The small town of Dover, just 20 miles southwest of Topeka, was rocked on October 19, 1991 by the sexual assault and murder of 12-year-old Brenda Keller by Jon Mareska.
The story touched Ernie Webb at the time and stayed with him for the rest of his life. Webb never met Brenda, but over the years he felt compelled to visit her grave. Even when his work as a journalist took him all over the country, he returned to Dover every time he visited his home in Burlington.
“If I was going through a hard time, I would have just come over to see her, and I didn’t really understand why,” Webb said. “I’m not a religious person, but I really believe there was a higher power that compelled me to write this story.”
Brenda Keller leaves a legacy
Although the story haunted Webb for decades, there wasn’t much information about what happened outside of news reports published at the time. While in graduate school in 2017, Webb decided to learn more for a senior project that became his debut book, “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, Faith and Forgiveness in a Small Kansas Town.”
Webb said one of the reasons he started the project was to leave a legacy for Brenda after she touched so many people’s lives in just 12 years.
“In ‘Goodbye, Butterfly,’ (Webb) describes Brenda’s idyllic childhood and the heartbreaking childhood of her killer,” writes the book’s publisher, Clovercroft Publishing. “Their collision resulted in one of the worst crimes in the state’s history, which enraged a grieving city, exposed flaws in the legal system and left numerous questions unanswered.”
Webb explores the lives of both the victim and the perpetrator, contrasting Brenda, the kind and curious daughter of a pastor in a close-knit community, with Mareska, a troubled nomadic youth who had already amassed a considerable criminal record when he set foot in Dover.
Mareska stayed in Dover for only a few weeks, staying with relatives who were awaiting admission to a mental hospital after serving his sentence in the Osage County Jail. Due to an administrative delay, he was at large at the time of Brenda’s murder.
“I believe he was supposed to be taken to the Osawatomie facility on October 17, 1991,” Webb said. “Well, he wasn’t allowed to. They couldn’t do the intake and ended up postponing it until the following week. In fact, he killed Brenda that week.”
More than a true crime novel
The book’s premise is similar to the true crime genre, but Webb said the scope expanded to a portrait of a family and community in a state of grief.
“It’s more about faith and forgiveness and the impact on the community and how the family and friends recovered and how they dealt with all their grief,” he said.
Webb began writing the book with the permission of Brenda’s family. He interviewed more than 80 people and said that more than 30 years later, the impact still weighs heavily on people who knew Brenda.
“When something like this happens, you experience a complete loss of innocence and security,” he said. “Many of them will say that although things have now returned to more normality, they have not been the same since.”
And there are still elements of the case that Webb didn’t notice. He said there may have been other people involved in a cover-up who were never convicted.
“The only person who really knows what happened that day is still in prison. And other than sending me a letter, he won’t talk,” Webb said.
Former journalist turns to long format for his first book
It is Webb’s first book, but he has written for years for newspapers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia, including the Capital-Journal.
He gave up journalism in 2010 but continued writing in later roles in communications. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at Washburn University and works full-time as the university’s director of marketing and communications.
The change in form from news writing to literary books was a challenge, he says, but after years of working as an author, he is happy about it.
“I had to make an adjustment. I deliberately wanted to put in more detail and descriptive words. So I found it really hard to write for a long time, for lack of a better word,” Webb said. “I’m very happy with the finished product, it took a long time to get to this point. But I don’t think people realize how hard it is to write a book like this.”
How to get a copy of “Goodbye, Butterfly”
“Goodbye, Butterfly” will be released on August 27 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Webb’s website.
