The Last Party

Officers search the Wultz home. When they enter the bedroom, they find Perla’s body surrounded by three American girl dolls. One of the officers expresses surprise that the death is being called a death by suicide.

Detectives arrive to interrogate Grant, who promptly calls an attorney. He is shown a string of text messages sent by Perla from his phone, requesting Paige to come to the house and meet him in Sophie’s room. Grant begins to understand Perla’s intention to frame him.

Grant watches the sun rise over the Wultz home as detectives continue to search the interior. He decides that he is going to sell the house, unable to bear the idea of sleeping in it again. A detective named Heinwright approaches Grant, telling him that they need to discuss Lucy and “her connection to all this” (309).

News of the murder spreads through Brighton Estates, where the Wultzes’ neighbors eagerly consume the “exciting” gossip. Within hours, swarms of reporters descend on the house.

Inside the Wultz house, the coroner handling Perla’s body shows Detective Heinwright the old scar tissue on her neck, stating, “[T]his isn’t the first time she’d had her throat cut” (313).

Grant’s attorney, Paul Reachen, arrives at the house. When Detective Heinwright asks if Grant knows the origins of Perla’s scar, he openly states that Perla is Jenny Folcrum before being silenced by Paul, who ushers him off the scene.

This chapter opens with a quote from one of the Murder Unplugged hosts. She explains that “the true-crime community exploded” on the morning when news of the murder broke (318). Shortly afterward, Sophie Wultz contacted them to arrange an interview.

Grant is arrested the morning after the murder. Sophie is playing soccer at Mandolin’s house when Paige arrives. Paige asks flat-out if Sophie put sugar in her gas tank, which Sophie vehemently denies. Paige says, “I think your mom was fucking with us,” and Sophie responds, “That sounds about right” (318). Paige surprises Sophie by asking if she’d like to meet her grandfather.

With assistance from Paige’s father, she and Sophie visit Leewood in the prison hospital. When he recognizes Sophie as his granddaughter, Leewood bursts into tears. He confesses everything about the night of the Folcrum Party but doesn’t voice his belief that Grant killed Perla. He hopes that Grant will not be punished, thinking, “You did what you had to do to protect your children” (321).

In prison, Grant is attacked several times before being moved to solitary confinement. Being alone gives him time to reflect on his marriage, “a Venus flytrap of hell” (324). The false leads that Perla planted point squarely to him, and his frequent visits to Leewood strengthen the prosecution’s case that he is an obsessed copycat killer. Grant hopes that the holes in Perla’s story, combined with the testimony of Mandolin, Bridget, and Sophie, will support his innocence.

Grant is embarrassed that he fell for Perla’s manipulation for so long but knows that the loss of Lucy predisposed him to care for her. He let his grief over Lucy convince him that “by loving and taking care of Perla, [he] was, by extension, giving those things to Lucy” (326). A guard arrives to unlock Grant’s cell, telling him that he has a visitor.

This chapter is narrated by Sophie. She is excited that she has finally become famous but resents the fact that she is known for being the daughter of Perla and Grant and not for her own story. This will change when she appears on TV for a live interview, where she plans to “tell the truth in the way [Perla] taught [her]” (328).

From prison, Grant watches Sophie walk onstage and take a seat across from well-known broadcast journalist Neil McArthur. Sophie begins to speak about Perla, stating that she was a good mother in many ways, teaching Sophie “how to be a strong female and stand [her] ground” (330). She then shares her belief that Perla did kill her friends and would have killed Sophie if she was not stopped by Grant. Sophie says that Perla tried to drown her in the bathtub when she was eight years old, giving a detailed account of the incident.

Grant watches in shock because he knows for a fact that the incident did not happen. Sophie fabricated the story. Grant looks at Paul, who is grinning, and begins to smile himself.

After Sophie’s interview, Grant’s charges are dismissed, and he is released from jail. Sophie plans to live-stream his release on social media. She knows that he will lecture her about lying but maintains that she lied for a good reason, revealing that she witnessed Perla entering her room with a knife on the night of the murders. Sophie carefully weighed the consequences of her lie and decided to go through with it, stating, “Honestly, mom would have been proud” (334).

Three weeks after his release, Grant and Sophie leave the Wultz house for the last time. Grant plans to sell the house and drive them across America in an RV, looking for their new home. Their first stop will be Lancaster Prison, where Leewood has left a package for Sophie.

Grant reflects on Sophie’s stubborn and ambitious nature, inherited from Perla. After seeing her lie so fluently, he is terrified that she “got something else” from her mother (336). Grant plans to watch Sophie closely, looking for any signs he missed in Perla. He vows to “show her the importance of honesty, kindness, and humility” (336). As Sophie climbs into the RV, Grant looks at her and knows he would do anything to protect her.