Copper Kettle sold the best fudge on the Jersey Shore—and after its owner's body was found stuffed in a car, his murder went unsolved for decades. Things change, though.
Atavist issue no. 143, WHO KILLED THE FUDGE KING?, is now available.
But a cohort of Ocean City residents insisted that the answers were right there for anyone who bothered to look. They believed that a toxic brew of prejudice, rage, and power had doomed the Fudge King.
I agreed, and thought that the story might make a great screenplay—a kind of South Jersey noir or David Lynch fantasia, where the flowers are pretty above the surface but gnarly worms lurk just below. Yet, soon I was hooked more deeply by the story of a fellow gay man living a relatively out life in the town where my family had spent our summer vacations. Someone whose reward for trying to yank Ocean City into the future was to become a target of hate and hypocrisy.
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