I grew up in Steubenville, a small Ohio Valley River steel town that nestled under the shadows of the rock hills and smoke that belched from the mills along the polluted waterway that was the basin for the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers running south from Pittsburgh, spilling into the Ohio.

The matchbox houses built on the cliffs along the river looked to me like ravens perched and ready to fly, their dark wings poised to launch an attack on those of us below.   I’ll never forget those houses and the mysterious cloak that covered the slate-colored hills.

Little did I know what fate had in store for me, the little girl from Steubenville with wondrous dreams, who like the imaginary ravens, wanted to  grow wings and fly away to New York  to realize her dreams of something better.

Instead the magical life I wished for, a life of celebrity, would include terror, mystery and murder that would keep me in the darkest of shadows for many years. A life I would not have asked to live, but a life I survived.

I am grateful that I have lived to tell the tale of my harrowing life in my memoir, Behind The Magic Mirror.