Like most mainstream books, Tim Dumas' "Greentown," receives its fair share of reader reviews on the popular Amazon.com web site.

The majority of reader ratings are favorable. They range from two to five stars with comments ranging from "couldn't put it down" to "...the author not only infuriates me, but he is inaccurate in his depiction [sic] which leads me to believe his [sic] is inaccurate in other depictions of the book."

But one reader headline is particularly eye-catching. It reads: "Why doesn't anyone ever write about the Klein murder?"

Seven months and two days after Martha Moxley was found bludgeoned to death, the bodies of Joanne Kim Klein, 30, and her maid Martha Lema, 28, were found at their Perkins Road house on the night of June 2, 1976. They had each been shot twice in the head, execution-style, with a 9-millimeter handgun.

A former fashion model turned photographer, Kim Klein had at one time been married to a reputed Chicago mobster and was said to be close to the infamous late gangster Sam Giancana (the two died within weeks of each other). Her maid, Lema, was rumored to have ties to a drug smuggling ring.

After the discovery of the two women's bodies, police questioned Kim Klein's former husband, James Klein, who lived in Manhattan at the time. According to police, Klein said that he had visited his ex-wife several hours before the bodies were found, but that the former couple had gotten into an argument and he had left.

In September of the same year, James Klein was arrested and charged with the two murders. He was freed on bail in November, only to die four months later, allegedly by suicide in his Manhattan apartment on Feb. 7, 1977. He was 38. An empty bottle of pills was found near his body and his death was ruled to be caused by an overdose of barbiturates. Multiple suicide notes, in which Klein lashed out angrily at the Greenwich Police Department and the prosecutors office for his arrest and indictment, were found near the body.

The Greenwich police have ruled the case closed. "Her husband was arrested," Chief Peter Robbins explained Tuesday. But in the minds of some, "case closed" does not mean "solved completely."

Former Greenwich police detective Stephen Carroll investigated the Klein case with his partner James Lunney, shortly before Carroll's retirement in 1977. In an interview Tuesday, Carroll cited the pairs experience working the Moxley case as a reason why the two were assigned to the Klein murder. When local authorities discovered James Klein was in Florida at the time a warrant was issued for his arrest, the two flew down and took him into custody in Pompano Beach.

"There was all kinds of inferences," Carroll said, in reference to clues or rumors about the killing apart from James Klein's involvement. But Carroll added that he did not do follow up work on any of these clues or rumors. "If Jim Lunney or [then-captain of detectives] Tom Keegan did, I'm not aware of that," he said.

Because talk existed of the killing being linked to organized crime, especially due to Kim Klein's alleged former associations in Chicago, Carroll said, "I think [Lunney and I] asked if we could go [to Chicago] -- the answer was no."

Through neutron activation tests on James Klein's hands after the murder, Carroll said the Greenwich police detected a substance which might have been linked to the 9-millimeter used in the killing.

"He either had fired the weapon or handled the bullets," Carroll said. He added that the trace substance detected on Klein's hands was "faint."

Asked if he believed the late James Klein killed his former wife, Carroll replied, "You know, that's a very good question. I really don't think so." But according to Carroll's theory, this belief does not exonerate James Klein from all responsibility for the crime. The former detective believes that Klein was present in the bedroom when his ex-wife was shot to death.

"It was our feeling that somebody else killed her," Carroll said. He also added that "I'm not sure if it was [James Klein's] orders. There was some connotations of drugs in the house." He added that the whole scene seemed "very much like a mob hit."

"We felt [Klein] was the one who scooped up the shells, but he missed one," Carroll said.

That one 9-mm shell was found on the bedspread -- the same bedspread which bore Kim Klein, lying flat on her back, with her knees hanging off the bed and her feet almost touching the floor, according to Carroll. The maid, said to have been found in the bathroom, was likely shot dead to silence her future testimony to investigators, Carroll added.

But if James Klein did not shoot his wife, at least one murderer has not been brought to justice to this day. And the murderer might have had a whole organization behind him or her on the day the two young women were killed.

Eerily enough, Carroll also ties together Kim Klein's murder to the reported suicide of her former husband months later while he was out on bail.

"I don't know that he did take his own life," Carroll said, pointing out the organized crime factor, even the possibility that the suicide notes were forced or forged. Carroll added that to his knowledge, handwriting tests were never performed on the letters.

"I think the individuals responsible were under some pressure that he might talk," Carroll said. And of the suicide note: "Anybody can tell you what you write in a note," the former detective remarked.

"I think he was told `Jim, it'd be a good idea if you took these pills.'"

Dumas', former editor of the now-defunct Greenwich News, refers to the Klein murder as "a fascinating case" "The police consider that one solved, but a lot of people seem to differ," he said. Fishing out a recollection of the case, Dumas said of Kim Klein, "She was very afraid in the last weeks of her life and afraid of her husband."

In June of 1976, the late James Klein's family demanded $20 million in damages from the town of Greenwich, citing civil rights violations, malicious prosecution, wrongful death, false arrest and false imprisonment among other grounds. According to Carroll, no settlement was ever reached and the town never paid any amount to the Klein family. But a book, "Rape of the Blindfolded Lady," written by James Klein's sister Carole Raft, was published several years later. In the account, James Klein is portrayed as an unfortunate victim.

Former Los Angeles police detective and Moxley case book author Mark Fuhrman said Tuesday that while investigating the Moxley case, beginning in 1997, he and his associate Stephen Weeks had also reviewed the Klein case and found the department's lack of evidence "shocking," considering James Klein's arrest.

"I'm not saying that [James Klein] didn't do it, but what they had down wasn't enough," Fuhrman said.

"The Klein case was not a clean case," he continued. "The evidence that I saw that Greenwich was using and holding Klein without bail was ridiculous." (Actually Klein was originally being held on $250,000 bail, an amount he could not post.) Fuhrman also questioned the necessity of local authorities in originally sealing the warrant for James Klein's arrest (it was later unsealed).

The prosecution's case, Fuhrman contended, contained "no eyewitnesses, no one could put him at the scene of the crime."

He continued, "The Klein case stunk when I read what I read about it. If you're going to charge somebody with murder, you have to connect them to the crime scene at the time of the murder. You've got to corroborate it through some piece of evidence."

And as for neutron tests on the hands, Fuhrman said, "there's a lot of things that can transfer that," citing fertilizer as an example. Fuhrman also pointed out the possibility of a neutron test coming back positive if a subject owns a gun. James Klein is said to have owned three.

"The only time [those tests are] brought into court is when they're 100 percent positive and the [reading] was so high," Fuhrman said, contradicting the "faint" reading described by Carroll.

After no arrest in Martha Moxley's murder, seven months earlier, Fuhrman contended that the Klein case was a "must solve" for the Greenwich Police Department. Asked if that would explain why an arrest might be made with supposedly so little evidence, Fuhrman replied, "Well, Tom Keegan's your key; he screwed up the Moxley case."

Keegan, the captain of Greenwich police detectives at the time of the Moxley and Klein murders and later Greenwich police chief, could not be reached at his home in Myrtle Beach, S.C. where he serves in the state House of Representatives.

Even if James Klein is proven innocent, Carroll says he's skeptical any other participants in the crime can be brought to justice.

"I doubt it -- it's like one of those things that happen in the city quite often and [the perpetrator's] never found," he said.