David Kushner reveals painful childhood after his older brother was murdered

Writer and journalist David Kushner, 47, has recounted his brother's tragic 1978 murder in a new memoir

One October afternoon in 1973, when he was just four years old, David Kushner begged his older brother Jonathan to bring him back Snappy Gator Gun from the local 7-Eleven.

Jonathan was abducted and murdered as he returned home on his bike, leaving Kushner with decades of guilt, sadness and the faces of the two 'bogeymen' who changed his family's life forever.

The award-winning journalist and author recalls that fateful day in Alligator Candy, a new memoir that delves into the detail of his brother's death - and finding out about his murderers. 

'In a way, I've been writing this book for... about 44 years,' Kushner told PEOPLE. 

'This is the story of my life and I've been living with it and thinking about it and researching it since I was a kid, trying to find answers for myself.' 

Nearly 10 years would pass before Kushner, 47, would walk into a local library and find out the details of his brother's murder. 

For years Kushner struggled what was both a 'looming mystery' and the two very real 'bogeymen', as he calls them, that had taken something so precious away from his family. 

'Every kid fears the bogeyman, the creature in the closet, the monster under the bed,' he told the magazine. 

Kushner was just four years old when his older brother Jonathan (pictured right riding his bicycle and left with David) was murdered by two men while returning home from a trip to the local 7-Eleven 

The horrific murder left Kushner with decades of guilt, sadness and the faces of the two 'bogeymen' who changed his family's life forever (pictured is his father being comforted during a memorial service)

'But my bogeyman had a face - two faces - and they couldn't be dispelled by someone telling me he wasn't real.' 

John Paul Witt and Gary Tillman abducted 11-year-old Jonathan on October 28 as he rode his bike through the woods after the 7-Eleven trip close to his Tampa, Florida home.

Police said Witt and Tillman were 'hunting' for a child. They gagged Jonathan and locked him in the trunk of a car, where he suffocated to death. 

They then molested and mutilated his body before burying him a shallow grave near the woods where they had taken him. 

It would be the alligator candy that Kushner begged his brother to bring back that would lead to the murderers' convictions. 

John Paul Witt (right) and Gary Tillman (left) abducted 11-year-old Jonathan on October 28 as he rode his bike through the woods. Jonathan suffocated in their car and the two men molested him before burying his body

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Witt's wife Donna brought the bag of Snappy Gator Gun back to his wife Donna for her son after the murder. She told police she had eaten it. 

Kushner called that day in the library his 'first act of journalism', one that would become a career of contributions to the likes of the New York Times and Rolling Stone and winning Best Feature Reporting at the New York Press Club. 

But it would also be the day he realized 'some of the most terrible stories were true', he writes in his memoir. 

Kushner made Alligator Candy an ode to the brother who never got to grow up, and says he has come to peace with the last moments of Jonathan's life

'It was terrifying,' he told PEOPLE. 'But it was also revelatory because suddenly I was trying to get some answers but, at the same time, the answers were raising more questions.' 

Kushner suffered PTSD after his brother's death, later self-medicating with marijuana in his teenage years and eventually turning to writing as an outlet. 

Witt was executed in Florida by electric chair in 1985. But more than 10 years later, a loophole made Tillman eligible for parole.

Nearly a decade after Jonathan's death, Kushner realized he was in a position of action - to ensure his brother's killer did not walk free. 

The writer and his oldest brother Andy gave speeches in 1997 that helped add 102 more years to Tillman's life sentence. 

'Now here we were: grown men, grown brothers, best friends,' Kushner wrote in his memoir. 

'And we could so something if we wanted. We could speak. If felt like we were walking into the schoolyard to defend our brother against the neighborhood bully. It was time to fight.' 

Kushner made Alligator Candy an ode to the brother who never got to grow up, and says he has come to peace with the last moments of Jonathan's life. 

'I know that while his death was so tragic, he was never more alive than his very last ride,' Kushner writes in the book. 

'The wind was in his face. He was pedaling fast. He was heading home.' 

'And he was free.'   

Kushner's parents, Dr Gilbert Kushner and his wife Lorraine, in 1973 - the year of their son's death 

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