wasn't allowed to rent it.

...