Tell Me I'm Your Man (A Story of Love, Madness, and a Murder Trial)

A haunting, provocative investigation by an award-winning journalist asked to participate in the murder trial of her first boyfriend, who is accused of killing his wife and pleading not guilty by reason of insanity.

Fifteen years after breaking up with Steve, her college boyfriend, April Dembosky received a call from a lawyer who told her that Steve was about to go on trial for murder—and asked if she’d be willing to help build his insanity defense. The evidence that Steve had killed his wife, Carolin, was unambiguous. The question for the jury, the question that April's memories could help answer, was about Steve's state of mind: was Carolin's death an episode of domestic violence? Or had Steve killed her because he was so mentally ill he couldn't tell right from wrong?

Tell Me I'm Your Man brings a fresh twist to the literary true crime story, blending science and legal reportage with memoir to explore two questions: Did April ever really know Steve—was the person in her memory, her kind and generous college boyfriend, real? And was Steve, whatever the legal verdict, morally responsible for killing his wife? In the tradition of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark and Under the Banner of Heaven, April draws on a decade of experience as an NPR health journalist to retrace Steve and Carolin’s journey through the healthcare and legal systems, piecing together the personal, societal, and bureaucratic forces that led Steve to commit an unthinkable act. What begins as the investigation of a personal tragedy—for Carolin and her family, as well as for Steve and his—becomes a page-turning tale of overlapping systemic failures and a quest for moral clarity and closure.