Jill Amadio

My latest novel

2011-07-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

"By Phantoms Duped" is my newest work-in-progress. Hope you enjoy reading the synopsis below.

By Phantoms Duped

2011-06-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

"By Phantoms Duped" is a novel based on the true story of Christina Scott, a leggy wildflower of a girl living a simple life in rural Oregon in 1992. Blond, blue-eyed, headstrong, and bored, she runs away from home at age 17. In Portland, Christina meets and marries the charismatic Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, an apparently wealthy, sophisticated 21-year old student whom she knows by the name of Obaid. The world will later know him as one of the 9/11 hijackers. Scott is the only American, as far as can be ascertained, to have wed one of the 9/11 terrorists.
After the terrifying discovery in 2001 that she had shared her bed with a mass murderer, a hundred questions flood her mind: What is her culpability, if any? Was she really that naïve at the time? She agonizes over whether she could have been instrumental in preventing the tragedy. Should she go into hiding? How did she get caught up in all this? Above all, as she realizes the impact of her discovery and the events leading up to it, she wonders: is the US government telling us all we know about the attack and the reasons behind it?
Christina’s bizarre life with Al-Ghamdi and ‘friends’ begins in March 1992, continues with their sudden marriage in February,1993, the same month the World Trade Center garage is bombed; their equally sudden divorce in October, 1994, and their final mysteriously cryptic communication in 1995, three weeks before the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.
Her second nightmare starts in 2001 when the U.S. Department of Justice names Al-Ghamdi as one of the hijackers on United Airlines Flight 175 that flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center. After Christina and her family members identify him as their former in-law they realize their lives will never be the same again as it appears they are plunged into the middle of the September 11 plot.
During the paranoiac post-9/11 period from 2001-2003, Christina works with a frantic FBI, emptying her memory of the 1992-1995 era with her former husband. She becomes a confidential, paid informant, fearful for her life and the lives of her family. Her fears appear to be well-founded. In December, 2005, she suffers a fatal, controversial car crash while working with the author. The coroner’s, sheriff’s, and other official reports, conflict. Witnesses refuse to talk. Was it an unavoidable accident, a planned suicide, or was she deliberately forced off the road?
In the context of the years leading up to 9/11 the creation of the Internet in 1992 signals the dawn of the electronic decade, giving Bin Laden global access through the World Wide Web to his murderous Al Qaeda network. While a slumbering America embraces Feng Shui and Planet Hollywood, Christina provides personal insights into the now-frightening dynamics of her years with Middle Easterners who not only live next door but in her homes at port cities on the West Coast, Portland and San Diego.
She offers a rare, chilling glimpse, under the radar, into the fabric of the cell members’ layered, duplicitous lives; their strange habits and travels abroad; the odd activities they, arrogantly, never try to hide from her, and the clash of cultures she observes. We learn how Christina, her mother, and sister, attempt without success to tell U.S. intelligence agencies of their suspicions. The Scott family’s wake-up call in the mid-1990s is ignored at a critical time for intervention. Yet in 2004 the 9/11 Commission Report admits that terrorists were indeed operating in several US cities in the early 1990s.
While America is late to acknowledge that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of terrorists are living among us, many posing as students like Christina’s husband, setting up sleeper cells and blending in so easily (and continue to do so, according to reports such as Egyptians arriving in August 2006 on student visas and disappearing), she provides a dramatic, first-hand account of her life with the radical jihadists and the effects of their fanatical philosophy that continue to resound.
Surrounded by Saudis, Yemenis, and Persian Gulf Arabs from 1992-1995, as America continues to celebrate its 1991 Gulf War victory, the unsophisticated teenager is unwittingly privy to blatant terrorist recruiting on the West Coast, not-so-secret cell gatherings, day and night reconnaissance operations, and raucous target planning sessions as they sit around her coffee table. Christina later tells the FBI she accompanies the men as they take flying lessons in San Diego and frequently cross the Mexican border to bring in ‘relatives.’
She is present when new recruits appear disorganized and directionless yet share an unusual unity. She is there when Al-Ghamdi and his cohorts engage in measuring bridge abutments, the width of train tracks, and calculate the height of landmark buildings. Strange activities? Not to the guileless 17-year old. She accepts the men as foreign architectural and engineering students fond of grabbing a couple of triple-cheese pizzas on their way to photograph (terrorist) homework assignments. Christina, who never traveled more than 20 miles from home before running away, accepts without question Al-Ghamdi’s six different passports and two Social Security cards. He’s so well traveled, she marvels, I guess he needs lots of passports.
There is no hint of the mission the men might be on; she recognizes no red flags. Raised in a sheltered, deeply religious family of Jehovah’s Witnesses in one of the most sparsely populated states in the Union, the young girl is quickly dazzled by Al-Ghamdi’s exotic culture, worldliness, and even mystery, dreaming only of the ivory satin wedding gown she’ll wear when he proposes. In 1992 the couple watch Bill Clinton being nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, cheer when the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team become the first Canadian team to win the World Series, and take Whitney Houston’s hit song, “I Will Always Love You,” as their own.
By Phantoms Duped details how Arab recruits are divided into class-ranked groups, which cars they are assigned to buy, and the location of safe houses. In 2001 and 2002, as Christina reluctantly, painfully re-lives those years for the Bureau, providing Special Agents with a ringside seat, she realizes that Al-Ghamdi’s words and actions held deadly meaning. The ‘friends’ were Al-Qaeda cell members. Kind ‘uncle’ Abdullah from the U.A.E. was a murderous terrorist who handled the finances. What an impressionable fool she’d been, and vulnerable, she realizes bitterly. Why hadn’t she tried harder to warn authorities in 1995?
The drama and intrigue of Christina’s story is further heightened by the FBI’s skepticism and ambivalence in confirming her former husband’s identity (several books reveal the FBI’s confusion about the hijackers’ identities, which continues to this day. Several men share the Ahmed Al-Ghamdi name; it is as common in the East as Smith or Jones in the West and the hijackers were known to often exchange identities), while at the same time wringing her memory dry, insisting on her cooperation for almost two years after 9/11.
A female agent phones Christina’s mother in Oregon and Heather in Texas to confirm that their former in-law is Hijacker #13, then two days later calls both of them again to deny she ever made the statement, leaving the Scott family to ask why they continue to be questioned for many more months and why Christina is later asked to become an informant for “Penttbom,” the name given to the FBI’s 9/11 investigation. A similar FBI denial occurs in Florida, where, in his book, The Big Wedding: 9/11, The Whistle-Blowers, and The Cover-Up, author Sander Hicks quotes Amanda Keller as saying that the FBI told her that her definite identification of her sometime boyfriend as 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, was “mistaken,” that she must accept “the official version” and that there was another Mohammed Atta. Is the FBI lying? If so, what would be their reason?

In 2005, Christina, now living quietly in Northern California, vacillates over whether or not to go public with a book about her experiences. Is her life still in danger, four years after 9/11? Her decision to tell her story is motivated by a need to alert America to how easily terrorists live among us, never more timely than now; by the belief that the victims’ families are entitled to know about the hijackers’ lives that they didn’t read in the newspapers, and in part to encourage others to come forward in similar circumstances. “If you can save one person by what you tell,” her brother tells her, “then you must come forward.”
By late November 2005, the book project is well in hand. Documentation for By Phantoms Duped proves substantial and includes Christina’s and Ahmed Al-Ghamdi’s marriage certificate and divorce decree, newspaper clippings, excerpts from her secret journals detailing FBI debriefings, photographs, and taped interviews with the author. But as she re-lives those years and grasps the broader significance of her experiences Scott has bouts of depression and enters counseling. More fearful than ever that her life could be in danger now that she has decided to tell her story, she makes a new will giving the author exclusive rights, through her mother Joan, to her story in case of her death.
On December 3, 2005, Christina heads to snow country to check out a Christmas vacation cabin at Diamond Lake, in the Cascade mountains. She plans to enjoy the holiday with all three of her children. In the car are additional secret journals and notes of meetings with FBI officials that she plans to give Jill Amadio during her visit on December 6. Along Copeland Creek Road, off Highway 138, high above the creek that tumbles down a gorge into the North Umpqua River, eight men claim that they witnessed Christina deliberately drive her 1998 Honda Accord over the steep embankment and into the turbulent waters 170 feet below.
Is the shame Christina experiences after Al-Ghamdi’s deception and betrayal too much of a bitter burden to bear? What is the true story behind her death? Why have some of the witnesses disappeared? Why is there no autopsy? And, one of the most bewildering aspects of the case as far as the family is concerned: why won’t the FBI answer our questions about the true identity of Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, their in-law? After her death in 2005, a local law enforcement officer tells Christina’s mother that the FBI privately confirmed to him that Ahmed is definitely identified as Christina’s former husband and hijacker #13. On the day she died Christina Scott was 31 years old.

2011-05-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

Here is a synopsis of my new novel:

Raymond Chandler Reunited With Cissy

2011-02-18T14:04:00.000-08:00

Jill Amadio

Raymond Chandler’s Final Wish

A disturbed grave. Wrenching separation. An unfulfilled desire. A literary detective’s discovery of a “hidden truth,” the granting of a wish after death, and gin gimlets to finalize the deal.

A murder mystery? Hardly. Instead, the real-life granting of Raymond Chandler’s fervent wish for his beloved wife, Cissy, to be buried with him. Since she died in 1954 her ashes have lain in storage in a mausoleum that abuts the Mount Hope Cemetery in San Diego where Ray is buried.
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For decades Ray has waited for her to join him. Were it not for Chandler historian Loren Latker whose delving into the Chandler archives revealed the writer’s intention for him and his beloved to share the same grave, the historic event this year would never have taken place. Before he died in 1959, five years after Cissy’s death, Ray expressed his wishes regarding burial but he never completed the legal paperwork.

A court order was needed to move Cissy’s ashes. Aissa Wayne, John Wayne’s daughter, took up the challenge, and on the sunny morning of Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2011Ray and Cissy were reunited in a ceremony presided over by Reverend Randal Gardner.

I drove down from Dana Point vowing not to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be present at one of literature’s most poignant moments. When I arrived at the cemetery, which sprawls over a hundred and ten acres, many of the hundred or so invited guests were already seated on folding chairs beneath a canopy of trees facing a podium. It was a gloriously sunny day, the kind Ray longed for when he lived in rainy England.

Chandler’s grave is located in a semi-isolated spot among the rolling hills and marked by a humble plaque in the ground next to a small evergreen bush. After I expressed disappointment that no impressive headstone marked the icon’s final resting place Pastor Gardner said plaques are for the convenience of those riding lawnmowers. Then I remembered how private a person Chandler always tried to be and how self-effacing. He would have approved.

I also mused that there was plenty of burial space all around him, and wondered if any local writer would have the temerity to request to be his neighbor when the time came.

After being directed to parking areas we were handed a program and a sheet printed with The Lord’s Prayer and Beethoven’s Hymn to Joy. Everyone, it seemed, preferred to honor the man in a sartorial manner. Several gentlemen wore 1920s- and 30s-era pin-striped suits, fedoras, Oxfords-style black and white shoes, and to top it off, a pipe clenched between the teeth. The women were splendid in authentic crepe dresses, a few wearing split skirts and black stockings with seams running up the back. Platform shoes were the order of the day and many wore plate-shaped hats of the era tilted saucily to one side. Others favored crushed velvet and felt Robin Hood caps. In ‘The Big Sleep” Chandler wrote: “Her black hair was glossy under a Robin Hood hat that might have cost 50 dollars and looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of a desk blotter.”

Three classic 1920s roadsters and sedans arrived, their drivers attired in vintage suits and straw boaters. In one of the cars, a 1929 Graham Paige, was Loren Latker bearing the urn that contained Cissy’s ashes. As Loren walked over to the small table next to Ray’s grave, the Crown Island Jazz Band played Dixieland music. I didn’t get emotional about any of the goings-on until they struck up “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It was a seminal moment, the New Orleans funeral procession music bringing home that this was a jubilant occasion.

After a prayer and a singing of Beethoven’s “Hymn to Joy,” we were welcomed by Dr. Annie Tiel-Latker who, with Loren, had arranged the reuniting of Ray and Cissy. It took two years of courtroom pleadings, finding Ray’s will and codicil, and filing petitions before Chandler and his wife would finally be laid to rest in the same burial plot.

As Marine helicopters from Camp Pendleton droned overhead the actor who played Philip Marlowe in the HBO television series, Powers Boothe, brought to life excerpts from Chandler’s writings, especially his masterful metaphors and similes that stopped you cold and forced you re-read them: “[he} was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a piece of angel food cake.” Los Angeles “ had the personality of a paper cup,” and many, many more. Boothe’s performance was so exciting his publicist called him shortly after dawn the next day.

Judith Freeman, who wrote “The Long Embrace,” read movingly from her 2007 book about Raymond Chandler and the woman he loved. She wrote: “Cissy..kept him sane. She watched over him, cared for him, worried about him,” and remarked on the fact that Ray burned all of Cissy’s letters to him after she died, probably to keep their love private.

It was time for Raymond’s wish to be with his wife even in death to be fulfilled. A rectangular hole about three feet deep and measuring around 8 x 14” had been cut from the middle of the grave. Rev. Gardner took the small, square casket that held the ashes and placed it in the space. He covered the area with a board. The deed was done.

Two TV crews covered the event, two documentary film makers, the local PBS station reporter, and a several still photographers. Boothe concluded the ceremony with, “I’m not going to say goodbye. In the tradition of Raymond I’m going to say, ‘I need a drink and I’m going to have one.’”

Chandler’s favorite gimlets were served at a hotel reception afterwards and at a gala dinner. I was so wiped out by the entire day I drove home in a daze, determined to read more of the master Chandler. “What a man wants and needs,” said Chandler, “…is the tangible and ineffable sense that a life is shared.” In death, it is now also shared.

2011-02-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

I'm honored to be on a Left Coast Crime conference panel again this year. Held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to which I shall drive the 800 or so miles in my teeny Hyundai coupe, the conference promises to be the best yet. I'll be staying with fellow auto journalist and racer Denise McCluggage, who has lived in Santa Fe for decades. She's an author, too. We are among the first females to write car columns -heretofore hogged by males, so we go way back.

Tons of mystery and thriller writers at the conference will be looking daggers at each other as they jostle for sales and attention. which they richly deserve, of course. Writing a book is hard, tormenting, exhilarating, and rewarding. Then, on top of all that, mystery writers have to come up plots, clues, red herrings, nice and naughty characters, and wicked prose.

I'm almost finished with a biography I am writing about a retired CEO who rose from humble beginnings to the top of his industry. In between he fathered 12 children who turned out to be pretty amazing themselves.

Called the Secret Service Bureau in Santa Ana, California recently to ask for an agent to speak to our Orange County Sisters in Crime chapter about their work. But they declined. Never mind, we have a fabulous ForensicsFest lined up this month, with four experts telling us how their work helps solve crimes. They includes a forensic anthropologist, a forensic pathologist, a police sketch artist, and a brave man whose company cleans up the blood and spewed brains after the crime scene has been cleared.

What else? Querying agents like mad, seeking a home for my screwball amateur sleuth, gossip columnist Tosca Trevant's tale in "Stone Cold Dead." Tosca speaks Cornish and brews god-awful mead while solving murders. Tosca was thrown out of England because she discovered a royal scandal and planned to write about it in her "Tiara Tittle-Tattle" column. So she's landed on our shores, in California, to do her best to meddle here.

2010-07-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

Ghostwriters Anonymous is growing exponentially, but I can't reveal names - that would negate the whole idea of GA. However, yesterday I had lunch with one wonderful writer who is getting into the field, and was asked by another for tips. Yet a third, who is writing a book on us spirited writers, also contacted me, so pretty soon we'll have a host of ghosts floating around. My article on the subject is in the August issue of the American Society of Journalists and Authors Journal, so maybe that's the reason for the friendly vibes. Nice work. Interestingly, my contcts this week are all ladies. Surely there are male ghostwriters out there. Or are they all in James Patterson's stable?

2010-07-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

I've created a new group called Ghostwriters Anonymous. As of today, it's a one-man band, me as president, but a few writer friends might join after their careers at magazines and as public relations execs have dried up and they need work. GA, not to be confused with GA-GA, is dedicated to keeping their clients in the dark, or rather, keeping their clients' ghostwriters out of the public eye. Most celebs employ ghostwriters, as do some famous fiction writers, for help in producing books. Many former journalists are eschewing bylines in favor of finding clients who need their skills. A caveat: Slinking back into the shadows is only for ego-less writers who value a working wage over public acclaim.

2010-03-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

Good to hear that daughter Janet is plunging into the homeopathy world, educating herself on this health-helpful discussion and learning how to improve her physical/mental condition. And am heartened to know that my other daughter, Kathy and her husband have joined a gym. Keeping fit is crucial. I keep adding to my notes for the Left Coast Crime Conference in LA this month.
Gorgeous weather here in southern Cal., conducive to writing and transcribing tapes for an upcoming memoir that may be well in the future.

Gunther Rall book now a Kindle Book

2010-02-25T11:30:00.000-08:00

Great to see my popular sold-out book, "Gunther Rall: Luftwaffe Ace and NATO General," now available as a Kindle electronic book on amazon.com. The hard-cover version has been out of print for three years but now it can be downloaded to a Kindle device for $9.95. So many people had emailed, asking where they can find it, and now, if they have a Kindle device, they can read it almost instantly.

2010-01-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Great way to begin the New Year is to get back to work on my 9/11 novel about Catherine Scott, an Oregon teenager who was married to one of the September 11, 2001, hijackers. Based on a true story, my fictional version chronicles her life after running away from home and meeting an Arab who is studying English at a college in Portland. He was in the U.S. on a student visa - as were they all - and Catherine soon finds herself caught up in his efforts to form terrorist cells.

2009-12-30T09:16:00.001-08:00

Back from Christmas in Connecticut, and gratified to see prices on the Web for second-hand copies of my book, "Gunther Rall: Fighter Ace and NATO General," are now ranging from $60 to $800! Wow! Sure wish my publisher would get back into the game with a third printing after the first two sold out, but she claimed last year she can't afford it. The Authors Guild was gracious enough to go to bat on my behalf for a reversion of rights, but the contract had no such clause, so I'm out of luck. Talk about a short-sighted publisher, who is now out of the industry. Pig in a poke...

Tosca Trevant is the character in my recently-completed mystery, "Music for Murder." She's from Cornwall, a feisty gossip columnist whose beat is Buckingham Palace. However, after barging through the wrong door in said palace and discovering a scandal, Tosca has been re-assigned to America, where, her editor claims, she can't get into any trouble. Ha!

2009-10-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

October 27, 2009.

Almost finished the biography I am ghostwriting. Fascinating subject of a man who took his father's business from a so-so enterprise to billionaire status. Creativity, entrepreneurship, risk-taking, and putting customer satisfaction above all else resulted in his phenomenal success.

2009-10-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

October 26, 2009
Reread Here at the New Yorker by Brendan Gill over the weekend, it's still highly relevant today. First printing was 1997. Marvelous anecdotes of america's great writers.

Tried to find the newest hot band that 18 year olds listen to, but it was too confusing. I finally settled on Blur, a Britpop group. I have Tosca wearing their T-shirt.

2009-10-23T09:17:00.000-07:00

Friday, October 22, 2009

Just re-read one of my favorite authors, Rhys Bowen. She writes the tremendously successful Constable Evan Evans mysteries, set in Wales. I'm also a fan of Rhys' Her Royal Spyness books -- hilarious hijinks that feature a young lady amateur sleuth with the grand name of Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, daughter of the Duke of Glen Garry and Rannoch. Rhys herself is minor royalty, 40th in line for the throne.

Yesterday I finished writing a movie treatment about a young girl abandoned by her flighty mother, and how it impacts her throughout her life. Sad stuff, and not uncommon in today's world.

2009-10-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

October 21, 2009

Welcome to my blog. I'm a little late getting onto this bandwagon, relying on my other websites for communication, but this seems a lot more fun, friendlier, and like writing a dairy.

Sadly,Gunther Rall, the subject of a biography I wrote, titled "Gunther Rall: Fighter Ace and NATO General," died this month, at age 91. His two daughters sent me a card but I had already read the obituary in the UK's Daily Telegraph. I added a comment to the story, which they posted online. He was an honorable man for whom I came to have a great respect, as I interviwed him at length for my book.

I am recovering from a day-long stint as an Honorary Judge at the Newport Beach Concours d'Elegance, held at the St. Regis in Dana Point. While I write about motorcars and the auto industry as a journalist, covering new models, it was an honor to be asked to judge some of the West Coast's most magnificent vintage cars. My favorites are French - Delahaye and DeLage, but Austin-Healeys are a close third. A 1936 Talbot-Lago caught my eye, too. Among the Real Judges, with whom I was part of a team, was an elderly lady named Belva Baltzar- I was told that Concours judges cling to their judgeships until the Great Reaper appears, so most are advanced in years. Belva was among the candidates who trained with NASA's space program to become an astronaut. One of her classmates was Christa McCauliffe, who was the finalist selected to join the Apollo team. Like Christa, Belva was a teacher, and still teaches Special Ed. she's been a Real Judge for 46 years, has owned a few dozen cars, and several vintage racing cars..

Most of the other Honorary Judges were talented auto designers, including Ford's brilliant chief designer, Freeman Morgan; Barry Meguiar, the wax fella who keeps the cars shining; Bruce Meyer; founding chairman of the Petersen Museum, and Road & Track's Bill Motta.

In the crime novel I've just finished writing, a 1953 Austin-Healey BN1 is featured. My amateur sleuth, Tosca Trevant, from Cornwall, of course, like me, can't figure out the unusual manual transmission, putting her life in danger.