WINSTED — Residents learned about the motives of criminals and the process behind criminal investigations when the Beardsley and Memorial Library held a discussion by Vernon native M. William Phelps on Saturday, Jan. 19.Phelps is the co-host of the television show “Dark Minds” for the Investigation Discovery Channel and is the author of 23 books about crime.The show is about unsolved serial murder cases which Phelps investigates during the course of the program.Phelps started his talk to an audience of 50 residents by speaking about his investigation methods. “Through the journey of my investigation, I consult with a criminal profiler, a psychotherapist and a criminal serving time in prison,” Phelps said. “This guy, who on the program we call ‘Raven’, is an animal and a monster. He has killed between five and 20 women. He calls me a couple times a week and we talk about the case that we’re investigating.”Phelps said the show keeps the identity of the criminal anonymous in order for the show to not glorify him in any way.“We don’t want him to get any credit for what he did,” Phelps said. “All we are looking for is his input on how a killer might think. He gives me the insight that no one else can because he tells me and the viewer what it is like to actually take somebody’s life. What goes through his mind is very important to us because he describes what he is thinking when he committed his murders.”Phelps said, out of any question he has been asked in his career, the one question he has been asked the most is why do people kill.“Any of us are capable of killing,” Phelps said. “The quick answer to why someone kills is that there is no answer. There are only three motivations for murder: love, money and revenge. There are a lot of sub-categories under those three motivations.”He said the purpose of the “Dark Minds” television show is not to all-out solve cold murder cases, but to try to present information on the cases in order to generate interest and get potential information from the public in order to finally solve them.“On the show, I go out and interview police officers and family members of the victims,” Phelps said. “It seems as if the more I got involved in these cases, the more active the investigation in each case became. If you watch the show, it may seem like each investigation takes less than 43 minutes to complete. The truth is that each investigation takes a long period of time to complete, sometimes more than two years. In this upcoming season of the show, we are presenting one case that I worked on for five years. These are all cases where they cannot find the perpetrator.”While other true crime television shows, including “Criminal Minds,” use criminal profilers in order to get information pertaining to a case, Phelps said his television show does not use them.“Criminal profiling is like throwing darts at a dartboard,” Phelps said. “Most of the time profilers are wrong. If they find information, most of the time it does not help the case. We can speculate about what the culprit does for a living but that does not help the case.”Phelps said while most people may think the murder rate is high in America, in truth it is much lower than it was 20 years ago.“Because of television and the Internet, the reporting of murders has gone up, which makes it seem like murder rates have gone up,” he said. “For example, last week in New York City there was not one murder. If you look at the murder rates in Hartford and other cities you will see they have all dropped. In about 999 out of 1,000 murder cases, the perpetrator is someone who knew the victim. The chances of someone being killed randomly are pretty low.”As for writing true crime books, Phelps said he mainly writes about serial killers and female murderers because, to him, they are much more interesting to write about than male murderers.“A male, unless he is a serial killer, is not really interesting to write about for 500 pages,” he said. “Females are just a lot more interesting. A male can be cruising along, pick up a hitchhiker and throw them out of a car. It’s just a primordial instinct men have to hunt and kill. However, a female is much more systematic. A female will take her time to find the target then go to a grocery store to check out what kind of poison they offer. A few weeks after that, she will purchase the poison, put it in a cabinet at home, then think about it over the course of a few weeks. Then she will take the poison out, start experimenting on a squirrel or a cat, then a few weeks after that she will finally get her intended victim. There is just a lot more that goes into the thought process for a female killer than there is for a male killer.”Phelps went on to give a preview of his next book, “The Kiss of the She Devil,” which is due out in March.“I did not title the book,” Phelps said. “Usually, you submit a title to the book publisher. The book publisher then goes to a marketing team that comes up with a title for you that they think will sell books.”Phelps said the book is about the case of a Michigan librarian who was leaving work one night and was murdered in front of the library building.“The library surveillance video that night shows a car that pulls up to her as she is standing in front of the building, then someone gets out of the car and shoots her,” he said. “People I interviewed told me she did not have an enemy in the world and was loved by all. I spoke with my serial killer source who told me that even for people in the world who do not have an enemy, there is usually someone out there who doesn’t like them.”
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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