The case was closed, but for journalist Nancy Rommelmann, the mystery remained: What made a mother want to murder her own children?On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, … seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
Embarking on a seven-year quest for the truth, Rommelmann traced the roots of Amanda’s fury and desperation through thousands of pages of records, withheld documents, meetings with lawyers and convicts, and interviews with friends and family who felt shocked, confused, and emotionally swindled by a woman whose entire life was now defined by an unspeakable crime. At the heart of that crime: a tempestuous marriage, a family on the fast track to self-destruction, and a myriad of secrets and lies as dark and turbulent as the Willamette River.
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How do you understand the not understandable and forgive the unforgivable? So asks one of the characters in this clear-eyed investigation into something we all turn away from. To the Bridge is a tour de force of both journalism and compassion, in the lineage of such masterpieces as In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song. Word by word, sentence by sentence, Rommelmann’s writing is that good. And so is her heart.
Crazed by anger and indignation against her ex, a mother threw her little children from a bridge into the freezing cold water below. It made me cry for the helpless innocent kids.
Such a tragic event that’s really difficult to comprehend. There is no way to begin to justify the action of the mother, but this book introduces influences that potentially contributed to her frame of mind. Desperate people do desperate things. One of the quotes in the book, “After years of looking, I could no longer differentiate between Jason’s and Amanda’s pathologies.” How responsible are close by-standers? The defense attorney in chapter 28 painted the most realistic scenario. Very sad. Such a sweet little boy gone all too soon. I hope his brother and sister will have happy, productive lives.
This is a true story. Very interesting, but very sad.
I was asked to review this book by Ms. Rommelmann’s agent. As I sometimes detour into true crime books, particularly enjoying those like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood that meld journalism with literary fiction, I agreed. Rommelmann delves exhaustively into the lives of Amanda Stott-Smith and her ex-husband, Jason Smith, to determine why Amanda on May 23, 2009 dropped her son Eldon and her daughter Trinity from the Sellwood Bridge into the frigid waters of the Willamette River seventy-five feet below. The daughter survived; the son did not.
To The Bridge brings filicide, the murder of one’s children to light much as Capote brought adult violence to the forefront back in 1966 when In Cold Blood was first released. To The Bridge is unified by being told from primarily from the author’s point of view as she investigates the crime. This technique leads to events being related somewhat out of order. For example, readers learn about Amanda’s college days after they learn of the crime itself which occurs years later. Thus the reader is required to use a few brain cells to stitch events together.
Despite all her research, Rommelmann does not pinpoint the exact reason Amanda tossed her children over the bridge. Towards the end of the book, having discovered Jason’s narcissism, Amanda’s mental health issues, their mutual physical and mental abuse, she states that she could “no longer differentiate between Jason and Amanda’s pathologies.” She comes full circle to an idea that she presented early in the book, that sometimes the human brain has to hold multiple truths, and any or all of the truths she discovered about this toxic couple could have caused Amanda to snap.
Ms. Rommelmann has also written about serial killer John Wayne Gacy who was found guilty of thirty-three murders and executed by lethal injection in 1994. Her stories have been published in the LA Weekly, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal among other publications.
The book could have been informative if not for the overuse of the unnecessary verbiage, and jargon. Make it simple, but significant. OMW
Three Stars
sad how a mother is so desparate she will throw her kids off a bridge
This book was offered as a free book upon release for July 2018. I was interested to know if there was something new to learn about what drives a mother to kill her child/children. I do not believe there is any new insight, but the way in which Amanda and Jason interacted and parented is a lesson for anyone who is NOT in an abusive relationship. I am from Houston TX and this month is the 14th anniversary of the murder of 5 children by Andrea Yates who drowned her children at their home in the Houston area. I’ve always been drawn to her condition. In this book, Amanda kills her son and attempts but fails to kill her daughter by dropping them from a bridge in Portland OR in 2009. There are similarities in the 2 events, but the reasons in each woman’s mind are different. Andrea did it to “save her children” from a terrible fate the thought would befall them and cause them to go to hell. Amanda did it to exact revenge upon her HORRIBLE husband. Both women were abused (mentally at least) by their husbands which resulted in loss of dignity, loss of self/personality, dispair and anger.
The book is informative, tells a very detailed account of the marriage and psyche of 2 people, Amanda and Jason who were each complicit in the breakdown of a family, and explains how family and friends saw the dysfunction, abuse and distress but did not know how to intervene.
The book was well researched. However, it read like a text book, or like supplemental material for a course in social work/psychology. It was poorly edited and rambled. Yet, I’m glad I completed the book, because we learn about the aftermath of the event and the effects on the lives of those who were involved in Amanda’s and Jason’s lives, including the 2 surviving children 7 years later.