Oakland cop turned crime novelist makes new home in Bluffton
Editor's note: This story was updated 12:30 p.m. Aug. 3, 2015, to correct the name of Thiem's publisher, Crooked Lane Books.
Brian Thiem remembers the uneasiness that swept over him as he walked up to the naked woman.
She was posed like a dancer and hanging from a tree.
Her body had been stuffed in a trash bag and taken to the field. She was strangled somewhere unknown and then put up in the tree.
The murderer was sending a message, and Thiem was determined to solve the crime.
That night was one of countless times he was awoken by a phone call at 3 a.m., notifying him of a dead body.
After leading over 100 murder cases and dedicating 25 years of service to the Oakland Police Department, Thiem retired in 2005 to pursue his passion for writing. He and his wife, Catherine, recently moved to the Bluffton area.
The former homicide investigator has written his first crime novel, "Red Line," to be released by Crooked Lane Books on Aug. 11. Now on the other side of the country, Thiem spends most of his time writing in his office with his dog, Annie, by his side.
Though he's a long way from the grisly crime scenes he combed in California, he still conjures up those long nights to help fuel his muse. The woman hanging from the tree in 1984 is one of those haunting memories.
There was no match for the fingerprints found at the scene. There was little evidence and no witnesses. She was a prostitute and a drug addict, which meant a long list of people who could have harmed her.
"Once her body was identified, I went to every place she frequented, spoke with people who knew her and went to the place where she was killed, but nothing came of it," he said.
Reluctantly, he had to close the case.
Over 16 years later, just months after he retired, a cold-case team reopened it. By then the killer had committed sexual assaults targeting prostitutes, and his fingerprints were now in the database.
He confessed during the police's interview.
When an investigator gave him a call with the news, Thiem said he couldn't help but wish he had been able to solve the case.
The culprit told police he killed her because he wanted to watch somebody die, and he hated prostitutes because they broke up families, according to the San Jose Mercury News.The case inspires the first scene of Thiem's second book, which he is currently writing for the three-part series featuring detective Matt Sinclair.
Thiem says his personal experience as a detective makes his writing stand out from the thousands of other crime novels.
"No matter how much research an author does or how many people they talk to, unless they have lived that life, it's hard to make a story feel real and authentic," he said.
Thiem used that first-person experience to develop Sinclair's character into a realistic homicide detective.
"When I write about my character searching a backyard at night, looking for a bad guy who potentially wants to kill him, I know what that feels like," he said.
"I know what it feels like to walk into a dark house knowing that there is someone in there who might kill me."
Thiem says his novel and main character are fictional, only inspired by the cases he worked and those he worked with.
The plot of "Red Line" follows a series of murders, investigated by Sinclair, who later discovers that the killings are connected with his past failures. As the bodies pile up across the city and with few leads, Sinclair is unable to link the victims to each other, and his chance to save his career is fading.
Thiem compared "Red Line" to the work of best-selling novelist Michael Connelly, who was a crime journalist.
"Connelly had an understanding (of homicides), but he was never the guy who did the job, who looked at the dead body and talked to the parents when they were crying and distraught," Thiem said.
"And that is something that I am able to portray in my novels."
This story was originally published August 1, 2015 at 1:14 PM with the headline "Oakland cop turned crime novelist makes new home in Bluffton."