Literary
Lee Mellor and the dark art of true crime By Adam Gray
There is a man lurking
among us, skulking in the shadows, feverishly studying violent crime, relentlessly hammering away at his keyboard, editing audio interviews like a man possessed. His name is Lee Mellor, aka Dr. Mellor, a creative machine, a master of a dark art, one of the most respected figures in Canadian true crime. He is the author of seven books, and the host and creator of the edgy cult hit podcast Murder Was The Case (which has 192 episodes and counting). He’s also been a professional singer/ songwriter, is a criminologist with a PhD in homicide and sex crime, and still in 30s, he is just getting started. Mellor’s journey has been a complex one. Nomadic by nature, he was born in the northwest of England and relocated with his parents to Canada in 1988, where he grew up in Bowmanville, Ont. After studying film and earning
“...focus on putting words on a page for the same reason a lion focuses on stalking gazelle. The motivation is survival. Refuse to be anything but a lion.” a degree in history from Concordia University, he was struck by a mysterious illness that caused him to suffer chronic pain. Mellor had to regroup and learn to deal with his condition; he moved back in with his parents who were now living in a beautiful property on Little Lake in Brighton, Ont. Although this was a dark time in his life, it was also a turning point. 30
“I coped by vociferously reading true crime paperbacks and social science textbooks, while plotting a novel about
