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On the night of a bad winter storm in Alabama, Hayward Bissell drives down a highway, running down people, attacking others in their home until, after a police chase, he is apprehended. To the police's horror, they find a woman tightly seat-belted in the car with Bissell, dead, militated and with parts of her body severed and removed. After Bissell is taken in, his extreme size and destructive behavior unnerves his captors and catches the interest of the local news stations. Sheila Johnson, a newspaperwoman, decides to look into the story of this violent man and write this non-fiction account of it. I'm not sure why this one case warranted a book, more than other more interesting cases. I've seen similar stories done on television magazine shows. BLOOD HIGHWAY is the story of one man's break from reality. It covers the final lurid outburst from various angles, details Bissell's life from the time he was able to keep a tenuous hold on some reason, to his hospitalizations that didn't do much for him because he didn't stay on his medications, to his final savage break with sanity. It's also the story of how women in this country still stay with abusing men, even when people have warned them away. The victim in this instance was a mildly retarded young woman who we see through her own words in her diary, who never learned to make friends and fell in love with any man who acted nicely toward her. All in all, it's more of a sad story than a shocking or titillating one. Nothing much is settled or discussed in BLOOD HIGHWAY, no one gets to the bottom of how to solve the problems of the mental health care system in the US or how to stop women from falling in love with obviously out-of-control violent men. The readers are pretty much left to look at the advertised '16 pages of shocking photos' in the book. They include a picture of the car where it happened, a snapshot of the two dogs that died saving their owners, along with assorted recent pictures of the surviving victims and the driver's licenses of the murdered girl victim and the killer. And there are many photos of the weight loss of the defendant after his stay in jail. Maybe it takes more to shock me than most people, but the photos meant very little. The most shocking part of the story for me, but one that was given too little page space, was that the surviving victims in this violent episode weren't given any support by the State and were evicted and met with extreme hardships while they tried to regain their health. As eventually there was no trial or courtroom shenanigans, the book ends on a rather bland note. I suppose if you enjoy real crime stories, this one is as good as any, but if you need more than a recap of events from multiple participants' viewpoints, with no commentary or thought-provoking discussions, make a fast detour away from BLOOD HIGHWAY.
Reviewed by Sharon Katz, December 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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