This September, local resident Peter Reid’s latest book, Every Hill a Burial Place, will be available.

In 1966, Peace Corps Volunteer Peverly “Peppy” Kinsey mysteriously fell while out on a picnic with her husband, Bill. The two were both volunteers for the Peace Corps in Tanzania. Local authorities arrested Bill and charged him with murder as witnesses came forward claiming to have seen the pair engaged in a struggle, a bloody iron bar was found near the scene. The incident had the potential to be disastrous for both the Peace Corps and the newly independent nation of Tanzania.

Reid, who was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania at the time, has exposed inconsistencies and biases in the case and a prosecution “severely overmatched” by the resources the defense brought in to argue for Bill Kinsey’s acquittal.

“Peter Reid has written a meticulously researched and fascinating true story about the ambiguous death of a female Peace Corps volunteer in Tanzania in the 1960s and the subsequent prosecution of her husband, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, for murder. Equally compelling is the backstory about a range of issues receiving intense local and worldwide attention, including calls to “send in the Marines” to rescue the accused, an apparent lack of concern about justice for the deceased, and the perception of special treatment for a white American in a newly independent African nation.” — Skip McGinty, 1960s Peace Corps Africa Volunteer and Peace Corps Country Director, Oman

You can order a copy at Orca Books or online, on Amazon.

Peter H. Reid, past member of the Griffin Neighborhood Association and one of the principal organizers of the Steamboat Conservation Partnership, is also the retired founding director of the Community Law Clinic at Stanford Law School. Peter previously served for more than thirty years as executive director of the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County. He lives here on the Steamboat Peninsula and in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife Barbara.