Cruel Death

By: M. William Phelps

Narrated by: J. Charles

A life gone murderously wrong...

Erika Sifrit was once a high school basketball star and an honors student. Then she married Navy SEAL Benjamin Sifrit. Some say Erika was abused by "B.J." Some say she pulled his strings. But by the time they reached Ocean City, MD, Erika was packing a gun in her Coach bag and was caught in the grips of a new American death ride...

A trail of blood and body parts...

In the sun-kissed, sea-swept resort town, a loving couple crossed paths with Erika and B.J. Sifrit. Shortly thereafter, Erika was wearing a bloody wedding ring on her necklace, while what remained of two dismembered vacationers was buried in a Delaware landfill, and a modern-day "Bonnie and Clyde" story was being written - a lurid tale of madness, money, sex , and murder...

©2009 M. William Phelps (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Five Star Audio

Based on a horrific crime, this author takes us from the capture of a married couple. Then into the interrogations, the court room, interview with families and finally the verdicts. This crime took place in Ocean City Md, where I myself, have vacationed many times, so I'm aware of the places and scenes referred to into the book. I look forward to reading more from this author

Very detailed narration

The voice actor was very good, except his voice sounded like it was cracking at
times especially when he was reading Erica’s quotes. Don’t know what that was all about.

Well investigated

Some actor impressions irritating but mostly good. Will read author again
This review is stupid but the app won’t let me out until I meet word minimum

The story is NUTS

Ok, so the narrator gets a little into the voices at times, whatever. I appreciate the effort and thought put into the performance
Great listen overall!

I should have listened to the sample

I had no idea that the man I'd seen giving commentary on Forensic Files was a true crime author. So I looked him up and found this book after watching the episode about these murders.I had heard of this case but wanted to do a deeper dive into the facts. The book provided a lot of detail that I was craving regarding the motivation for the crime. I'm only disappointed that a privileged girl and a supposed patriot - a Navy Seal, were able to get away with petty crimes for so long; crimes that other groups/people would never get away with. Thus they were able to graduate to ultimate acts of depravity.

The narrator was over the top - especially when he attempted to change character by adding dialects in a somewhat exaggerated way in order to depict the region where the speaker lived or was raised. I would have appreciated it more if he would have just read the lines straight with a he-said or she-said. I'm not sure if it's technical but his voice had an odd way of dropping to lower frequencies on some sentences to the point where I had to re-listen to swallowed words in order to get what he was saying. Over time, I got used to the reader but it was challenging at first.