As “Saturday Night Live” recently lampooned, murder as entertainment is all the rage, from documentaries to fictional dramas to podcasts. Perhaps true crime remains best developed as a literary genre even when it grows complicated by authorial issues (one only needs to think of Truman Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD, though there are other good examples). Some true crime books are also memoirs, like Debora Harding’s DANCING WITH THE OCTOPUS, creating a sort of subgenre that draws readers into a very personal vision without the kind of unintended blurred lines that are found in Capote’s famous work.

THE BABYSITTER by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan is one such tale. In it, Rodman recounts her relationship with Tony Costa, who was convicted of two murders and suspected of several others. She balances that story with a more investigative look at Costa and his crimes, as well as the abuse she herself suffered at the hands of her mother.

"The story is gripping, tense, harrowing and balanced with a careful and thoughtful narrative style. The authors move it beyond mere entertainment and toward a challenging exploration of family and dysfunction."

Despite their strict Catholicism, Rodman’s parents divorced when she and her sister, Louise, were quite young. From that point on, their father was rarely around as he made a life with his new family. Rodman’s mother, Betty, was often angry and prone to bouts of rage, especially while drinking. She was quick to insult and hit Rodman, though she was much kinder to Louise. Betty worked hard, as a home economics teacher during the school year and as a hotel maid during the summer, but she was negligent toward her children, leaving them with a string of babysitters --- sometimes strangers --- when she went out dancing, drinking or on dates.

One such babysitter was Tony Costa, who also was essentially fatherless. His father died when he was a baby, and he didn’t have much of a connection with his stepfather. He did seem to have been coddled by his mother, a woman who Rodman remembers as gentle and affectionate. But it should’ve been clear to anyone paying attention that Costa was violent, unwell and capable of even more terrible acts than the ones he was known for. As a child he killed animals for taxidermy experiments; he abused both prescription and street drugs; as a young adult he kept a group of teens enthralled; he courted a 13-year-old girl and married her after getting her pregnant and then abused her horribly. But Costa gains infamy for murdering two women, Mary Anne Wysocki and Patricia Walsh, and burying them in the woods where he also grew marijuana and stashed the pills he stole and sold.

Costa’s biography is fascinating in the way that serial killer biographies often are, and Rodman’s own story is heartbreaking. What makes THE BABYSITTER particularly compelling is the weaving of these two narratives as Rodman’s memories of Costa are mostly positive. From her perspective, he gave her attention when she needed it most. He would take her and Louise on errands around town, often buying them treats, and thus provided a welcome, if temporary, escape from life with Betty. There were moments that he scared or worried her, but her threshold for that fear and her need for kindness allowed her to overlook them. The book presents two villains, Betty and Costa, though Rodman and Jordan avoid sensationalizing or demonizing either, striving for understanding but not absolution.

THE BABYSITTER is a captivating book that examines its setting as much as its characters. Rodman and Jordan go further in their research than anyone else has done on the Costa case and have located women whom Costa was believed to have killed decades ago. The story is gripping, tense, harrowing and balanced with a careful and thoughtful narrative style. The authors move it beyond mere entertainment and toward a challenging exploration of family and dysfunction.

In the end, this is a story of Liza Rodman’s survival and strength. THE BABYSITTER is a unique and welcome addition to both the true crime and memoir genres.