I am a veteran journalist whose reporting career has spanned newspapers, radio and digital/broadcast media. I am currently seeking an agent or publisher for Finding Johnny, a memoir about the unsolved murder of my younger brother, and the insidious nature of buried grief.
I am a former health and general assignment reporter for ABC News; and a health and education reporter for NBC News. My freelance articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, WebMD, VICE, Pacific Standard and MIC.
I hold a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts and an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism, where I was awarded the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and Baker Prize for creative nonfiction.
In 1979, when I was starting life as a radio announcer in Switzerland, my 20-year-old brother was murdered in my Massachusetts hometown. He was shot in our driveway, just yards from my sleeping parents. I raced back to a family in deep denial: my father had tossed away Johnny’s belongings in a trash bag as my mother wept behind closed doors. Later, he offered me (and I accepted) the car where my brother had died, wiped clean of his blood. I abandoned my overseas career, hastily married a boyfriend I hardly knew, and tried, but failed, to fix my family’s pain. For decades, I buried my grief, but ultimately found healing in action. With my two surviving siblings, I embarked on a hunt for the killer and for the mysterious details of our brother’s short life. With a reporter’s tenacity, I confronted police about the unsolved case, my stoic New England past, and my unresolved grief.
The Donaldson family in 1959: from left, Jimmy; Debby; my mother, Nancy, holding Johnny; my father, Jake; and me.
Cold Cases
The Grief of Never Knowing Who or Why
Finding Johnny
Memoir of a cold case and a family’s buried grief
John Royal Donaldson, 16, and the goaltender for hs soccer team at New Hampton School in New Hampshire.
Of the 9,686 homicides in Massachusetts from 1965 until 2019, 3,749 remain unsolved.
Nationally, one-third of all murders remain unresolved, and that number is rising.
The tentacles of a cold-case murder affect family relationships, careers and even mental health.
Grief can be especially profound when there are no answers. Whenever there is a sense of trauma, people want to have a narrative. It’s an unfinished story, and it hinders acceptance.
People who have lost someone in a sudden, violent way may be more prone to complicated grief. Losing a partner doubles that risk; when a child dies, it’s even higher.
Healing is possible. Talk about your loved one; honor the relationship and memories you have made; find a way to see a future with purpose; lean on family and friends. Write about your loss.
“Grief can enrich us, even if it saddens us,” says Dr. Katherine Shear, a psychiatrist at Columbia University's School of Social Work, a leading expert on complicated grief.
Christmas 1978 was the last time I saw Johnny. My three siblings and I went bowling together in our hometown of Harvard, Mass. Four months later, Johnny, left, was murdered .
