Latah murder inspires novel; 'Choke' a dark story of sexual addiction

His father's murder at the hands of Dale Shackelford provided part of the inspiration for the latest book from the author of "Fight Club."

Portland author Chuck Palahniuk said reflecting on his father's life while driving to Spokane two years ago to identify his body started him on the road to his new book, "Choke," a dark comedy about sexual addiction.

Shackelford was convicted in December of the May 1999 shooting of Fred Palahniuk and Palahniuk's girlfriend, Donna Fontaine. Fontaine was Shackelford's ex-wife and, according to Palahniuk, the latest in a long string of girlfriends and wives in his father's life.

It was "my father's pattern through his life to always have a girlfriend or several girlfriends," Palahniuk said during a brief rest in an extended book tour.

Fred Palahniuk was married five times and, whenever his children visited him, he had a new girlfriend, Chuck Palahniuk said.

"He really loved to meet someone and have that period of romance (and) euphoric joy, but the relationships didn't tend to last beyond that," Palahniuk said. "It was his need for companionship, love, whatever, that ultimately was his undoing."

Fred Palahniuk had known Fontaine only a short time before the two were shot outside Fontaine's Kendrick-area garage apartment where their bodies were burned beyond recognition.

"I don't think my father really knew what he was getting into -- the passion and danger there," Palahniuk said.

The bodies of Fontaine and Palahniuk had been badly burned in a fire that destroyed Fontaine's home after the shooting. In the summer of 1999, the summer the "Fight Club" movie came out, Chuck Palahniuk and his brother drove to their father's home outside of Spokane to track down X-rays that might help police identify their father. A former brakeman for Burlington Northern Railroad, Fred Palahniuk had two vertebrae fused after a train accident left him disabled.

On the road up to their father's house, the brothers saw a new sign that said "Kismet Rock."

"Kismet," Palahniuk learned later, was the title of the personal ad placed by Fontaine and answered by his father.

On the night the couple was killed, Fred Palahniuk was planning to drive Fontaine to his home to surprise her with the "Kismet Rock" sign, Chuck Palahniuk wrote in a short essay detailing the story behind his new novel.

Palahniuk wrote he began attending support groups for sex addicts in an attempt to understand his father.

Fred Palahniuk "was a man who would talk to anybody," Palahniuk said, "gas station attendants, waitresses or anybody. It drove my mother crazy."

"He was an inventor E always trying to come up with a one-shot thing that would be the family's salvation," Palahniuk said, recalling how his father would frequently take the plastic tab from bread loaves and announce: " 'the guy who invented this will never have to work again.' "

Chuck Palahniuk said his father's murder also worked its way into his next book, a horror novel that has not been released. He said he may eventually write a long nonfiction essay about his father's death, but isn't likely to write a nonfiction crime novel about the murder.

Palahniuk attended a few of the opening days of Shackelford's trial, listening to opening arguments and testimony of Fontaine's children.

With Shackelford's defense outlining several alternate theories of the murders, Palahniuk said he feared they might suggest that his father pulled the trigger following the pattern of the murder-suicide of Chuck Palahniuk's grandparents.

The story of Palahniuk's grandparents wasn't aired at trial, though a defense expert did advance a murder-suicide theory.

Palahniuk said seeing Shackelford erased for him any of the trial's drama.

"My first reaction was: 'My god, he's not handsome enough to be a murderer,'" he said.

On television crime programs, the murderer is always "the second handsomest person," Palahniuk said, but "that completely banal, overweight man took all the drama out of the situation."

Palahniuk said he and his siblings were at peace with their father's death even before a Latah County jury convicted Shackelford, making him eligible for the death penalty.

Palahniuk said he believed his father "is fantastically happy. E It doesn't matter to him how the trial was resolved."