Kim Cross had no plans to write about true crime. One major case refused to be ignored.
The Polly Klaas case was well known, but a personal connection allowed the journalist and historian to reveal so much more.
Spending years reporting and writing a true crime book was not part of Kim Cross’ plans. Before she really dug in on the case that would become In Light of All Darkness, Cross didn’t listen to true crime. She didn’t read true crime. She didn’t think about true crime. Well, mostly. It just wasn’t her genre of choice.
“Before In Light of All Darkness, the only true crime book I had ever read that I can think of for sure is In Cold Blood. And I read it because it was Truman Capote,” says Cross.
Cross typically wrote about bicycling, fishing, and massive weather events — the latter of which inspired her first book, What Stands in a Storm. The title detailed the impact of a spate of tornados that thrashed 21 states in April 2011, killing more than 300 people. It wasn’t easy reporting, but the devastation was driven by nature, not human cruelty.
So Cross wasn’t expecting to tell Polly Klaas’ story, despite her family’s direct link. Her father-in-law, Eddie Freyer, Sr., served as the lead FBI agent on the 1993 abduction, rape, and murder case.
“This case had been in my life and in front of my face for somewhere around 15 or 20 years at that point,” says Cross. “It had never occurred to me to even consider it as a story that I would tell, in part because I just don’t do true crime [and] in part because it’s almost like it’s part of our family DNA.”
While she was on the hunt for a subject for her next book, Cross’ husband suggested she tell Polly Klaas’ story.
The idea was planted though Cross wasn’t totally sold on it yet. She asked her father-in-law to take her through a presentation he had been doing about the case since it wrapped with the conviction of Richard Allen Davis in 1996.
“So he gave me the presentation and I understood the beats of the case and also, you know, the things that went wrong,” she says. And, Cross says, it had become clear that her father-in-law was really open to telling the story.
The response to Cross’ book about the Klaas case has been tremendous. Along with hitting bestseller lists, it helped Cross collect the 2024 Truman Capote Prize for Distinguished Work in Literary Non-Fiction or the Short Story.
In this Depth Perception interview, Cross talks about her unexpected and very cautious submersion in the 1993 case, how she avoided writing an FBI puff piece, and what role true crime plays in her life now. This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity. —Jenna Schnuer
One of the things that really struck me about your moving this project ahead was the potential impact on your own family. You’re close to your father-in-law, Eddie Freyer, Sr. Were you worried that reporting on the case and, possibly, finding any mistakes he and his FBI colleagues had made would damage your relationship?
It did worry me, in fact. We had that conversation early on. [I said] so if I do this, this can't be an FBI puff piece. We're going to have to talk about what went wrong.
He [also] realized at some point, it's time for the story to be told before the people who can tell it are gone. During the course of the reporting, we lost two key people.
Did your father-in-law’s trust in you make it easier to report this book than it might have been for another journalist?
One hundred percent, and that's the reason I did this book. If anyone else could have done this book, I don't think I would have done this book. I didn't want to do this book for me. I wanted to do it because I realized if I don't do it, it won't get written. And at that point I had done enough research to realize this is an important piece of history. It's changed the way investigations are done by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. This was a pivotal case in a lot of ways.
And it would be a shame to lose that history because I decided I don't do true crime.
Or because you were uncomfortable or anything like that.
Right. It's not about me and my bylines, but like, this story could make a difference and I think that I'm uniquely equipped to tell it. And I think that's when you should do a story.
I mean, several — more than several — detectives and agents said, I wouldn't have talked to another journalist. And it was only because of that relationship that they trusted me. I took that very seriously.
“‘Before In Light of All Darkness,’ the only true crime book I had ever read that I can think of for sure is ‘In Cold Blood.’ And I read it because it was Truman Capote.” — Kim Cross
Once you decided to do the book, did you read and listen to a lot of other true crime books to think about structure and how they were done? A lot these days seem more for entertainment than anything. I’ll admit I’m not comfortable with a lot of true crime. I find a lot of the podcasts almost too playful and too much about the people who are making them. That's not always fair of me and it's not the case with all of them. What’s your take now on true crime?
Once I knew I was [writing the book], I went out and did a deep dive on the genre. I thought I better know what this genre is and where I want to position this work in it. I listened to the popular podcasts and I read a lot of the books and I read some classics like Helter Skelter and also some blockbusters that were talked about like Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which was a podcast and a book and a documentary. There are a lot of pieces where the case is unsolved and the writer is part of the story because they become the detective. Then there's the kind of story where the case is solved and it's more of a literary journalistic retelling of the story.
I really wanted mine to be more like on the literary journalism side of it but I didn't want to be too literary because I wanted the art to be in the reporting and the presentation of the facts and the fact checking and the research. So I didn't write with the literary craft or voice that I usually write in other pieces. I felt like it could demean it somehow. I just wanted to present the facts in the most eloquent and dramatic way possible and to the greatest extent possible, give readers some context and insight, but not editorialize and let them decide, like come to their own conclusions based on the facts about certain things.
A lot of [the details about the case] are not new, but there were a lot of things that were wrong in the original [media stories]. And so I really wanted to correct the inaccuracies on the public record.
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What did you learn about true crime and the people involved with cases while reporting In Light of All Darkness?
I guess first — and I knew this, but I didn't know it on this level — that you just can never assume anything about anyone and how they are going to respond to the trauma they've been through and your approach to them. Because people that I was certain would not want to talk to me, [or I was] so afraid that even just approaching this person is going to retraumatize them, [were willing to speak to me].
You just can't make any assumptions. Other people that I thought, you know, would certainly want to talk to me given their history of talking to other journalists, didn't. It's very humbling and it's a reminder that everyone's different. Everyone reacts to trauma differently but as uncomfortable as it is, you have to approach them and give them the choice to decide what amount of agency they want in the story, if any.
When we talked before this interview, you said you were done with writing about true crime. But that’s not totally true. Now you write a Sunday Long Read’s spinoff newsletter that focuses on true crime. Tell me about it.
Now that I have read so much true crime, I feel like I have an accidental subject matter expertise where I have a probably pretty decent informed opinion about the genre….
And even though I don't really want to write about true crime myself, I have a lot of friends who do it and how cool would it be to elevate their work and be able to maybe shine the spotlight on some up-and-coming writers who Sunday Long Read can really help.
I think that's one of the reasons I wanted to do the newsletter, because I realize how hard longform true crime reporting is. I feel like I can see deeper into stories beyond the surface. One example is Right Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor, Mark Warren's story that just won the Pulitzer.
Killers of the Flower Moon author David Grann on when Hollywood calls
“You really have to be really careful with taking liberties”: the responsibility of adapting historic journalism
What kinds of pieces do you write about the most in your newsletter? What true crime works for you?
I like things that surprise me. There are a couple that come to mind. One was a story of these twin robber bandits in Australia. The cops thought they were one person. How could they be robbing banks in two towns simultaneously? And so I thought that that was really fun. Brett Popplewell did a fun story about an art caper. Sarah Weinman did a great story about a body that came out of a basement of this club.
Yeah, I'm very much into dramatic sequence and structure and the telling of it. Even a story where you know how it ends can still have suspension and tension.
What would you say to someone, say, well, me, who isn’t a true crime reader and why do you think they should reconsider the genre?
[It’s filled with] stories that make me interrogate my assumptions about right and wrong, about crime and punishment, about judgment. And how if you really dig deep, for the most part, no one is all good or all bad. And often when people behave badly, it has more than a little to do with what they've been through or how the world has treated them.
And, finally, what’s up next for you?
I’m going fishing.
Further reading and listening from Kim Cross
“The Alchemists” (Bicycling, Oct. 23, 2024)
“Journalist Kim Cross on reconstructed narratives and the women who led a cycling revolution in Afghanistan” (Nieman Storyboard’s “Strictly Q&A” podcast, May 8, 2025)
“Freedom, Wyoming” (The New York Times, Aug. 20, 2021)
“What Happens When Two Strangers Trust the Rides of Their Lives to the Magic of the Universe” (Bicycling, Mar. 26, 2020)
“The King of Tides” (Southwest, July, 2015)
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