When writing a true crime novel, author and attorney Brian Kincaid said the reader needs a sense of place.
"I think one of the things that impressed me the most and made for an interesting story, was how for three horrible summer days in late July 1981, the people of Old Forge came out, came together,” he said.
Kincaid will be in Wilkes-Barre and Scranton this weekend for two book signings and a lecture on his true crime novel: “Murder in Old Forge Pennsylvania: The Tragic Death of the Ziemba Children.”
On July 26, 1981, the Ziemba siblings — Cheryl, 8, and Christopher, 4 — went missing from the yard behind their family home in Old Forge. Two days later, after more than 500 volunteers combed through the borough, they were found shot to death in a culm pile in Ransom Twp.
Neighbor Joseph Aulisio, who was 15 at the time, was arrested and later convicted of killing the children.
Kincaid said the book focuses on three concepts: the community response in Old Forge, the unusualness of a teenage murderer, and a “Battle of Titans” between the defense attorney and the district attorney and subsequent trials.
"I can remember in the 80s hearing about it and being nervous, as everybody was. All the parents were nervous. All the children were nervous,” Lackawanna Historical Society Director Mary Ann Moran-Savakinus said. "I always remember when they found him [Aulisio], he was one of the people that was helping the search.”
On Saturday, Kincaid will be at Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre for a meet-the-author event and book signing from 1 to 4 p.m. The historical society in Scranton will host Kincaid on Sunday for a lecture and book signing beginning at 2 p.m.
On Saturday, Kincaid will be at Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre for a meet-the-author event and book signing from 1 to 4 p.m. The historical society in Scranton will host Kincaid on Sunday for a lecture and book signing beginning at 2 p.m.
"People got involved. People were out there. People were searching for someone's children," Kincaid said. "On a drizzly night, a miserable night, miserable Sunday night, looking for these kids going all over the place. You know that speaks a lot, the spirit of Old Forge … and that always impressed me.”
Kincaid's 30+ years of research
In the late 1980s, Kincaid was in law school at Capital University in Ohio.
"I always had the idea, even as a law student, of someday writing a true crime novel," he said.
In his third year, he was assigned a paper on the death penalty for juvenile offenders. His roommate was from the Pittston area and suggested Kincaid research the Ziemba children. A New Jersey native, he remembered reading about the crime in The New York Times.
After law school in 1989, he visited the University of Scranton's library to research the case. He looked through reels of microfiche of local newspaper articles.
"Then I progressively started looking up people, which was a lot harder to do in the ... late 1980s, early 1990s," he said.
He got in touch with Aulisio’s defense attorney, Jack Brier, who let Kincaid go through files from the case. Then he interviewed Ernie Preate, who was Lackawanna County District Attorney at the time of the murders. At that point, he was Pennsylvania's Attorney General.
“From there, I developed a friendship with a number of the firefighters on Old Forge Hose who had found the bodies of the Ziemba children on July 28, 1981," Kincaid said.
Then, in 1993, he got a threatening letter from Aulisio that was mailed to his home address from jail.
"He's talking about the movie ‘Cape Fear.’ And obviously, you know, ‘Cape Fear’ is where the convict gets out of prison and comes after an attorney,” he said.
That didn’t stop Kincaid. But being a young lawyer with very little time to dedicate to personal pursuits slowed him down. He worked on the book progressively, and by 1998, he had a manuscript.
But then, as he described it, Kincaid became the “dog who caught the car.”
"I ran in an election in New Jersey that I wasn't supposed to win, and I won. So then my time was just gone, just completely gone,” he said.
Kincaid moved around six banker's boxes full of research from office to office. He also got an occasional call from Old Forge Volunteer firefighter Stanley Zoltewicz, asking if he was still working on the book.
The 90s turned into the 2000s. Kincaid would occasionally visit Old Forge to get Italian food and pizza.
In 2019, Zoltewicz called Kincaid, asking if he still had the letter that Aulisio had sent him from jail. The murderer was up for resentencing.
Kincaid had almost thrown out all of his research. But he said that for some reason, he stopped himself.
He found the letter and sent it to then-Lackawanna County District Attorney Mark Powell. By that night, he had a subpoena to testify during the sentencing.
Aulisio opened his letter to Kincaid with “surprised to hear from me?” the author said.
During Kincaid’s testimony, he decided to look directly at Aulisio and say, “Surprised to see me?”
"It was interesting because, you know, Judge [Vito] Geroulo said he ‘found the letter to Brian Kincaid … to show a sinister state of mind that can't be disregarded’,” Kincaid remembered.
Shortly after the resentencing, the pandemic began.
"The guy who never had any time for anything now has all the time in the world,” Kincaid said.
Arcadia Publishing released the novel in July.
'Evil among us'
Aulisio is now 59 and an inmate at SCI Benner Twp.
He didn’t testify during the trial in 1982, Kincaid said. He had previously said he was framed, but in 2019, he softly admitted to killing the Ziemba children while seeking to get his sentence reduced.
Kincaid said Aulisio also admitted to both a prison psychologist and a religious advisor from the Catholic Church that he committed the crime.
Kincaid said that despite over three decades passing, he knows people remember the case and the Ziemba children.
"There's never in a murder case, just the victim or victims, there's the extended family that are also the victims," he said. "There was evil among us, and on that day in Old Forge, took those two lives and destroyed the family and devastated the community.”
Moran-Savakinus acknowledges the still-lingering sadness surrounding Cheryl and Christopher’s tragic death.
"These two children had barely started their lives, but they were part of our community, as were their families. And it's important to talk about them and remember them, and also to note that these tragedies do happen. It's not just a television show. Bad things happen all the time, and it's good to be aware of it, to make sure that they don't happen too often, or they don't happen at all,” she said.
